My mother, the victim

On Weds night, my mother was over for dinner. My DD is a little sick still and was cranky. My mother talks to DD in a babytalk tone and DD was not responding well. So there is my mother, cowering away from my 3 y.o. DD and asking her for permission to sit & eat dinner with us!! When DD screamed at her, my mother backed off and asked me if she should just leave. I said "If that's what you want to do." and proceeded to sit down and start dinner with my DD. Eventually my mother sat and joined us. She was looking/acting so dejected.

Well, I was sharing this with my T today and my T said "She's turning your DD into your father!". My mother is playing out a scenario in which she is the victim and DD is a victimizer!! She's creating this dynamic and teaching my DD that she can gain control of a situation by screaming! I never even thought of it like that. But that is clearly going to come to an end!! So next time this happens, I need to tell my mother basically to act like the adult and take control of the situation, to stop treating DD as if she's an abuser to be frightened of. You can guess how much I'm looking forward to telling her something like this......

I've been having an extremely frustrating time at work moreso the last few months than ever before. I have a manager who I could tell stories of for days. He sucks my energy like you cannot fathom. He makes my job much harder than it needs to be. In a nutshell, he slacks, he lies and he looks at porn during work hours. The owner and I have had several conversations about it. His position is tenuous at best right now. But I find myself walking this line between not taking on the garbage that my manager leaves undone and keeping my company protected. It's tough and it gets tougher as time goes on.

Today as I was waiting to go into T, I felt like I didn't even have much to talk about because with everything going on this week, I've not really let myself relax. Well, sitting there in the waiting room, I did let myself relax. I did my grounded breathing and I started crying immediately. I went into T's room and actually lay down on the couch and cried! I said I felt like everything was so overwhelming right now. Work is extremely stressful and I leave there with little energy. Then I have to pick up DD and head home for dinner, bath, quality time with her. After she goes to bed, it's my time to clean the house, prepare for the next day and then hopefully have a little "me" time. But I have so little energy that it takes me so long to just do the necessary things around the house. Everything is falling behind. Things are kindof messy. I can't find things. My bills are about to get behind. I walk around feeling so overwhelmed about what to do next that I don't do much at all. I waste time because I can't focus because I'm overtired and then I stay up too late in an effort to have time for me at the end of it all and don't get enough sleep and it all starts over again the next day.

I apparently really strained my elbow last weekend when I did a marathon Ebay photo shoot and ended up with of tennis elbow. I had NO idea how horribly painful this is!! It's excruciating, like a knife in my arm! And causes such weakness that I can hardly write, pick up my coffee cup, hold my purse, etc. So trying to function with this is extra fun! Yesterday afternoon, I started coming down with a cold. I forgot to take my Effexor last night. I woke up this morning with a migraine. So....tennis elbow, migraine, sneezing, coughing, congested w/running nose, feeling nauseous. No desire to eat. Can't take Effexor without food and started with shaking & dizziness by the time I got to T. Also without food, can't take my vitamins, Advil (for elbow) or cold medicine. So I feel like crap. Feeling like everything is spiraling out of control.

First I talked to T about my situation at work. She said my boss is an addict and a psychopath who needs to seduce people with his lies. She also said that he and I have a classic "under-functioner, over-functioner" relationship and it will burn me out. She said from what I've told her, he's incapable of pulling his act together. The owner of my company had a serious talk with him 2 weeks ago. Then this week, while my manager was on vacation, it came to light that he'd lied right to the owner's face in that meeting. Owner is pissed and said manager has 60 days to pull it together or he's going to have to take action. I'm not sure what that means but I feel like I need to set my own 60 day follow-up and, if he is still up to his old tricks and not being fired, I need to re-think my position there. I hate to do it but I can't allow this kind of negativity to surround my career.

Next we talked about the thing with my mother and I also told her about the dream I had with my house flooding. It's funny I found so much of my dream obvious except for the part where I pulled the too-small suits out of the closet. Even though it seemed trivial, I had a feeling it would probably be relevant. T immediately said I could have been picking up on this dynamic with my mother projecting her abuse-victim trauma from my father onto my DD. Interesting.

At least having that opportunity to just vent and express my frustration at everything allowed me to let it go a little and get some perspective. Came home and did a flylady in the kitchen. 15 minutes on the timer and just started in one corner and did as much as I could in that short period. I've done it a few times today. Stopped at a drug store & picked up a brace for my elbow. Went grocery shopping and am making some chicken soup as I type this. I feel a little better now that I've organized by brain and my space a bit. My best GF is coming over tonight so that should be fun. Sure wish my cleaning had turned up my Netflix movie....... maybe tomorrow!! :o)