Here I am……

here I am – where are you?

This past Friday my mother was finally told that I had been found.

Apart from giving birth this is certainly the most momentous occasion in my life to date. I don’t say this to negate the importance of the rest of my family, but just to emphasize that contact with a woman I have craved for the better part of 44 years quite frankly takes the cake!

When my sister and I found each other, she told me that our mother is mentally ill. The news was utterly devastating. My first reaction was selfish, of course. After a lifetime of waiting, I had finally found her, only to discover that she probably wouldn’t care.

After a while and many tears, I began to realise the suffering that she would have been forced to endure (being undiagnosed for many years), and the pain just cranked up further.

My Uncle Guitar Strings was the one that volunteered to go into the lions den and tell her the news.

Her reaction was immediate AND positive.

I didn’t expect that! I had just got used to the idea that she wouldn’t really be involved in my life and now I hear that she is waiting on tenterhooks for me to contact her!

I find myself feeling somewhat discombobulated. My mind had finally settled on a version of reality that seemed palatable, and now I find I have to throw everything out and dare to believe a newer and better version.

The picture of myself that I have used for this post is the clearest representation of how I’m feeling right now.

I am afraid and feeling lost.

Can I truly hope to dare that I might actually have a mother who loves me, albeit in between bouts of illness?

Do I really have the courage to open a heart that is so bruised and wary.

It was easier when I though she wouldn’t care, because then I didn’t have to.

As I’m writing this I am looking at my eldest daughter typing away on her laptop and bothering me for all sorts of arb stuff while I’m busy dealing with mind numbing heartache. It makes me smile.

It’s life: family, living and loving. We all come together, bounce off, come back – it’s normal. My mother just has to be given the leisure to do the same in my life. I’ve always wanted her in my world, but until the fear hit I didn’t know I had to allow it too! I didn’t realise that I would actively have to choose, I thought I had.

She keeps taking me by surprise. I tend to do that to people too. 

Now if I can only figure out what to write in my first letter…..