Leaving Oz

This is for a good friend, but bear with me it will take a while (sometimes the yellow brick road is winding!)

First, beta-blogger is driving me crazy (yeah, I know, short trip...). I was so excited to be able to blog at work again. Now the security settings at school will let me read blogs, even beta-blogs, but I can't post or comment on the beta. OK. Also people are less able to comment on my blogs, which I was surprised to find bothered me more than I thought it would. I mean I never got a huge amount to begin with, but I guess I kind of looked forward to getting what I did have... (Don't I sound pathetic?) So that's the first reason I've been tardy.

Two, is more significant. I've really wanted to blog about something, but it's been hard. Talking to a friend today gave me the courage, for her sake, so I'm gonna try it and see if that clears up this blog constipation so to speak.

Before I go on to that, quickly, a brief update on the petty argument with brother. There is nothing to report. He never called back. Further he and his wife are having some real struggles in their life (Please pray for them if you are so inclined. God will know who G and wife are) and so while I know about those problems and am praying fervently, I am not calling right now. My brother is so stressed he would view it as an attack and the last thing I would want to do is add. He knows I love him and if he needs me he'll call. That is the best part about real family, at least to me. Arguments can be petty, they don't mean anything in terms of the real relationship... I won't go into my guilt on picking the fight in light of all this though...

Now, on to the real issue.

Leaving Oz.

There is a phrase among the family, loved ones and former loved ones of people with borderline personality disorder. It is the moment we often call "Leaving Oz." This is the point when a family member, loved one or spouse decides to get off the roller coaster. For the most part it involves leaving that person. For the most part there is no half way when you have people with this disorder in your life. The most likely way to be free is to separate yourself completely. This is hard. It is not fun. There is guilt and pain and regret and doubt. Yet for many of us it is a reality.

My mom has BPD, and to say that it hasn't affected me, my brother, my father, Nana or any of the rest of the people her life has touched intimately would be a massive denial of reality. My father, after my mother left him, chose quickly to "leave oz" and has no contact with my mother except when she occasionally calls him to try to get him to be friends with her again. My brother and I have both decided that we won't give her up to this demon of sorts, but we both have our own way of trying to stay out of oz, so to speak.

My brother mostly stays emotionally detached. He talks to mom and lets her visit him, he just makes it very not personal, almost like she is simply another mission field to him. Maybe she is. He has claimed on several occasions that she isn't really his mother anymore anyway, so he is simply doing his godly duty. I doubt he really thinks that, but if this is how he copes, it seems to work for him, anyway.

Me, I used to live in Oz with Mom. It was a very scary place. I thought I would have to live there forever. I thought that saving mom meant that I had to keep riding the roller coater over and over and over until the motor died. The ups and downs were terrible. The crying, the guilt, the self accusations, the shame, all that come with this disorder. Some days I was the enemy and some days I was the savior in mom's world. That can be quite a mind trip, to say the least...

Then came the day, March 30, 2004 when I had to make the decision to take Nana into my care. I was only 28, I had just started a new job, I was living in a tiny efficiency apartment with my dog desperately trying to make ends meet after a four month spell of unemployment and Nana needed me. So I took her home with me, no warning, no plan, making it up as I went along. I realized during the ten hour drive home that I couldn't live in Oz anymore. Honestly, my plan at that time was to never speak to or see mom again. Turns out I wasn't strong enough, brave enough or emotionless enough to pull that off. I'm not sure which. It was the right decision for Dad, but it turned out it was not how it would work for me. But I did take a break... and I moved out of Oz.

That was two and a half years ago. A lot has changed, and a lot hasn't. Mom hasn't. She is still, in my opinion, the Queen of Oz, and occasionally the Wicked Witch of The West. However I realized on that terrible day that Nana asked me for my protection that I was choosing to live in that awful land and that I didn't have to and now I was responsible for someone else and she didn't need to live there anymore than I did. So now, Mom still makes me crazy and a tear or two has fallen, but for the most part I choose now when I am going to ride the roller coaster with her, mostly I just wave as she rides by. I'm not sure if I was Dorothy back then, just trying to find my way home or The Scarecrow, no brains to realize I didn't need to be there. The point is, now I am just Sandy and I live on planet earth. There is more Oxygen here, by the way.

So to my dear friend who is currently packing her bags to leave Oz, I want to say that I am so proud of you for standing up and saying "No." It is going to be harder than ever for a while. Change always is. However, I also want to tell you that there is a much more peaceful place over here. I promise that whether you decide to never set foot in Oz again or like me decide to be only an occasional visitor it can be done and there is a better life on the other side of the rainbow.

To everyone else, I would say that mental illness is not just a TV movie of the month. Many of us deal with it everyday. Some of us eventually suffer from it because we had to live with it in others for so long. Most of us don't really talk about it. We live with it too much to want to discuss it. And, a lot of us don't even realize that so much of what we thought was normal growing up, wasn't. Coming out of Oz can be rather blinding for us. Yet it is the love and support of good friends that make it possible.

Thanks guys.