Can't sleep. Every day I tell myself "I'll wake up at 6:30 am and go to the gym and get to work early - productive! get things done! yeah!" - and inevitably I'll totter off to sleep at 4 am and wake at 9 am.
Can't sleep. Thoughts need untangling. They're mangled and stretched and are twisted together with no end.
Mom emails more now since I got her the laptop. Her letters always makes me sad. She lives with Dad, who's increasingly senile and abusive. I'd like to give her advice, but putting her in my world is like dropping someone on Mars; my admonishments regarding feminism and independence are met with responses about sacrifice and God's will, suffused with such a heavy despondence and subjugation that I can't bear it. She lives in a prison of her own choice, and she calls it duty. Her social circle is stripped, her relatives gone, her movement restricted by the fact that she's never learned how to drive properly.
Dad never allowed her to. She never started her own business, never got her own bank account, never owned anything that was wholly her -- even though those are all her own dreams. She accepted those silken chains because it was for the family, for the kids, for harmony.
I'm not sure what to say, or do. They're getting old. One day, either Dad or Mom will pass away first, and perhaps it's wrong of me to hope that Mom's the one who stays on longer. But what to do? Where will she live? Who will she live with? Who will be the caretaker? As I get into my thirties, these questions only grow louder, seeking some resolution that I'm not prepared to answer.
I've already excised him from my life, but the nagging feeling, the sympathy I still have for mom is hard to let go; it's because she still struggles! She still wants to learn about the world around her, still is curious, still operates on some level like a logical, sound person. And because of it, I have to approach her with the same logic and not toss everything to emotions. And because of it, I wish there was a solution, some way to help her out.
She won't leave him. For what can she do? He's isolated himself to the only person left that he can abuse and be vengeful with. I'm not sure where his hatred comes from, and I'm afraid that's the only thing left in his grasp. He has excluded, by excommunication and silence and ignorance, everyone from his life: his sons, his brothers and sisters, his pastors, his friends and acquaintances; and now he wants to destroy his one remaining relationship. It's as if he seeks to metaphorically commit suicide, as if the man has nothing left to live for and so he destroys the bones, ligaments, arteries and muscles surrounding his heart.
But they're my family. My parents, and so the question remains: what to do?