My apologies for the radio silence; it’s been a busy time both logistically and emotionally, and I’ve been so drained from it all that it’s been hard to both find energy to write, and to organize my thoughts enough to jot them down in a way that resembles any sort of sense. Honestly, I’ve still been sad. Still carrying that big ball of sad around with me.

I’ve become much more intimately informed of details about my mother’s current state of health and wellness, which has been a lot to process. (I haven’t spoken to her or her care team directly, which I think would go poorly for all; I have an informant who’s adjacent to the situation, let’s say.) All in all, I’ve decided that I would rather be in the know than avoid acquiring the information. While the knowledge is painful, the wondering would drive me crazy, I think. Overall, she’s doing okay, but there are some significant care needs which I would say are not expected to really improve; insurance decisions and long-term care decisions need to be made, which I’m not a part of, which is good of course. None of these details directly impact anything for me, really. I mean to say, there’s nothing I need to do about any of it. I get to continue to stay well out of it. It’s a crucial point that I am holding fast to, when almost like a drumbeat I am plagued by guilt and self-doubt, especially since she repeatedly asks my informant about me.

I hate that she still seems to have the power to sow enough uncertainty in my mind and body, that this week I had to reach out to half a dozen different friends for help to remember that I am not, in fact, a horrible person. Why did I think that I’m a horrible person, you ask? Because my mother is in a nursing home and I, her only daughter, won’t talk to her or go see her. I am, unfortunately, an extremely empathetic person — I say unfortunately because it made me the perfect person for her to feed off of for most of my life, and because even now I still cannot help feeling sorry for her. Objectively, her situation is sad (and, perhaps, not uncommon for the elderly population as well). My mother is dying — slowly, not necessarily tomorrow or next week or next month, but, she’s near to the end of her life — and that is objectively sad for any person who’s ever been born and had to endure this reality. It’s an objectively sad situation all around, without all the layers of complication to consider on top of that.

In other words…my grief and pain and big ball of sad is normal.

Wait, what?

All of the trauma and horrific abuse I’ve endured for decades, all the pain I’ve had to process in seven and a half years of therapy and counting, all of the abnormality I’ve battled through…and you mean to tell me that these feelings I’m coping with now are NORMAL?!

Yeah. Normal. It’s grief, plain and simple. Well, perhaps not simple per se, but, just grief in itself is the crux of what I’m dealing with now. It’s been so long since I’ve brought any sort of “normal” feelings to the table, that I couldn’t recognize it for what it was at all. My therapist had to point this out to me.

I suppose there’s some small comfort to be found in that. Feeling sadness about a loss, or an impending one, is normal. I’m not inherently broken if I can grieve normal things the way people who are not trauma survivors do. It’s a bittersweet bit of humanity I can cling to, when my determination to hold fast to my boundaries even now, at the end of all things, seems to make me feel like I’m being inhumane. I have to remember that keeping myself safe and distant from her now doesn’t mean that I don’t have a heart; it means that I am continuing to protect it.

If the cost of her satisfaction is my peace, the price is too high.

Maybe that last bit isn’t entirely normal, so to speak. But it’s my normal, nowadays, and it’s the path I will continue to follow.