Mom is visiting for 8 days

My mom is coming to visit me and will be arriving at the local airport at 9 pm tomorrow. She is actually coming because I asked her to come to drive me out of state to visit the doctor who is helping me so greatly. The doctor feels she needs to see me mostly for legal reasons I believe but at this point I think we’re both quite interested in meeting each other.

My mother asked if she could visit me back in April. She wanted to come in May. I told her I was too unwell to have a visitor. I could barely sit up for 2 hours a day and virtually never spent time with anyone as it was too demanding to have a conversation. I told her if she wanted to come and have a vacation in the area and visit me a couple of afternoons that would be fine but I couldn’t tolerate a visitor who was around for any length of time. She was very understanding and said she would see about coming in the fall.

Then about three weeks ago my doctor asked that I come see her. I can’t do the drive myself and my husbands job is relatively new and he can’t take time off, so I called my mom. It works out nicely for her because she really wanted to see me. I want to see her too, but right now it’s a bit nerve racking. Even at my best she is sometimes difficult for me to deal with. She is coming for 8 days and we will be on a road trip for half of that. We are doing one 5 hour drive, then stopping for the night. The following day we arrive at our destination in about 4 hours. We will spend the night there that night and then take the next two days to drive home in similar fashion.

I have all sorts of concerns.

First and foremost the last several times I’ve traveled I’ve decompensated to some degree. I simply stop sleeping. It doesn’t matter if I’m in a car or a plane and it doesn’t matter if I change time zones or not. I’m not sure what it is but my body gets all messed up and I just don’t sleep. I’m dreading that as I’ve been sleeping like a baby for over a month now after not sleeping much at all for at least three months and maybe more. I have terror of not sleeping at this point—which pretty much assures me that I won’t sleep. Nothing like a phobia at bedtime to keep you awake.

Generally once I return home from a trip I do get to sleep easily again, but because my mom will be visiting I’m not sure I’ll be able to relax with her here—I also tend to sleep much less when we have visitors.

I feel I need to entertain her. This is my hang-up. She does not demand to be entertained and is really very easy. In reality she would be happy to completely take care of me meaning taking over all household duties including cooking and cleaning etc. And expect nothing from me at all. She is rather selfless that way. Actually she is selfless to a fault and it’s part of what drives me nuts about her—I’m sure many of you are thinking my gosh, if only my mom was like that. But mothers have a way of irritating us I think regardless of how good they are. She is actually rather self-deprecating and doesn’t look out for herself and basically has no sense of self. That makes me angry somehow. I want to liberate her—give a good dose of feminism. She’s been controlled by men all her life. And I’ve never managed to be able to do that and I’m sure I never will but as is often the case with mothers and daughters—we simply don’t accept one another the way we are. In this case though, she accepts me completely, so I feel like a shit for not accepting her.

In any case, I cannot allow her to do what she would do by nature—that is take over household duties. And even though she expects nothing, I expect a lot from myself as a hostess. And I simply won’t be able to do all the things I’d like to do. It’s simply not possible. And that will lead to my feeling stressed out and therefore possibly keep me from sleeping well even before we leave on the road trip and then when we return.

The nice thing though is that I am doing better and better and getting stronger.  Hopefully that may mean I’m also more resilient and maybe I can handle a bit more stress. I have had a consistent energy boost now for 10 days which is a record—probably not been well for that long in about a year. I can get out and drive and run errands, but I still poop out after a maximum of 4 hours and sometimes much before that. Basically I’m out of shape. Complete immobility for months will do that to you. I need to build up my stamina and it’s not going to happen immediately.

Anyway—wish me luck with mom. I hope I can relax into it and enjoy her visit. If I can be comfortable making boundaries I should be fine. I just need to try and step back from being the perfect hostess and go and hide in my room when I need time alone. The road trip—well I really don’t know what to expect, but somehow I think that may be easier than having her in my home.

I will be active online to some degree, but certainly not as much as usual.