Mother's Day

     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.