Enmeshed

"Enmeshment is a description of a relationship between two or more people in which personal boundaries are permeable and unclear. This often happens on an emotional level in which two people “feel” each other's emotions, or when one person becomes emotionally escalated and the other family member does as well."

Like a good little student, I did a lot of reading this past week or so about binge eating disorder, personality traits, behaviors, etc.  One thing I came across was the idea about enmeshment.  Commonly associated with eating disorders in general, the submissive half of an enmeshed duo uses food as one thing they can control in their life while essentially being controlled by the dominant party in every other aspect.  Or at least that is my understanding of it.

Nana and I always had a complex relationship.  She was not my mother, yet she thought of me as her daughter.  But she treated me like a granddaughter at the same time by spoiling me in ways that parents probably wouldn't.  Since my mom and dad divorced when I was around 6, she played a big part in raising me and I spent a lot of time with her.  She babysat me daily until I went to kindergarten, and when I started school I went to her house every day after school until my mom or dad picked me up.

Nana had two sons: my dad and my uncle (who died in an accident in the 90s).  Then she had a series of several miscarriages (7 or 8) trying to have a baby girl.  She went to the doctor when she was around 42 and he thought she was going through menopause and had some sort of tumor on her uterus.  They did surgery to remove the tumor, but when they opened her up realized that instead it was a baby girl.  

They sewed her up and sent her home, where she miscarried again.  She was heartbroken.  She told me she and grandaddy put her in a little box and buried her in the backyard.  About two years later, my mom got pregnant and had me.  And in every way, Nana thought I was the little girl she lost.

Nana was a very manipulative and controlling person.  I can only say this because it has been ten years since she died and I have had a long time to create the distance needed for clarity.  The lines between me as a person and her were blurry.  She manipulated me as an extension of herself.

That sounds cold but I don't mean it to be.  And I don't harbor any negative feelings about it.  It is just the way she was.  She loved me so much that there wasn't a huge distinction where I ended and she began.  I told her everything.  She was always my confidant.  That probably sounds weird because most people don't have that kind of relationship with a grandparent.  But I did.

Nana was a product of the depression and grew up very poor.  She was born in 1931 and was the second child in a family of twelve siblings total.  She left home at 18 to make her own way and never turned back.  She was a waitress until she learned the restaurant business and by the time she left her job (essentially to babysit me every day) she was a restaurant manager.

She was probably never made to feel special as a child.  In fact, she thought her birthday was May 15th until she got ready to retire at 62.  She was trying to sign up for social security and her information was messed up.  She was actually born on May 16th.  She probably never had a birthday party as a kid and they literally forgot what day she was born.

She told me stories about putting cardboard in the bottom of her shoes because there were holes worn through the leather.  The other kids made fun of her for being so poor.  When she left home, her father told her not to come back.  When she got married, her mother gave her two old iron skillets as a gift.  They were her own skillets, but it was all she had to give to Nana.

I say all of this as a sort of precursor to *her* relationship with food.  There was never enough to eat when she was a kid and she often went hungry.  Then she spent her entire adult life working in the food industry.  To say that she loved people through their stomachs is an understatement.  No matter what time of day or night, or how good or bad she felt, when you walked into her door she tried to feed you.

I remember being at her house as an adult and she had cooked something for dinner but I had already eaten.  She wanted me to eat it anyhow.  "Just one bite," she said.  I tried to tell her no but I have a very distinct memory of her holding a fork full of food against my closed teeth telling me to open my mouth and eat that bite of food.

It sounds kind of fucked up in retrospect, but at the time I laughed about it.  That is who she was.  The nurturer.  The caregiver.  And the dominant in our enmeshed relationship.  I would have done anything for her, but I felt she would do the same thing for me.

When she died, I was lost.  A gut-wrenching, horrifying, half-dead kind of lost.  The week before she died, she was in the ICU (battling sepsis, ironically).  We stayed up there 24-7.  The night before she died, the nurses told us we should all go home and get some rest and that they would call us if anything changed.  They called around five that morning.  I couldn't get dad on the phone so I sent my brother to his house to wake them up and I drove to the hospital by myself.

About two days prior, her breathing had become very labored (she was never on a respirator).  It was very loud almost like she was snoring.  I remember walking into her room that morning and everything was silent.  When I grabbed her hand she was still warm like she was fine.  She had literally just died.  Alone.  I felt so guilty.

I called my brother to let them know she was already gone and then I waited for them to get there.  It probably wasn't any longer than it would take for them to get dressed and drive the six miles to get from their house to the hospital.  To me it felt like an eternity, and I felt completely alone.  I guess I was crying too loudly because they called the hospital chaplain.

