My mom is sick. The right side of her body is trembling and she is fatigued. She's undergone numerous tests and no one can figure out what is wrong with her. She calls me up crying and leaves hysterical messages on my voicemail.

There is so much wrong with her that I really don't know if she will ever get better. This makes me sad because she is so miserable and she is one of those people who fixates on her illnesses. I used to hide being sick from her because she'd rush me off to the doctor for anything. She is actually a bit of a hypochondriac. But some of her illnesses are real and some of the ones that might've been nothing become something because she turns them into something.

She’s placed pressure on me ever since I was a little girl to take care of her. She’s resented the fact that I ever left home. She couldn’t get over it when I moved to San Francisco for 7 years. No one in Peru, according to her, would ever leave his or her parents. She herself is proud of the fact that she didn’t leave Peru until both of her parents died.
I am an only child. Talk about pressure!

She is a woman stuck with the regret of marrying my father. She wishes she had married a man named Alan Christie. All I ever hear from her when I visit her is how she gave the world to me, how much she loves me, how she gave me the best that she could despite my despicable father, and I hear about what’s wrong with her, what the doctors are saying and what medications she’s taking. I’m tired of listening to the same thing over and over and over for YEARS. I’m talking decades. It gets very tiring and I believe that is why she doesn’t have very many friends. She is stuck like someone with a bad acid trip and she wonders why I don’t talk to her very much. When I try to communicate with her, she just doesn’t get it. Call it huge cultural, generational, intelligence gap. I wish that I could pull her out of the nightmare that she has created for herself but no one can except for herself. I’ve tried.

I had moved away from SoCal to get away from everything that has made me unhappy and now I am close to it all again.

I feel selfish for not wanting to talk to her. But really, I am trying to help her. I just can’t give up my life because I am in no position to do so. She would bring me down with her.
She is heartbroken that I resent her and when I try to tell her why, she just doesn’t see it. . Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought some past issues up with her; now she is upset with me because my timing wasn’t so kindly.

So at this time in my life, I am facing the demons that I have run from. I am feeling sorry for myself and I am feeling even more sorry for her. I wish that she does get better. I’m sad.
It’s going to be a long journey.