I spoke to my brother last night and it seems as if my parents are in a bit of a crisis. I am not going to go into what the crisis is – this is today’s crisis, just like there was yesterday’s.

This is what I do know.

The reel.

The reel my mom has said as long as I can remember:

“Why is Grandma so mean to me, Tessa?”
“Why are they so mean?”
“You know your father never sticks up for me with his family.”
“Why don’t you speak up for me?” My mom says to my dad.
“Why do these things happen?”
“I am a good person. I am not a mean person.”

Then, followed by sobs.

The reel. It is the same. It is still the same – today.

I remember her asking me these things when I was as young as five years old. My response was “I don’t know why they are so mean to you. I am sorry they are mean to you. They are mean people.”

And as usual, my words fell onto the floor to be swept away. She must believe in her reel to continue.

To stop the insanity my mom needs professional help. Her problems are for someone or many with credentials that is far beyond my scope.

I had this reoccurring dream growing up. I would wake up, walk through the house, no one was home. The sky was a perfect blue, cloudless, trees in full bloom. It was picture perfect. That perfect sky blue. I walked to the kitchen window and looked out. The problem: the house had no doors.

I didn’t try to get out. I just knew the house had no doors.

Sometime around ten, eleven, twelve I started to learn through trial and error that nothing I did ever would make my mother happy. Yet, you wanted to make her happy because her unhappiness would stop a room. Her look seared through you, but you had to stand there. A fist pound on the table shook the room. A slam of the cupboard door made the glass vibrate.

You had to take it because a slight weakness would make the house shake, and sometimes the neighborhood would erupt worse than you could imagine. You learned to be still, otherwise you would lose your footing. You would lose it. You couldn’t lose it.

What I learned was the longer I stood and the longer I stared at her, her ability to try and break me weakened. She tried, believe me. This was a repeated attempt. She wanted you to fight against her to make her feel less alone. She wanted that junk, that drama, that feeling of something. The something that she missed from her mother. The love she never received, but she is trying to achieve it in absolutely the wrong way. It saddened me, it truly did. Yet – this was survival. So, you stood, stared, and you did not react. You did not engage.

When I continued to grow, as one does, I learned to keep standing still. I would say to myself, “Don’t let her . . .” Break me.  Sometimes my hands would start to shake and I would just try and find that sense of calm inside.

I started to stand more firm, more grounded, and I started to speak up. It came out in small bits. It came out in an even tone. I just started and said two or three words whatever it was I had to say.

“What did you say?” she would ask.

I would not repeat it, which raised the level of tension like you never felt. She would say it in an escalating way – “What did you say?”

I would be sent to my room. I would be grounded. That’s fine. I would have to come out and apologize. This was the tricky part. I could get my words down, but my facial expressions would come through. I would try and practice being expressionless, which then my mother would ask “What’s wrong with you?”

I wanted to say, “You.” But that would have only gotten me grounded again and maybe longer, and I would have to work my way out of that one. I chose to say nothing. This was a repeated scenario as well.

What happened as I grew, I started to speak up more. When I did, the better I felt, and then slowly the dream started to go away. The more I realized I could never make my mom happy, the happier I became in some ways, unfortunately. It is a sad situation. Mental illness is a sad situation.

Then, eventually when things got really ugly, I ran away. That was when I was almost seventeen, so this was a slow-growing effort. The rumbles of a train coming. An air warning that it was time to leave before “it” truly came to head. To this day it was the scariest and best decision I made in my life.

I could not have done what I did without my friends, without the love and support of their encouragement. I could not have done it without seeing good and caring people at my CF clinic. Professional, well-rounded people that became my mentors, even when I was not aware of how much they impacted my life.

And at the same time, I had the where within that what was happening in my house was not supposed to be. It was not healthy. I saw other families, and mine was not like theirs.

Often times, I feel bad for my dad that is still with my mom. I believe he stayed for us kids, but we have been grown for 20 years. So now the crisis that they are in, they are adults, just like all of us. You make adult decisions. You have to take responsibility as an adult. They will be fine if they choose to be.

I don’t have answers for either of them except professional help. My mom still is speaking the same reel to my father. Maybe he never stood up for my mom with his family because maybe there was truth in what they said. I don’t know exactly what they spoke about my mom, perhaps that she wasn’t well. It was apparent. It still is. Maybe he couldn’t say she was well, because she wasn’t.

I know for myself, I have no regrets. I left because it was survival. When I left home and then continued to grow into my own, my health got better and better on all levels. It was seen on the charts and my overall well-being.  I am so grateful for everything. I mean everything.

My doctor asked me once in my early twenties how my mom was, the first and last time he asked. I said I had not spoken to her in a while. He looked at me and said, “Tessa, some people never change.” I nodded. He knew and I knew, and that was that.