Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day can either be a really happy day to celebrate the woman in your life that helped to shape you and guide you. But it can also highlight the broken relationship between Mother and Daughter that no one talks about. That I don’t talk about.

What is it about the dichotomy of relationships between a mother and a daughter? How damaged does that relationship have to be that you would keep going back for mental punishment just so you have some sort of contact with her? How damaged as a woman are you that even at 45 when you are strong, happy, healthy and have a great parent child relationship with your own child that you will engage in some sort of sick mind games just to have a connection to a woman who has never fully loved and protected you? I guess as damaged as I am.  I guess you have to be so damaged that even when you remember the things she did for you, the material things she gave, you have to remember that she then used them to control you. I guess you have to be so damaged that you remember the times she gave you “help” but again used it to control you. I guess you have to be as damaged as me.

I don’t know what sometimes keeps me from being able to just let go. She says things about me publicly to people who don’t know me and that I can’t defend myself to, things like I’m ugly, fat, bitter and jealous. And they will believe her because they “know” her, or they know who she is now. She tells them I want her life, want to be her, but the thing is I’m not bitter and I’m not jealous. I don’t want my mother’s life. I don’t want to look like her or have lived the things she has lived. I’m happy as who I am despite the fat programs she put me through or the Doctors she sent me to to change me. I was happy as a teen until she repeatedly told me I wasn’t good enough or pretty enough or I looked like my Dad’s side of the family. It has taken me years to be at a point where I am happy with how I look, even if I’m not skinny or look like her. I’m happy with my relationship with me.  I’m happy in my relationship with my father and siblings and I have an amazing husband who loves me wholly and forgives me for all my crazy. My son and I are so close that I don’t know anything that could bend or break our bond because I have always been honest with him. Yet here I am writing this all down in my blog because I don’t have anyone who would understand what I’m feeling. I know what my husband would say, he would tell me I should have just stayed away from her, that I know what a toxic source of energy she is and that this turmoil I’m dealing with is my fault. But I couldn’t stay away. She is my mother, she carried me and helped to create me. I could never stay away from my own child and I don’t know how she bears it.

One of her favorite things lately is that she likes to tell people I tried to destroy her life, that I put things about her on the internet. She tells people she had me investigated, well great, I’m sure that isn’t real and if it is they didn’t find anything but it sounds so much more powerful from her and she can get around explaining why she doesn’t have a relationship with either of her children or her only grandchild and why she will most likely never have a relationship with her soon to be born great grandchild. She will never admit that I was the bridge that softened her approach to the rest of her family and allowed for her to have a relationship with them. She will never understand that the letter I wrote wasn’t to destroy her but to make sure she was being open as I know from the past she can change like a chameleon.  Maybe I shouldn’t have written that letter, but I truly believe that she never intended for her new life to become introduced to her old life. I thought it might open a dialogue but she reverted back to the Mother I grew up with and became ugly, self righteous and tried every way she could to snap back at me. And even now when she is blocked from my life she still digs in with the claws and they still hurt, because after all she knows where all the soft vulnerable spots are, she helped create them.

After all this, even after hurt upon hurt and lie upon lie for years, the little girl in me that has always craved my Mother’s love and affection still misses her. Still misses the affection so easily given to the men in her life or even other people but she always withheld some part of her love from her children, from me. My life is so much healthier and happier with her not in it. I know I am loved and cherished, but some part of me is also missing that little foundation piece. The little piece that still craves her love and a connection with her even when she continues to poison it. I don’t know that any amount of self-realization or counseling can ever help you get beyond the little broken piece. So instead I have to get up every day and cover the wound that never heals with a layer of band aids and hope that it stays strong until the next time the claws come out.

I will celebrate Mother’s Day this year and be proud of the Mom I am. I will be proud of how I’m not like the example I grew up with and accepting of the mistakes I made as a Mom. I’m far from even being close to perfect but I know my son loves me. I will celebrate the women in my life, both past and present, that have been like Mom’s to me and I’ll probably even think of my Mother.

If you ever need a really good article to read about toxic people this is an amazing essay. I read it a lot.

www.heysigmund.com/toxic-people/