Menstruation, Melancholy & Oprah

Today is a "wanting a divorce" day, but a better one.  I did not take any medication (neurontin or anything else) for depression.   My "monthly" started and  I feel less depressed and heart-broken.  Still sad and grief-stricken, but more functional... more able to do what needs to  be done without feeling like I am on the verge of falling apart.  This makes me deeply question how much of my sadness, anger, depression, fear, hurt, overwhelmedness, crabbiness, melancholy, excitement, passion, lack of passion, creativity, energy level etc. ad infinitum are more related to hormones than anything else.  I feel at the mercy of my monthly cycle.  My poor kids!  No wonder they don't know which way is up.

I am embarrassed to admit that I record Oprah every day.  I end up deleting 90% of them, but I am so afraid I will miss that life-changing episode that the entire planet is talking about that my whole DVR list is filled with Oprah and Intervention on A&E (am I a glutton for punishment, or what?  I live it AND watch it on TV!).

  Anyhow, I watched one show on adult children of divorce confronting their parents who divorced when they were kids.  In most cases, the Dads had left the moms.  The Moms had been the ones left with the kids.  The adult kids (sobbing and devastated) seemed to have the most pent up anger at their Moms.  They had faced and grieved their Dad's abandonment... but what seemed to kill them the MOST was how unavailable their MOMS were to them after Dad left. 

Moms were hurt, bitter, abandoned, alone, and scared, so they shut down on their kids and were crabby and disconnected (many times working one or more f/t jobs).  The Moms had good reasons/excuses (I was exhausted, your dad left me, I didn't know how we would make ends meet, etc.), but that was not the point.  The point was that the kids seemed to have so much more anger and bitterness with the parent that stayed and held the whole family together.  The abandoning affair-haver or alcoholic or abandoner was just excused - because that's all anyone expected of them.  But the stay-er the holder-together-er... they were the ones the kids seemed to have the most resentment toward.

Now I am smart enough to understand that it is SAFER for the kids to blame to parent who stayed... that parent is the one who will not abandon them when they are crappy and nasty.  But it is also that they stopped expecting anything from the abandoner and expected EVERYTHING from the stay-er.  So when the stay-er fell short and didn't meet 100% of needs, the kids felt abandoned x10 because they needed present parent to be their everything.

This was not necessarily an encouraging show for me (the stay-er), but it was a little enlightening.  And it DID remind me to not sell my soul to make my kids happy because they will probably NEED to blame me when they are grown.  And it also reminded me to just try to HEAR my kids... not to make excuses or try to fix them or explain things... but just to hear them.  

Easier said than done.