What a difference a dosage adjustment makes. I’ve been on 5mg since Monday, zero side effects/withdrawals. I feel really solid and clear, far more so than I have in months and months.

S.O. called me from work yesterday and began listing all the things that he loves that I cook. Sort of romantic in that quirky John Cusack kind of way. And, he more than apologized which was really nice. We’ve been talking a lot more lately, deep things, dark things, and all with an overall optimistic tone which has been a rarity over the past several months. We both feel like things are turning around slowly and for the better.

For now I’ll ignore the nasty little demon in my mind that pops up to say, “Haha! You thought that in SEPTEMBER too!” After all, it is Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, my MIL is back to acting like a complete ass. She decided that she would no longer purchase birthday or Christmas presents for anyone. Then a few weeks later announced that she would only be buying a Christmas present for our youngest. This, we know, although she would attempt to deny it is based on the fact that our youngest is her biological grandchild.

S.O. was wonderful, polite, and firm when he sent her a nice email explaining that this was unacceptable and that we would prefer she not purchase gifts for anyone rather then single someone out for whatever the reason may be. He went on to invite her, warmly, to Christmas Eve (as we are doing it here this year instead of at my mother’s) and Christmas Day dinner as well. It’s not that we don’t usually spend the holidays together, we do, but knowing her temperament he wanted to make it very clear that A.) this was not about gifts (we certainly don’t feel that way and neither do our children) and that B.) she was still very welcome here that there were no hard feelings on our part.

She has implied that she is not coming and now claims that S.O. has insulted her terribly. She also referred to our two oldest kids as, “her kids.” Meaning, mine, not S.O.’s and certainly no relation to her.

One would think that after being together over 12 years, S.O. adopting my children (and they were very, very young when we got together, our second oldest does not know that S.O. is not her biological father) that this would no longer be an issue for anyone. It’s ridiculous. Especially given that she is running out of family members. We are it. Her other son (S.O.’s brother) is a freak-o, religious zealot who (no exaggeration, really) emotionally abuses his children and moved his very submissive wife and three children out of town. We have no idea where he lives or where our nephews are, the oldest we haven’t seen since he was 3 and the younger two we have never met. Needless to say, my MIL has not seen them for several years either.

In short? This woman loves drama, loves looking like a victim, and is seriously a sad, bitter, old woman.

The thing is? I’m not super angry or emotionally charged over it. Probably because we have just been through so much over the past several months that it really isn’t the “worst” or “most awful” thing that has happened to us. I don’t like her. She is filled with spite and hateful rhetoric, she can’t have a normal conversation everything must revolve around religion or politics and if you don’t agree with her she starts screaming and runs out of your house praising the good Lord and swearing that you are all going to hell.

So, really? If she doesn’t show for Christmas, it really will be a blessing.

I’m nearly at a full week of being off my my anti-anxiety/anti-depressant medication that I’ve been on for three years. Strange how I feel more like me than I have in a while.

My husband is convinced that my panic attacks, anxiety, and depression are from years of emotional and mental abuse (intentional and not) by my mother. Two of my largest and most paralyzing panic attacks were in her presence, something just sort of snapped, I guess. I’ve never been one to blame my parents for the way my life is or how it has turned out, so I suppose I was a little thrown when he told me this.

My life was fairly normal until my parents divorced. My mom went a little bonkers, I guess. I remember driving home from a town 45 minutes away when I was 13 because my mom had had too much to drink. I had never driven before and at 13 you sort of see turn signals as a really annoying nuisance. We arrived home safely. I summed it up to the ends justifying the means and left it at that.

We regularly drove over to this town so my mom could spy on her boyfriend who shared a house with a couple of 20 year old girls. One particular trip ended up with my best friend and I being chased by dogs because we were volunteered to hide in the bushes and see if we could tell what was going on. My mom was in the car with my best friend’s mom several blocks away so the car wouldn’t be seen. It was late at night and we were caught by the creepy neighbor next door where I soon learned that I could lie on my feet and look totally natural doing it. I gave a story about looking for my lost cat and he sort of scolded us about being out late alone in a less than white picket fence part of town.

By the time we caught up with the moms, they were giggling and laughing at us and it had started to rain. Some how we ended up sliding into a ditch and waiting for hours for the cops to show up and give us a ride home. I can still feel the hot humiliation on my face at being forced to ride in the BACK of a patrol car for a 45 minute ride home.

Same boyfriend moves in and the relationship is less than ideal. My mom started flirting with a stockbroker at the office. Boyfriend moves out. Mom gets serious with stockbroker and plans a backyard summer wedding.

Only stockbroker starts to act a little strange, what with not liking me much and parking in the cul-de-sac and watching our house for hours on end. Mom got cold feet and ran away to Vegas with my sister and I in the backseat and ex-boyfriend driving – they were going to get married. She stopped at pay phones along the way to cancel caterers, table rentals, the pastor, etc.

We had our own room on the strip, my sister and I. It was pretty cool. We were stuck in the hotel room while mom and boyfriend stayed in the other room or went down to play around in the casino. But, then our room phone started ringing and it was the stockbroker yelling at me to put my mom on the phone, calling me a liar and telling me that he knew she was right there. Eventually, I stopped answering the phone.

