Quite a while ago, we found out some really screwed up stuff about my mom. She was having an affair with my sister's ex boyfriend. It apparently never reached a sexual level, because my dad figured it out early due to some strange behavior he observed.
But here is the thing: She apparently had no clue as to what she was doing. A year and countless events later we now know that she has multiple personality and social disorders, including borderline personality disorder, and dependent personality disorder, due to some trauma she has blocked off from her early childhood. The feelings of her many doctors are that something was done to her by one or both of her parents, which is in itself intensely horribly for me to think about, since I love my grandparents very much. Anyway, my mother has blocked out memories from sections of her life and they are pursuing specific therapy techniques to try to get the memories out, so that they can help her.
This is all causing a variety of things.
First is the possibility of divorce in my parents. If she has done horrible things in the past, I don't know if my dad can handle it. He's been terrific about it so far, but it has put a huge strain on their relationship…and a lot of things in their relationship have actually contributed to her problems, I guess. One of those things was that my dad has always had the dominant role. He has always been in control over the years, but due to a recent lawsuit, they were both under strain and my mom no longer perceived my dad as being in control nor was he giving her enough attention, and it threw things off balance in her head.
Another thing this is forcing them to do is to probably move to a larger area to get better treatment for her. We have been told that if anything traumatic happens in my mom's life, she could suffer a psychotic break and need to be hospitalized for the rest of her life. So it is necessary for her to get the best therapy to work through this while they still have time.
This is all very hard for me, since I can't be there to support my family nor can I really get a good sense of what is going on. I have limited communications with them due to time zone differences and their busy schedule. I guess since I was a child, I judged a good relationship on what I saw in my parents. They were teenage parents, my mother was a high school dropout, and they worked their asses off for years to create the successful business they have today and stayed together through it all….and they still seemed to love each other very much. To me, it always seemed that if those two people who once had nothing could build so much together and still remain strong through it that anyone with the will could ignore the statistics, because they wouldn't mean anything. But now it seems like the model relationship could be but another failure among many.
I guess it all comes down to how much you will put yourself through. And to stay with Steph no matter what happens in our lives….I think I'd go through almost anything…
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