Hello everybody,
I'm new here. I was surprised and grateful to discover this board, and I look forward to contributing. But what brought me here is that I am at wits' end with my mother, so I hope it's OK to vent a little...
I have been in therapy to try to make sense of this relationship. It has helped; my therapist is a very patient and caring person. But there are certain aspects of my story that I need to speak to an understanding and receptive audience. I hope you don't mind.
My mother always taught me that I was ugly and unlovable, that no one would like or accept me, that my social and intellectual efforts were doomed to fail. She used to cry in dressing rooms because she hated having to buy me clothes in the "girls plus" department. When the other kids taunted me, she said, "What did you expect? Of course they don't like you."
When I was 12, I was hospitalized with severe abdominal pain. My parents told me it was appendicitis, and I had surgery. Fourteen years later, when I was in the hospital for a severe ovarian cyst, my mother told me that it hadn't been appendicitis. One of my ovaries had been removed. She never told me because "she found it too difficult to talk about." At any rate, I had to have surgery, and a section of my remaining ovary had to be removed.
I got married two years later. Her response to my engagement was frigid disapproval. My wedding was totally joyless. From my honeymoon, I wrote her a letter about how she would always be part of my life, but she replied, "That's just words. That doesn't mean anything." I have been unable to conceive, and she has been completely unsympathetic, responding to my concerns with comments like, "Well, that's something I never had trouble with" or "You have to stop whining and accept God's will." She thinks adoption is wrong.
I'm sorry to provide all this background, but I think it's important that you know where the problem comes from. I feel tremendous anger, but I usually turn it inward on myself. My self-loathing is a real issue in my life. I never really pursued fertility treatment because, on one level, I absolutely believed I didn't deserve to have a baby. I don't really believe I deserve to take up space.
I just want to know that other people have felt this way, and that it's possible to feel better. My mother is old now, and my siblings can't or won't take care of her. She lived with my husband and me during treatment for lung cancer, and she stays with us during follow-up scans. But she can't keep up the family home much longer. A permanent solution has to be found, and I know no one will help me do it (either financially or in terms of time/effort). She believes she should live with my husband and me. That thought makes me physically ill (really, I throw up). But when I say maybe she could have an apartment near us and I could see her several times a week, she calls me "evil" and "selfish" and "uncaring." Is it really so evil to want your mother to maintain independence while she can? What are the limits of duty?
These questions are eating me up, and the self-loathing is a constant ache. I want to feel better. I want to live with peace and purpose. I want to honor my mother and respect myself. I want to take my eyes off the ground.
Can someone tell me how?
Thanks for listening,
Joyce