This was the year I started high school. Junior high had been a mess (I’ve only given a few of the highlights as to why, messy divorce, custody battles, whore-ish stepmother, mom’s crappy boyfriends, etc.) I missed so much school my 7th grade year that I had to take summer school. I missed most of those days because my mother had to play in a band at a bar out of town in order to make extra money because my dad refused to pay child support. I waited up for her to come home and by 3 or 4 in the morning I was usually calling musicians and friends to see if she was safe or at least on her way home while my sister slept soundly in the other room because I made sure she didn’t have to worry.

Eighth grade, school itself was the highlight of that year. I joined the school newspaper, had a couple of boyfriends, and was looking forward to my 14th birthday when my mom got pissed at me and announced that she had planned a surprise party for me and one of my close friends (we had the same birthday) but that she was purposely ruining the surprise by telling me as a punishment and taking back all of my presents because she was pissed at me. The party might have been salvageable if it weren’t for my mother constantly reminding me how much better it would have been if it had been the lovely surprise party she had planned for me and how it was too bad I had to go and ruin it.

High school had just started and it was either the first or second weekend of school that I found myself in Vegas being screamed at on the telephone by the crazy stockbroker. Mom didn’t marry the ex-boyfriend and that was one happy 5 hour drive home. She got back together with the crazy stockbroker and kicked me out of the house the Tuesday after we got back. To this day she refers to it as “when I left” but my sister and dad were both there and heard her screaming at me to get out of her house. Mainly because I was less than thrilled over how I spent my weekend and really didn’t want the stockbroker moving into my house.

I moved in with my dad and then went to school to find that my mother had taken all of my brand new school clothes (some from a really trendy boutique in town) exchanged them for larger sizes and gave them to my ex best friend so that I could see her traipsing around school in my new clothes that I never got the chance to wear.

At 14 I found myself working at a local golf course to buy my own clothes. Thank you wicked witch of a stepmother. The family court forced my father to put me into therapy where my therapist told me I was depressed and probably needed to be medicated.

Three months after I turned 15 I found out I was pregnant. Custody battles were still going on so my “ill-timed behavior” needed to be kept hush-hush. I was nearly 5 months pregnant when my mother gave birth to my brother (by the stockbroker). When I was 8 months pregnant she forced me into a car and drove around for a couple of hours screaming at me about how I was ruining my life and humiliating my family. I went into premature labor and was put on bed rest.

By the time I was 18 I married the baby’s father and ran away to Colorado. That lasted about a year because I sort of had a tough time with someone smashing their forehead into my face and breaking my nose or pinching the backs of my arms until they were black.

One divorce and a couple of years later I met S.O. That was pretty much the turning point for me. We had been married for several years when I had my first panic attack. I read things in books about
“being in an emotionally safe place sometimes causes unresolved past issues to rear their ugly heads.”

My mother is still with the stockbroker, he’s incredibly successful, even if he is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, he handles all the “old money” here in town, he’s been mentioned in Wall Street Journal, and no one has a clue about their interesting past or the fact that they never married. They live in a beautiful, expensive house, in a lah-dee-dah neighborhood with a BMW, a Mercedes, and my somewhat spoiled brother and his new mustang convertible. Keeping up appearances is the name of the game and top priority around there. They have dinner at the club and go to all the parties for important people around town.

And my mother still maintains a relationship with the ex-boyfriend. Yes, just like that. In fact, he’s much like a second father to my brother. Of course, they always talk about being together and what not, but he only owns his own company and it deals with the oil industry and he doesn’t have the big beautiful house or the expensive cars…

The day I brought the boy home from the hospital, almost a week ago tomorrow, my mother brought my brother to our house so that my brother could confront my son about my brother not liking my son’s girlfriend. My son is much like his mother and didn’t take the news well. This caused my mother to call me and tell me that I was dead to her, I was a piece of shit, a white-trash piece of shit, that I was no better than my ex-husband, and several other choice words, including telling me that my brother hates me and wants nothing to do with me. That part I’m used to because over the years my mother has taken advantage of his Asperger syndrome and turned him against various family members depending on her own whims.

So here I sit today, a week off of meds, feeling odd at times because I’m sure it takes quite a while to get three years of stuff out of your system, but for the most part feeling more like myself and more in charge of my existence than I have in a very long time. Life is strange.

UPDATE
For those who might have read something on another blog regarding this.
I just wanted to clear up, someone has claimed they are being “denied access” to my children. My mother has not contacted us, at all, since that day. She has my kids email addresses, she deleted the entire family off her MySpace (As did my brother). Additionally, she is not allowed around my children (without us supervising) because on the day my son got out of the hospital she took my daughter to her house to make Christmas cookies. In front of my daughter she explained she could have my husband fired, she had her in tears and when S.O. tried to call and speak to her my mom refused to put her on the phone and told us if we attempted to pick her up she would call the police (one what, I am not sure, I explained to her at the time I would press kidnapping charges if she didn’t allow us to pick our daughter up. She had no legal claim there.)