Emotional Cancer

Sometimes the best things that we can do for ourselves are the hardest things to do. Or, to turn it around, the hardest things we have to do for ourselves are really the best things we can do. I'm not sure which sounds better, because it's really pretty much the same thing. A literary obverse, which I'm pretty sure is not some kind of fancy grammatical construct, but rather some fantastical shit that I just made up.

I had to cut someone out of my life last night, because that was the best thing for me to do for me. Cutting people out of my life generally means they cease to exist to me. An act of excision. I've found that cutting people out of my life is usually the hardest thing for me to do, though, because these are people who have brought me, usually inadvertently, intense anxiety and pain, and while I am left with a relief from the anxiety, it also seems to bring me this great and deep sorrow that doesn't go away, but just lingers there, like my stretch marks that just linger on. They fade, but they don't go away. Constant reminders of what was. Stretch marks of the soul.

I had to cut my stepmother out of my life a year or so ago. At that point, she wasn't even really my stepmother, but more like my father's widow, because she had never really been a stepmother to me. I always felt like she just kind of treated me like that little puppy that someone brings over to show off periodically. I was the puppy that never grew up, and then my children turned into those puppies. My connection to her was solely through my father. She and I never spent any time together, never talked unless my father was involved in the conversation, never had any true bond. It's quite sad to me, because she and my father were married for 24 years. 24 years of treating someone like a puppy is a hard pill for the puppy to swallow.

My father died, which is a whole other blog someday, maybe or maybe not, and I tried to maintain the relationship, or tried to establish one. It's important for me to insert at this point that I never really had any use for this woman, my stepmother. I didn't like her, I didn't like her essence, I didn't like that she was so dependant on my father, I didn't like a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff about her. At some point in time, I started calling her Mothbrain. Sounds harsh, but trust me, common sense had never met this woman, and God help, never will. So when my father died, and she didn't know how to pay bills, didn't know how to arrange to get the grass cut, considered a trip to the grocery store to be a major outing, got lost driving to my aunt's house (in the next county where she'd been at least 57.9 times before), I tried to be kind. I called once a week, sent The Ex over to cut her grass, offered to help her with the financial matters, offered to do anything she needed. But I came to realize after several months that this seemed to, possibly, could it be a one-sided relationship? I really pondered this, because she never initiated any contact. Or if she did initiate contact, she wasn't able to follow through on it. She sent me this long letter about wanting to make sure she was still involved with my children but didn't know how to make it happen. I suggested taking the children to the movies, and I'd even pay for their tickets. That happened exactly once. She bought a book for the older daughter for Christmas gift, but wanted to read it to her herself, and so asked that we not read the book to the older daughter. But she never called to arrange that. The fucking book is still unread. She showed up for a lunch date late because she got to the restaurant, realized she forgot her cell phone at home and had to go back home to get it. Her mother in Alabama was sick and she might have to leave right away. Helloooo, we're 14 hours away. Another hour isn't going to do you any good. No phone calls, no nothing on her part. Like I said, Mothbrain.

Here's where it got sticky and why. This will undoubtedly sound really trite, and probably petty, but we all have our quirks. When my grandmother (my father's mother) moved from her house into a "retirement community", and had to get rid of most of her furniture, my father was adamant that he get first pick. He was the oldest, you know. Read that as he was the greediest, you know. And then when my grandmother passed away, he again demanded first pick of all of her furniture. He was the oldest, you know. He ended up with a house full of furniture that belonged to my grandmother and great-grandmother, and some of their jewelry, too. Pictures, china, all kinds of stuff. He was the oldest, you know. I'm only repeating that because it sort of became his mantra of justification. Basically, my father was a self-centered, greedy bastard. Let's just call it what it is. The furniture and jewelry might not be worth much monetarily, but it meant a lot to me in terms of sentimental value. So here's Mothbrain in a house full of furniture that belonged to my grandmother and great-grandmother, and do I continue to try to build/maintain a relationship with this woman in an effort to try to get a few hand-me-downs when she's feeling the need to downsize? This really seemed grovel-ish to me. And I don't grovel. Ever.

To say that this caused me an extremely high level of anxiety would be an understatement. In retrospect, I see that what was happening to me was that I was perfecting a full blown anxiety disorder, along with panic attacks, about having to continue to have this woman in my life. It came down to this: deal with this woman, this Mothbrain, and take the anxiety disorder and panic attacks in stride, or let her go and all of my grandmother's shit go, and chalk it up to making the better decision for me. It only takes a minute to write this, but this was a decision about six months in the making. So I let her go. Goodbye china, goodbye family pictures, goodbye everything that reminds me of that comfort of my grandmother's house. I also got to say goodbye to some really ugly panic attacks. That's what I had to do. This woman had become emotional cancer to me.

Someone walked into my life a while back and I thought because I had known this person from the days of so long ago, it would be okay. I could trust, I could be secure in being me, I could relax. I thought at the time that the door to my life had been kicked in, boom, here I am! But it wasn't like that. It was much more emotionally covert, more ninja-like. This was some CIA quality shit, the kind of shit where you wonder, was someone here doing something? Or is this just my imagination? Snuck right the fuck in, stirred a whole lot of shit up in my soul, and then disappeared. Came back, stirred a little more, disappeared. Repeat this several times and there you have it. There was no finish, no end. Only another beginning, but no middle or end. So many beginnings. I started having what I think might have been minor scale panic attacks again. My anxiety level went back up. I began to feel like that this wasn't good for me, but I couldn't bring myself to do what I knew I needed to do.

I don't deserve emotional cancer in my life. I don't need it and I don't want it. This person, well, it was like that cancer that kind of goes away, but it comes back again. And then you treat it, and it goes away, but then it comes back worse than before. I couldn't deal with it. No more radiation, no more chemotherapy, no more holistic bullshit for me because it didn't work. Just cut it out of my life, get rid of it, please. And when I clicked that "Remove from Friends" button and had that one last panic attack, the final excision was done, although it was much more symbolic for me. It will go unnoticed until I'm suddenly not there.  I'm left with what will be a deep and lingering sorrow for what wasn't, what couldn't be, what won't be. Another stretch mark.