Sometimes, I hate my mother.
I realize after a two month absence from my LJ, maybe that title seems a bit ominous, but lately, something occurs to me that I feel is necessary for me to bring up, and it gives me something to write about here.
You know how in Runaway Bride Richard Gere discovers that Julia Roberts changes her entire personality in each of the relationships she is in because she's too afraid to be alone, too afraid to be unhappy? And then, she sabotages each relationship that she's in when she actually gets to the commitment stage? My mother is very similar to that, but without the actual act of sabotage. She hangs on until there's nothing left to hold on to.
It's always easier to tell people that my mom was a single mom most of my life than to actually give her history. Her history is not the most flattering. But I think it paints a portrait of a woman so insecure that I need to give it here. She had a boyfriend in high school who was older than her and a bit of rebel. She almost flunked out because she would spend days at a time with him. They were even engaged for a while. Before he broke it off. (I know this from stories from my grandmother.) My mom got pregnant with me after briefly dating my alcoholic father. They liked to hang out at the same bar. Her father threatened them, so they got married. He remained an alcoholic that she couldn't change, and she got tired of the party girl life, so they divorced when I was five. Did my mother learn to be on her own? Of course not. Not with a five-year-old. She started dating again, almost immediately. And within two years, she was engaged. To an abusive, alcoholic, drug addict. (I take it you might already be sensing a pattern here, no?) Of course, this AADA was also, absurdly you might say, health conscious. Which lead to my mother's brief obsession with healthy foods. There were so many vegetables and fish and livers in the house that we probably should have been composting our garbage instead of throwing it away. I was being force fed a diet of foods that I couldn't keep down. (Seriously, I can't keep down liver for some reason. I take three or four bites before vomiting. Don't know why. I've always been that way.) He was in and out of jail, spending lots of money, and we moved around a lot. She's still in debt. But she never left him. He died of a drug overdose, and then, there was one whole year where my mother didn't date.
A whole year. I don't know how she did it. She's a serial monogamist. It must have taken super human strength.
Because then, she started dating a man who constantly lied to her, who wasn't technically divorced yet, and who also liked to drink way more than he should. She's been with him ever since though. He likes spicy foods, so my mother likes spicy foods. He likes soccer, so now she's interested in soccer. He likes movies that basically amount to slasher-porn, so she sits through them to keep him happy. It's like I've been watching a horribly tragic version of the Julia Roberts/Richard Gere movie my entire life. She doesn't know how to be her own person at all. Every time she finds someone new, she becomes a whole other person around them. And I've tried to demonstrate this for her. But she doesn't see it.
Why am I telling you all this? Not because I want you all to see that my mother is attracted to not-so-great-guys. But because I think it's important for people to have their own identities. I think it's important, just like all those cheesy stories of self discovery tell you, for you to know yourself, for you to be comfortable in your own skin, before you let anyone else in. Don't become someone else to make the person you care about happy. I can't stand it when I see other girls do this. Some of the women I work with (or used to work with, now) are the same way. They bend and twist to fit the mold someone else has created for them, and it's ludicrous. I know that human beings, and our personalities, are somewhat fluid. I won't object to the fact that we change and grow over time. We're supposed to. No one is the same person at fifteen that they're going to be at twenty-five. But you don't have to change for someone else. And you shouldn't. It's one of the few things in this world that makes me truly angry. I don't think my vocabulary skills are even strong enough for me to express my anger. I believe that if you're with someone, you should be enough, not the version of you that they want to be with.
And that, my friends, is all from my soap box for today. I just felt that these things needed to be said.
You know how in Runaway Bride Richard Gere discovers that Julia Roberts changes her entire personality in each of the relationships she is in because she's too afraid to be alone, too afraid to be unhappy? And then, she sabotages each relationship that she's in when she actually gets to the commitment stage? My mother is very similar to that, but without the actual act of sabotage. She hangs on until there's nothing left to hold on to.
It's always easier to tell people that my mom was a single mom most of my life than to actually give her history. Her history is not the most flattering. But I think it paints a portrait of a woman so insecure that I need to give it here. She had a boyfriend in high school who was older than her and a bit of rebel. She almost flunked out because she would spend days at a time with him. They were even engaged for a while. Before he broke it off. (I know this from stories from my grandmother.) My mom got pregnant with me after briefly dating my alcoholic father. They liked to hang out at the same bar. Her father threatened them, so they got married. He remained an alcoholic that she couldn't change, and she got tired of the party girl life, so they divorced when I was five. Did my mother learn to be on her own? Of course not. Not with a five-year-old. She started dating again, almost immediately. And within two years, she was engaged. To an abusive, alcoholic, drug addict. (I take it you might already be sensing a pattern here, no?) Of course, this AADA was also, absurdly you might say, health conscious. Which lead to my mother's brief obsession with healthy foods. There were so many vegetables and fish and livers in the house that we probably should have been composting our garbage instead of throwing it away. I was being force fed a diet of foods that I couldn't keep down. (Seriously, I can't keep down liver for some reason. I take three or four bites before vomiting. Don't know why. I've always been that way.) He was in and out of jail, spending lots of money, and we moved around a lot. She's still in debt. But she never left him. He died of a drug overdose, and then, there was one whole year where my mother didn't date.
A whole year. I don't know how she did it. She's a serial monogamist. It must have taken super human strength.
Because then, she started dating a man who constantly lied to her, who wasn't technically divorced yet, and who also liked to drink way more than he should. She's been with him ever since though. He likes spicy foods, so my mother likes spicy foods. He likes soccer, so now she's interested in soccer. He likes movies that basically amount to slasher-porn, so she sits through them to keep him happy. It's like I've been watching a horribly tragic version of the Julia Roberts/Richard Gere movie my entire life. She doesn't know how to be her own person at all. Every time she finds someone new, she becomes a whole other person around them. And I've tried to demonstrate this for her. But she doesn't see it.
Why am I telling you all this? Not because I want you all to see that my mother is attracted to not-so-great-guys. But because I think it's important for people to have their own identities. I think it's important, just like all those cheesy stories of self discovery tell you, for you to know yourself, for you to be comfortable in your own skin, before you let anyone else in. Don't become someone else to make the person you care about happy. I can't stand it when I see other girls do this. Some of the women I work with (or used to work with, now) are the same way. They bend and twist to fit the mold someone else has created for them, and it's ludicrous. I know that human beings, and our personalities, are somewhat fluid. I won't object to the fact that we change and grow over time. We're supposed to. No one is the same person at fifteen that they're going to be at twenty-five. But you don't have to change for someone else. And you shouldn't. It's one of the few things in this world that makes me truly angry. I don't think my vocabulary skills are even strong enough for me to express my anger. I believe that if you're with someone, you should be enough, not the version of you that they want to be with.
And that, my friends, is all from my soap box for today. I just felt that these things needed to be said.