It’s Mother’s Day and, as usual, I feel a little out of my body. It’s been getting easier each year, though.
The first year I had Mother’s Day after I decided to cut
ties with my mom was dreadful. I got absolutely shit-faced like I hadn’t in
years; I threw up all night and all morning. I had terrible nightmares and I
was overwhelmed with immense guilt… or shame… or toxic shame? Maybe a bit of it
all.
Some things are not right or wrong. They may be right for
others and wrong for you and they may just be what needs to be done in an
ambivalent way. Life has so many contradictions. A relationship with the person
who gave birth to you will drive you crazy until you finally settle it inside
your soul.
Here in my blog I say things as they are. I don’t sugar code
them. My mother was absent for my childhood. I never missed her, in fact, I had
anxiety whenever she was around. I was raised by strangers, and in some weird
way I felt safer around them than around my mom. And even in cases where those
strangers were people who harmed me, I knew my mother was as good as invisible.
She wouldn’t protect me anyway, so it was no use going to her for protection, in
fact, she would probably shame me somehow or throw me as a lamb to the
slaughter.
Yes, a lamb to the slaughter. When I was a young preteen, I
was basically a child slave that didn’t have any friends or education. My
mother saw me as labor, childcare, cook, therapist and punching bag.
I just want to add that my mother exposed me and my siblings
to abusers and pedophiles and always defended them or pretended nothing was
happening. She, herself, was also abusive and violent.
All I really remember feeling as I grew up was the desire to
get away from her. I didn’t really understand it, but it was all I wanted. I
felt like I wasn’t a person as her daughter. I wasn’t a subject in the world
with needs and desires. I was a grey square in the corner people were allowed
to step on.
However (a big however), every child loves – or wants to
love – their mother. We need a mother. My mother stayed in my life and at some point,
I felt like I almost loved her, or at least I wanted to, but it was like loving
an empty shell of a person, or worse, a prickly poison ivy that always opened
my childhood wounds for her own amusement. Was it possible that she couldn’t
grasp the enormity for her mistreatment and neglect, or did she really not
care?
Honestly, a child can forgive their mother almost anything
and we all know that mother’s aren’t perfect, HOWEVER, some things just go too
far and every human has a limit. When that bridge is burned, it’s done. I’m not
willing to swim back on that current to rescue the old backpack I left on the other
side that was weighing me down and destroying me from the inside out. I need to
move on.
Every Mother’s Day has been rough ever since, but it's getting easier. I am a mother. It’s my day as well and I am the priority in my life
right now. I still feel the guilt, but I know that guilt comes from a society
that preaches that every child must love their mom or that all moms are good,
when that is not true. I feel the grief from seeing my friends and colleagues showing
affection to their moms. I feel an emptiness in my heart of all the love I wanted
to show a mother, but I can’t, because it’s not there anymore. It just goes
into a black hole.
My bother called me “dark matter” recently in pejorative
matter because of my recent life choices, and I decided to think that maybe
being dark matter is not so bad, it’s actually pretty cool. I can create my own
universe and hold my universe together. I can create my own Mother in my mind.
I have honored my mother by never having been mean to her. I
have always treated my mom with kindness, and I think it’s kindness for both of
us for me to let her go, and if she truly loved as she says she does, she
should let me go as well. She already destroyed my childhood and youth, yet I
still have a lot of life left in me and I can only live it fully if I stay away
from her dark matter.
Why is that so hard? She is free to be her, and I am free to
be me, each in our own universe in our corner of the galaxy. We are no longer
connected, even if she tries to reel me back in. That flower died. Whatever new
flower that blossoms will not have been watered by her but will be watered by my rain.
The sky is my father, and the earth is my mother. I am the
water that brings life to my world.
We don’t know why people become who they become. All we know
is who we are and what we need to take care of ourselves. It’s our responsibility
to be our mother if we didn’t have one, and to do what is best for us.
May we be loved. May we be safe. May we be peaceful. May we
live life with ease.
