Mother’s Day
I wrote this essay about Mother’s Day yesterday. But I didn’t publish it because I was afraid. I was afraid that my brother or sister in law could be stalking my Medium essays and showing them to my mother. I have no idea if this is a reasonable fear, or if it is my trauma-damaged brain lying to me, making me the center of a non-existent story. It does that. Today it tells me that they are very likely showing my mother selective essays about my healing, and telling her that they are proof that I’m a crazy person, reinforcing the family story that I’m the problem.
The fact that I’ve gone out of my way to not hurt anyone with these essays — writing under a pseudonym for years, keeping any social media where I link to them private for years, never seeking to publish on a broader platform where I might monetize my words, never sharing any of my writing with anyone who knows my family — would mean nothing to them. They would almost certainly find a way to make the secrecy of it more proof of my nefarious intentions. Damned if I do…
But if my brain isn’t lying to me and my intuition is correct about this, then it’s them who are hurting her. There’s no chance she’d ever stumble upon my writing on her own. And it is not intended for her.
I can’t control what other people do. And I need to stop making decisions out of fear. I have to be able tell my truth. I have to.
So, today, the day after Mother’s Day, I’m sharing what I wrote yesterday.
Here it is…
Mother’s Day
What are we to do? What are we to make of this day? Those of us whose mothers aren’t loving or kind or caring or empathetic? What about those of us whose mothers are unfit or mean, neglectful, or abusive.
It’s Mother’s Day and I’m having a hard time. Yesterday I was flung into a fit of anxiety and wild mood swings. I was frozen in anger and then drowning in sorrow. It had been many months since I’d experienced any of these symptoms.
I made it through. And now I’m writing. Because it helps me process the trauma and stay present.
What are we to do, those of us who have mothers who relish in our shortcomings, laugh at our pain, deny our reality and blame us for their life’s pains and disappointments?
I’ve done so much work to live with the pain and shame of my relationship with my mother. Really living with it is hard. I spent most of my life denying it, pretending it wasn’t true, trying to prove to me and to her that she really did love me. But I had to stop. I had to live in reality, because the alternative was killing me.
Today I’m struck by the little things, in adulthood. It’s not the abuse and neglect of childhood that’s on my mind. It’s how in sobriety, after decades of therapy and having dealt with so much, I still lived in denial of this one thing for so long.
She is not an “I did the best I could” mother.
She is not a, “sure I made some mistakes” mother.
She is not a, “those were different times,” mother.
She is a mean mother. An unloving, abusive, controlling mother.
Today I’m thinking about how, when I was living in remote, unconnected places around the world for two years, I hitchhiked Internet cafes and made international calls on pay phones, in order to stay in touch with my mother. I reached out a couple of times a month. And every single voicemail message, every single email, went unanswered. In two years, I received not one single call or email or piece of correspondence from my mother. I thought this was normal, that it was just how families are, that me being 100% responsible for the maintenance for our relationship was just fine. I thought that it was my responsibility to put in all of the emotional, mental and physical effort, and that wanting her to give any in return, was proof that I was needy and selfish and a bad daughter, just like she always told me I was. I was so sad each time I checked my email and voicemail and there was nothing, especially on birthdays and holidays.
I’m thinking about the time I was suffering terribly with a mysterious digestive ailment and had eliminated a particular food from my diet to see if I could find a solution. And after a family dinner at her home, she took me aside and giggled, like she thought she was being cute, as she explained how she’d intentionally snuck that food past me, and into my meal without me knowing it. When just shook my head and got up and walked away in silence, she said, “What? What’s your problem?”
Then there was my first attempt at sobriety. My mother witnessed my decades-long spiral into terrifying addiction. She had a brother in recovery who almost died, more than once, from the disease. She is a smart person. She knows what addiction is. And at my first family gathering in sobriety, the first thing she did was walk up to me with a glass of wine and say, “I wish you would just have one drink with me.”
And finally, I can’t help but be thinking about the time that I returned from 30 days at a treatment facility because I had, once again, become suicidal. I was, for the first time in my life, living in the reality and full knowledge of the childhood trauma and abuse I’d been trying to deny my entire life. And I agreed, against the advice of my doctors and spiritual advisers, to drive my parents to the airport for a trip to see my brother and his family. As soon as we were underway and I was captive, I heard what she thought of me trying to take care of myself and learning to live in my new reality. “You are acting like you hate us…Our life is miserable because of you.” It continued like that for about 20 minutes of the hour-long ride. I was driving and panicking and dissociating. My vision started blurring. I was really scared.
What are we to do with mothers like this? Do we just keep trying?
For years I continued to pour emotional and physical labor that I could ill afford to spend into my relationship with her. I just kept trying to make her see me, love me, treat me decently.
And then I had to stop. I had to accept reality. I had to learn that I could not heal from the trauma caused by my childhood abuse while I was still so frequently reliving it with her.
I was so sure, for so long, that my only path to healing was to make her love me. And I was certain that if I just tried hard enough, gave enough, put up with enough, did enough, that I could make her love me. I was living in a delusion and overwhelmed by magical thinking.
Now I’m just sad. Sad for the little girl who convinced herself that she was unlovable because that reality was safer than the truth that she was indeed very easy to love, but had a mother who just didn’t and wouldn’t.
I know that my mother wasn’t born unable to love her own daughter. I know that she suffered her own trauma and that her treatment of me is part of her way of surviving what must be a very scary and bleak and lonely existence. I’m sorry for what she went, and continues, to go through. But at some point, she made a choice to not change. She decided to dig in and double down. She chose. She continues to choose. And her choices are incompatible with my wellbeing.
I am finally more important to me than she is. That is how it should and must be.
I do love my mother. I honestly wish I didn’t. I just can’t allow her to treat me like shit any more. Estrangement hurts. It’s lonely. But it hurts less than denying my own reality in order to live in hers.
So, Mother’s Day still throws me into a tizzy. Maybe it always will.