I am not religious.  The words he spoke about her going to a better place sounded hollow.  It isn't that I don't believe in something after this world, but delivered through the lens of the bible was not what I needed in that moment.  I composed myself mostly so he would leave.  By the time the rest of my family arrived, I was by the window watching two birds playing outside.  She was cold.

I struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts in the months after she died.  In some twisted series of events, my gay "best friend" at the time had decided he didn't want to be friends anymore because he didn't approve of the guy I was dating.  Literally, the day she was admitted to the hospital was the day he stopped speaking to me.

Less than a week later, she was gone.  That morning, I went home from the hospital to have a very complicated conversation with my live-in boyfriend.  He decided that three hours after Nana's death was the perfect time to talk about how he really needed to explore a relationship with some girl he had met online while I was traveling for my job and supporting his unemployed ass.

So in summary, best friend gone, Nana dead, relationship over (?), in a matter of about five days.  I found the now ex-boyfriend a job and a place and paid his deposit just so he would move out.  And about two months after she died, I found myself in a New Orleans hotel room with a razor blade in hand.  I was lucky that night.  My friends returned from the bars before I did anything stupid.  I never even told them about it.  I took it as some sort of sign, came out of the bathroom, and finished the vacation with them.  I didn't go back to the hotel alone again though.

I sought out a local job because traveling every week had become unbearable.  I went back to the company I used to work for about four months after she passed away.  And about six months after her death, I finally went to counseling.  Reflecting on it now, I wanted to die, or thought I needed to because the other half of my enmeshed personality was dead.  I wasn't sure who I was without her.

Being back at home and not out of town all the time, without the three people who had become a big part of my life, left me with a lot of spare time.  I spent it working on myself.  I went to therapy for grief counseling.  I started getting massages.  I joined a gym and worked out six days a week.  I spent a lot time with my family.  I started dating again.

I worked through a lot of stuff during that time and found my footing.  The "best friend" came back into my life for a period of a couple of years.  But honestly, being abandoned by him when Nana died pretty much ruined whatever friendship we could have salvaged.  He knew she passed.  And he didn't even acknowledge it.  But that is a discussion about narcissism I can leave for another day.

I don't blame Nana for the issues I have with food.  In retrospect, my current counselor said something very poignant about her that I had never really thought about.  Nana probably never dealt with her grief over the babies she lost.  In a way, her unhealthy way of dealing with it was to transfer all of that love and emotion to a very controlling relationship with me.  She probably had an overwhelming fear of losing me from the moment I was born until the day she died.  The fact that my uncle died at 38 in an accident probably only strengthened that fear for her.

Nana told me one time when I was talking to her about being depressed (in my 20s) that I had to be very careful about suicidal ideology.  She told me that before she met my grandaddy, she also went through a deep depression.  She was standing on a pier thinking about death and the next thing she knew she had jumped into the water.  She couldn't swim.

She ended up on life support in the hospital for a little while.  When her family was notified, they told the doctors to turn off the machines because they couldn't afford to pay for her care.  The waitresses that worked with her collected money from her regular customers at the restaurant to pay the hospital to keep her alive.  

I cannot imagine the sadness she felt when she found out her family was just going to let her go.  I can only assume that she came out of it stronger and more independent than she already was.  She was a Taurus after all.  But I have to wonder if that is also why she taught me to be so guarded with people.  I can honestly say that most people don't really know me, even the ones who think they do.  For a long time, that was probably because I didn't really know myself either.

She made sure I never felt unwanted or hungry (for attention or food) the way she did when she was a child.  The enmeshed relationship we had wasn't healthy for either of us and it did cause issues: with food, with my relationships with my actual parents and step-parents, and a myriad of other different pieces of both of our lives that you could probably pick apart.  I don't think she did it intentionally or that she was probably even aware of it.

I think for a long time I struggled as a young adult trying to figure out who I am as a person simply because I didn't really know who I was outside of being her granddaughter.  I never really made choices without asking her advice and I made life decisions based on her needs before my own.  When she died, it was terrifyingly liberating.  I could be whomever I wanted to be.  I had to make my own decisions and own them when they were wrong.

Today, I am not the woman I was when she died.  I'm not really even the woman I was five years ago.  I sometimes wonder if she would approve of who I am or not.  I wonder if she would think I have chosen the right path in life.  I wonder if I could talk to her about this therapy and her role in why I needed it honestly.

Have you ever been loved so much it hurts?