You asking your mother to react to you in certain way is exactly like her expecting certain things from you.
Don’t do it.
Break the cycle
Let her be her.
You aren’t going to change her, don’t try
Do you boo.
Fuck that is all I have been saying lately.
“Same vacation different agendas”. = do you boo
“I understand but I don’t have to agree to abide.” = do you boo
Attica stopped drinking Monster energy drinks and now chugs kombucha instead, I did one good thing.
I have been getting mighty judgey lately though. More often than I am comfortable admitting.
Quietly though, I am not being a douchebag out loud, but I think if I keep rolling my eyes with this frequency and intensity, they are gonna get stuck back there.
I said yesterday I think I am where I am supposed to be, but now I dunno. I used to be very live and let live, and I still am, but I am kinda sneering and biting my tongue in two.
I think it means that maybe it’s time for me to level up again. I am irritated by my own shortcomings that are mirrored in others.
I’m also tired. I have one child, I cannot mother the world, I have been known to try…and if I could…it might be a better place. I am mostly love light and acceptance over here.
Mostly.
I know the way I interact with everyone is a result of things I have never really received. I definitely do unto others the way I wish they would have done unto me.
I try to.
I have to remember other people are trying too.
Everyone has their own reality.
And the world is a really strange and hostile place right now.
I kinda want my mom.
I can’t remember exactly when I realized my mom is a person.
I know that sounds weird, but its true. I always saw her as MY mom, as in how she related to me and my existence. Not who she is on her own. I think that was terribly unfair. To judge her by the station she claimed by giving birth to me and not as the sum of her experiences and who she really is.
It went on way too long. I left home young and we never really had that opportunity to come to each other as women, I was still a girl when I left. I became a mother 5 years later and I still couldn’t see her as a peer, just as an authority. Someone I had to do right by, but I couldn’t.
I do remember years ago before I started driving so at least 12, maybe more. She fell and scraped her hands, face and knees on the pool deck. I don’t know why I called home that day, probably needed a recipe, or something or maybe she called me because it was the same weekend they had to put their dog down. He was getting old and starting to bite. I think he was deaf and blind and tired and mad about all 3.
So he snapped at my folks and a decision was made.
I heard my mom’s voice sounding uncharacteristically defeated on the other end of the phone and the epiphany started to hit as she listed off the laundry list of shit she was dealing with.
She’s just a woman who gets overwhelmed too.
So, without telling her what I was doing, I booked a bus ticket and took the 3 hour trip home just to be there and cook and help out. I think they had just listed the house for sale too. I know exactly what it is like to have everything happen all at once. My parents moved 4 times after I was born, I’ve moved 48 now, probably 30 then. This is my wheelhouse.
I never really got the luxury of needing my mom, but I took the leap that she needed someone and why not me? I was off work that week, my sisters were away, my dad still working.
We had a nice week and it changed absolutely nothing about our relationship, but it changed me and that is enough.
Our parents are not the gods and monsters we see when we are little. They are their own people with their own reality based on the catalog of experiences they have had throughout their lives. They have baggage and pain and joy that has nothing to do with us, their children.
I didn’t want to be like her.
I decided that she could no sooner change to love me than I could change to be loved by her. Asking either one of us to bend was fundamentally unfair.
I realized early on, even if I couldn’t articulate or accept it, that I either lived a life that made her happy, or I could be happy. Those two things could not coexist. Didn’t stop me from trying to find a balance and being mad at both of us when I inevitably failed.
We would never have been friends in real life. That realization made things easier for a couple decades.
I could never truly please her without denying who I am.
Whether it works out or not, I chose me.
But I have realized recently, that isn’t fair. I never gave her a chance. I never got to know her.
And the cosmic joke here is, I am like her, in a lot of ways. On my best days I am strong, in control, organized, efficient and logical. I nurture as second nature. My house is almost always clean and a source of personal pride. Who knew spending a few Saturdays a year rearranging furniture would give me this gift as an adult? I got my lisztomania from her. There is always music wherever I am. I can cook like a chef and I am a brilliant hostess.
The housework I resented as a child I carried with me into adulthood.
