I visited my mother yesterday, something I always dread doing. Mom is the root of the majority of my dysfunction. Her own dysfunction is startling. I never fail to be hurt by her obvious lack of caring. She’s never been to see my place (neither has my brother who’s so much like her) and I’ve been here over a year now. She doesn’t seem to have any interest whatsoever in coming. Most parents are curious to see where their kids are living to make sure they’re in a decent place. After all, my father’s come down here numerous times and Davey’s parents have even come for a visit from two states away. Heck, when she and Dad split up I was curious to see her new place where she was living on her own to make sure she was somewhere okay. We moved out of the house around the same time, and she was so concerned with buying herself new furniture and taking all she could from Dad that she didn’t give one thought to the fact that I’d be lucky if I could get my grandmother’s old, worn sofa from my Dad to sit on. (Dad being how he is, of course he gave it to me.) She didn’t care that I was starting with nothing.
Even something as simple as noticing I’ve drastically changed my hairdo totally escapes her. She’s got to talk about all the awards my brother’s won being an EMT and fireman, but when I finished graduate school I didn’t get so much as a “gee, that’s great” until a few days later when she simply left me a small gift on the tv for when I got home from work. She didn’t even give it to me herself and she was home. (And this after all the years of pressure she put on me to be “gifted” as she claimed I was. To do really well in school. The pressure was such that I’d consider committing suicide in high school if I got a bad grade.)
She doesn’t call me, but I force myself to call her now and then because I don’t want to give her something to lord over me (”You never call!”) but she has my number and if she gave a shit she could call now and then. Part of me wishes I could just let go and give up on her, but the little girl in me still wants her to care. I spend hours talking about this shit in therapy. I’m in my 30’s and my mother is still a major source of aggravation in my life. I’m just glad I’m not in the house with her any more.
I’ll never forgive her for the time when I tried to kill myself when I was thirteen and she, while driving me to the hospital, said, “Why are you doing this to me?” Even then, it was all about her. I was in so much pain at such a young age that I was trying to kill myself and all she could think about what how it affected her. I asked for help for my depression and all she’d tell me (even after the suicide attempt and after she actually felt freaked out the first time I cut myself) is that, “You’re not depressed, you’re bored.”
I can’t talk to her about any of this. All she does when something is too difficult for her to bear is deny it vehemently. She denies helping put me in heavy debt in my 20’s even though all my friends from that era (and my Dad who she put in debt too) remember the whole period clearly. When I was a kid, I would think that I was insane when she’d deny something. I must be crazy, I thought, since I clearly remember such and such but she totally denys it ever happening. At least as an adult I’ve come to realize that she’s the one in denial, and that my memories are correct. I asked my cousin if my Aunt does the same thing (Mom’s sister) and apparently she does. My cousin thought it was just my Aunt’s drinking that did it, but now she sees, as do I, that it’s a family-wide dysfunction on that side. My brother does it too. I hope at least my cousin and I can come out of this sane and functional.
Maybe this is part of why getting over the assault has been so hard. Yet again it’s someone who’s hurt me completely denying what’s happened. Competely denying my experience and my pain and making me out to be the nutty one. I’m not nutty. I may suffer from bouts of depression, but I’m not insane and I speak the truth. I’ve always been honest to a fault and brutally so.
I don’t have experience with this kind of issue, but some of the women in my sexual assault support group have.
One woman said something that I thought was pretty insightful (she was raped by her father over a period of years). Her mother continues to be a toxic pain in the ass. Anyway, this woman said, “HOw can I expect a person who wasn’t there when it mattered the most to somehow be there now?” She said that because she’d grown up, she somehow expected her mother to “grow up,” too.
The facilitator of my group made a parallel. He said that he used to get these nachos at a fast food Tex-Mex place. They always sucked, but he kept going to get them. Each time, he’d be disappointed all over again that the cheese would be runny, and the cheese container too small to fit the chips into. Finally, he stopped going.
None of this is to say that it isn’t painful that someone who *should* be there for you isn’t there, or that it’s foolish to wish she were different, or that you should cut your mother off forever. Just that you could spare yourself some pain by not hoping she’ll change. Maybe she will, who knows, but until she does (if ever), at least you won’t be disappointed afresh each time she does or says something hurtful.
Yeah I keep telling myself that I need to get to the point where I just resign myself to the fact that she probably won’t change and get on with my life. I need to find a way to still see her from time to time without being put into a funk every time I do. In some ways it would be easier to cut her out of my life, but then I’d feel guilty. She’s not so awful that I want to cut her out completely… I just need to find a way to shrug off her inadequacies as a mother.