2:19 p.m. | 2012-12-08 Detachment I remember when I told MommaCrayCray that I was getting married. She hemmed, hawed and sputtered before finally spitting out that I'd shocked her because I told her that I'd NEVER get married and neither would Mr. Irony. That's not true, of course. Never say never and all that. As neither Mr. Irony nor I had ever been married and we're not spring chickens, I had sometimes remarked that it was possible, maybe even likely, that I might not ever get married. Somehow, she rewrote that into "never." It's not uncommon for MommaCrayCray to rewrite reality. She believes she's perfect and any indication to the contrary cannot exist in her reality so she warps her reality to fit her fantasy. She spins her own world out of cotton candy fictions weaved together into a fantasy cocoon that cushions her from the harsh realities of the real world. In this world, she is always right and the rest of the world is always wrong. She is perfect and everyone else is flawed. She is superior and the rest of us are inferior. It's a lonely world she lives in. One fraught with tension, anxiety and secrets. Reality constantly stands at the gate ready to crash and destroy her fictional world. Much time and energy is spent frantically keeping reality at bay to protect her delicately-spun fantasies. I've noticed a cycle to this madness. She'll work diligently and tirelessly until she has spun a world of perfection around herself. It's filled with grandiose visions of righteousness, its streets littered with the souls of others properly put in their place of inferiority and unworthiness, its sky full of puffy clouds bloated with ostentatious expectations. Its single resident floating high on her standing as the best person in the whole world. For a minute. Then comes the inevitable dissolution of this vaporous world. Reality throws stones that pierce the walls, little-by-little dismantling this Kingdom of Perfection and allowing the enemy of truth entry under the cover of darkness until the lone resident finds herself atop the shattered pieces of her mythical world. These stones are made of inescapable truths that expose the reality of a selfish woman who has no friends, has alienated her children, has two failed marriages, lives on government assistance and who was wrong about so many things. There's no Prince Charming love story, devoted and adoring children, oodles of loyal friends, buckets of money or awards for outstanding achievements. There's just the stone-cold reality that she's human, just like all the rest of us. She's not the most special in all the land. The devolution from magical kingdom to real world results in a sort of defeat that resembles depression but is not treatable with anti-depressions. That's where MommaCrayCray is right now. Again. There seems to be a cycle to it where she flies high for a while and then slowly starts to descend until she reaches a point where she�s "depressed." She stays there for as long as it takes to reconstruct her fantasy world. It's hard not to be sympathetic but sympathy results in toxic paybacks so it's easily tempered. This unreal world that she lives in is part of the whole "crazy-making" component of OCPD. All my life, I've experienced reality as one thing while being told that it's a completely different thing. The constant cognitive dissonance that results is confusing and uncomfortable. I've spent most of my life trying to eliminate it mostly by avoiding MommaCrayCray. Fortunately, I no longer experience that dissonance because I recognize the difference between my reality and her "reality." And, I'm almost at a place where I can accept that my reality will never be her reality, and I need to stop trying to convince her that my reality is real and leave her to live in her reality while I live in mine. That's detachment, I suppose. your thoughts? seed flower