ComingHomeB"H

Sometimes, often for months as you have seen from my lack of posting, the pain of life is so profound I cannot even write. its enough to sit as my thoughts spin internally, rendering me as if paralyzed. Beyond depression, beyond other diagnoses that follow me together with other ghosts, I remain on alert constantly to fend off attacks...mental attacks that bring on acute anxiety and fear of both people and places outside my small apartment.

I've created a safe space for myself where I can see and touch almost everything within reach as I move within two rooms. The local news is filled with horror stories daily and only this past week the cars parked in back of my house were vandalized, windows smashed, police called and my apartment looks right out on this yard. The cats used to run around during the summer, but no more.

my older cat had a small stroke and his hind legs are so weak he cannot jump, is disinterested in anything requiring jumping because he's slipped and fallen a number of times. I bought him steps so he can climb into his bed...no, even though it might make sense for him to sleep on the ground he's a neurotic as I am and prefers a higher plane for resting.

My mental withdrawal seems to correspond to the increasing intensity of therapy. Whereas earlier years I justified my leaving crown heights to return to college to support my kids, my kids are now all adults and whatever justification I may have had back then is now null and void because they are suffering from not having  mother. As my own mother was absent emotionally and present physically, I was absent physically and until a decade ago, unavailable for emotional support. My youngest son is currently visiting and we spoke for the first time on the impact on him about my leaving.

he said he had been afraid for many years to discuss the subject with me because of not wanting to hurt me, but he felt like he never had a mother...period. No one liked the second wife former husband married and she was gone after 7 years of being unable to deal with the same man I tried to, so the kid experienced immense instability, abandonment, a father who was alternately abusive verbally, physically and mentally....sexually is something that has never been cleared up.

So the lifelong grief of my parents is now replayed as I come to understand what my own children are going through, but if nothing else they have bonded so tightly they are comfortable and loving with one another leaving me to remain to outsider except on rare occasions.