On parenting and Mother's Day
The past few days have been filled with a certain amount of anxiety. Yesterday was Mother's Day, and, while I knew I should call my mom to talk to her, I really didn't want to. She has made zero effort to have any sort of relationship with me since Dec. '05 and has ignored every single email I've sent to her in the interim. In my eyes, she's not
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More critically, they don't interact with me on any substantive level. WE talk about the news of current events in our lives, like passing exams or getting jobs or becoming published authors or whatever, but we don't talk about what we think. What issues fire us up. What really matters. Everyone in my family, on both sides really but PARTICULARLY on my mother's side, is terrified of going there. It might mean (gasp) honesty about feelings.
They don't know us. They don't want to know us. If they cared to know us, they'd actually try to find out who we are, what we think, what things we dream, but they don't ask. They talk about health problems, make jokes, discuss dogs and cats and the weather and annoying co-workers. And you know what we decided...we decided that was just fine. BEcause we do not WANT to be anything like them.
Moreover, we've really come to see how every little thing ever done to us, said to us, used to bludgeon or abuse us, has NOTHING to do with us. It can't. It all started before there was an 'us' to get to know, when we were just a little baby too small to have anything resembling selfhood. No, it's not about us, never was, and never will be about us. IT'S ALL ABOUT THEM. Their hatreds, their fears, their terrors, their emotional holes. They judge us, avoid us, avoid real conversation, attack or neglect us because of THEIR problems, not because of anything we did, could do, did wrong, did right, missed, or overlooked, not because of anythign we can change, fix, or otherwise set aright....but because of things that have been wrong with them since before we were born.
That doesn't mean they can't hurt us. It doesn't mean we don't wish we could have a closer tie with them, the way so many people seem to have with their families. It doesn't mean we don't feel the lack of that kind of bond. They can. We do wish it. We do feel the lack. LIke a cold ache.
But it's not about us. That means we did nothing wrong, and further that we can't set it right. So we just have to accept who they are, what they can and cannot do, and try to deal with it the best we can...and be beautifully, gorgeously thankful we are NOT like them.
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