And I am grateful.
If the power threatens to go out, and it has, for 8 days once, 4 one time before, I kept my family safe, clean and fed because of what I learned from her.
And when her sister died in May, we talked.
We talked probably the most we have ever.
And I actually like her, my mother I mean. As a person. She’s very smart. And deeper than I ever imagined.
I remember hearing stories about her holding together the commune her and my dad lived on when he got back from Vietnam, and the fact that she drove across America to go get him when he disappeared for a bit.
How could I not see how amazing she is?
Where did I think I got my brave from if not her.
She’s 75 years old and posted half the BLM memes I shared to my page. She is staunchly equal rights for all, always has been. And loud about it.
My mom is really cool.
We both spent a lot of our conversations when my Aunt was in a coma saying ‘yep, me too’. I realized my core philosophies about life and death are compatible with hers. Identical really. We decided my Aunt had a really wonderful life and we chose to celebrate that and only mourn a little.
And she told me the one thing that made me feel better about losing such a wonderful Aunt.
“She always loved you.”
Its hard for me. I don’t even orbit my family. I am a weird comet that shoots through the night on occasions. Weddings, funerals that’s really it. All my cousins have babies and I have met maybe 6 of them. I missed them growing up, I have no rights to be involved with their children. These are my choices for the most part and I only hold myself responsible. I am lucky in a way. My last memory of my Aunt was her happy, healthy and smiling. I feel selfish about it and I am crying as I write this. But it is what it is. No tears or regret are going to change the last 31 years that I have been gone.
My 31 year old cousin died suddenly 7 weeks later. I’ve written about it. But I haven’t really dealt with it yet.
I was in an antique store in Galveston. And unknown number rang and I picked it up. Didn’t recognize the voice on the other end.
“Sarah, it’s your mother.”
In that moment, I really truly recognized her…hearing her small, sad, scared voice that 12 year old realization that my mother was indeed her own person attained a new level of clarity. She gets hurt and scared and devastated too. Something strange happened as I collapsed into a kitchen chair clutching some pretty pillowcases to my chest. I felt protective of her in that moment and I felt helpless and I realized how she must have felt so many times with me. When your child hurts and you can’t fix it. I am a mother, I know this feeling. But I wanted to fix things for her and I couldn’t. and I am wondering too, if maybe she was confronted with the possibility of losing me or my sisters as my other Aunt had just lost hers.
I don’t know where to go from here. I still haven’t taken those pillowcases out of the bag. That was June.
We joked bitterly that we really need to call each other when things weren’t terrible, and we have a little. Breaking a 30 year habit isn’t easy.
I can’t call her tonight, it’s too late.
I don’t even know if I can post this. i can barely see it, my glasses are fogging up and there are a lot of tears.
I hear a lot about healing the ‘mother wound’. I have been to a ton of therapy and gotten a lot of things off my chest, but I never felt the need for some dramatic confrontation about anything. I remember saying to my therapist years ago, ‘she did her best with the tools she was given, it’s not her fault we aren’t compatible.’ And I left it there. A game of x’s and o’s with no winner.
I know it’s hard for her when people ask after me, I haven’t lived a life she is proud of. Half the time I haven’t been proud either. But I hope she knows I am happy and I hope now that is enough. Maybe I will finally write a book I can put my real name on and she can read.
I know enough about her to understand why things happened the way they did.
I think that is my reason for always trying to glean the reasons behind other people’s actions and this is a gift I have that I could not have come by any other way. It is something I love about myself.
On a completely related note, I spent a lot of time alone in my room as a kid. And as a teenager I found music. One of the first albums I ever bought was the Joshua Tree by U2. I played it til I wore the cassette out and bought another one. To me it was poetry.
Running to Stand Still is playing right now.
And that is kinda how I feel about all of this.
You gotta cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice
I screamed enough when I was younger. I was an angry child.
I talk a lot now.
And I am weeping.
This is just catharsis and epiphanies brought on by someone asking me how to process their mother’s disapproval.
I don’t have the answers.
I am 46 years old, I am scared, I am sad, I am alone and I want my mom.