Hey ho, Bloggy-oh.
It's been...ooh, five weeks now, what?
How time flies when you are having fun.
To summarize:
MJ is still here, for now at least. After agreeing that he qualified for housing, the council dragged their feet about giving him a reference number so that he could start bidding (he needs a band, apparently). But he has one now - 'Gold Plus'. Whee. - so things should start moving again now, which is good. Meantime, Mother and I are getting used to bed sharing, and apart from occasional flashes of irritation (on my part, not his), things have been progressing a lot more easily and smoothly than I think any of us expected.
On MJ's part, the swap from living in his own flat to a shared home has gone very well. Living with two slightly insufferable females was never going to be a completely bump free ride, but it seems that any annoyance we may cause him - and we do. We don't mean to. We just do - pales into insignificance beside the abuse and unpleasantness he suffered during his 7 year stay at the Lion Hotel. Here things are, by comparison, quiet, restful, comfortable. So for him, the transition has been relatively easy.
On Mother's part, she is relieved that he is not on the streets and that the son that she had felt lost forever in a swirl of twisted memories, drug abuse and mental illness, appears to still be there. That offsets any awkwardness the transition may have held for her.
On my part...
Well...
It will probably come as no surprise, given some posts in the past, that the one that has found the situation hardest is me. For me, the transition has been very difficult. Some of the reasons are obvious ones: going from two women living comfortably and harmoniously alone to two women and one man with a routine that is completely alien to our own, having to share my bed (I really do mind that, though it has improved with time), the added mess an extra person makes throughout the day...but, being totally honest, that hasn't been the main problem. The main problem has been created in my own mind, by me alone.
So far as I can tell, it is a hangover from things in the past. Things that had happened, things that MJ had done; unpleasant things, distressing things. Things that made the idea of ever living under the same roof as my brother again intolerable.
Given the past, of course, such feelings are understandable feelings to have. But once the decision had been made - by both of us. The responsibility for MJ coming to us is mine as much as Mother's. I was as against the idea of him ending up on the streets as she was, and I agreed that him moving in was the only alternative, and that it was the better of the two choices - and the supposedly intolerable had happened, and that it turned out to actually be not so intolerable after all; there, surely, the feelings should have ended?
But they didn't. They stayed there, festering. In the first few days, I am ashamed to say, that my behaviour wasn't very commendable. Indeed, it wasn't merely not commendable; it was a step short of terrible. I didn't have a tantrum, exactly, but my actions were otherwise very much like that of a spoiled child not getting his or her own way. My attitude was furious and hysterical by turns, and my mood towards both Mother and MJ openly hostile. The results were nearly disastrous, but a bit of frank speaking from Aunt 2 and a realization of how terribly I was acting followed by fast, assertive and apologetic action saved all three of us from what could have been tragedy at the last moment.
Since then I have endeavoured to modify my inner sentiment to match my actions, which are - perhaps hypocritically - ordinary, pleasant and civilized 99% of the time, and for the most part I have succeeded. MJ has made this incredibly easy by behaving in a much superior way to me. There have been no upsets, no tantrums, no screaming, no unreasonableness, no emotional abuse and manipulation or attempts to force us to modify our behaviour to suit himself...none of the vileness and the awfulness of the past have been repeated. His behaviour has been polite, pleasant, deferring, even. And grateful. From the time of first manifestation of schizophrenia at nine years old, to about a year or so ago, MJ has not seemed to be able to express, or indeed to feel, gratitude. Now, he feels it, genuinely. And expresses it. That, and other things, have marked significant strides in the direction he needed to be going in to function at a higher, happier level than he has been able to since the imbalances in his mind first began to overwhelm him.
So, all well and good.
But in-spite of this, I have found those sour, angry, bitter feelings surfacing and trying to reestablish themselves in my consciousness. I don't want them there. I had been trying to rid myself of them for years and apart from the odd relapse I really felt that I was managing it. But now...
What makes it worse is that MJ hasn't done anything wrong, to me or to Mother or to anyone else. He didn't create the situation that led him having to leave the Lion Hotel; it just happened. Mother and I both agreed that rather than see him homeless, the only choice was for him to come and live with us, and his attitude and actions since then have been as described above: perfectly fine. He even helps around the house and with errands: he doesn't do things off his own bat, he has to be asked, but when he is asked he does it, whatever it is. So why do I still find myself feeling like this? What kind of person does that make me??
.....Anyway, that's the short version of what has happened since my last Blog post.
And now here we are.
I find myself able to write again - at last - so posting shall commence again, too. Not regularly, perhaps, but slightly more frequently than not at all, which is better than nothing.
.....Oh, shut up, it is too.
You missed me, and you know it.
So there.
Alice x
P.S. hello Eli. =smiles=
I lost you too, I'm glad we are together again (Bloggersphere speaking).
.....I guess I have a lot of catching up to do, too.
That'll be nice. x
No comments:
Post a Comment