Sheesh! I'm such an idiot!

[Avery]

Hi, all...

I'm taking a study break and thought I might approach something with you all that's been on my mind for a couple of weeks.  I actually miss my mother.   I'm not even exactly sure what it is that I miss about her - generally, our conversations leave me feeling tense and nauseated, but there were always a few times that we had some really great moments - almost a friendship.  I have a wonderful stepmother, who for the most part fills the mother void within me, but for some reason I don't feel the bond that I felt with my real mother on our good days.  For those of you who don't know, my mother and I haven't spoken since June of last year.  

I've also been feeling that guilt - that "what if something happened to her and it's been left like this?"  kind of thing.  While I can't imagine actually picking up the phone to call her, I can't imagine never calling her again either.  I don't want to get sucked back in again for so many reasons...I guess I'm just feeling sorry for myself that I don't have a normal mother.  I am authorizing all of you to remind me of what a bad idea it is for me to contact her and don't hold back!  Sometimes, I wish I'd have picked up her trait of holding a grudge until the end of time...sure would make it easier.  Anyway, thanks for listening...I felt like whining for a bit.  How do you let go for good??

Avery

[Rojo]

Hi, Avery

I don't think you're an idiot at all.  It's normal to miss being close to our mom's when we've been separated from them - this is something that's just built into us as humans I think.  The problem with our mothers is that they aren't normal humans and they have no compunction when it comes to damaging us to feed their outrageous needs.

I'm just a short while into not having any contact with mine and it's very, very difficult.  My mind plays tricks on me and tries to lull me into feeling that I'm the baddie here.  I've heard myself say, "Oh, it wasn't bad ALL the time."  "There were SOME good times"...all sorts of things like that.  Everytime this happens, I remind myself of all the overwhelming, life- altering, soul-sucking misery mine has caused me and it jolts me back to reality - at least until the next moment.

Avery, methinks it's a long, difficult road ahead but there comes a point where one has to make a stand for all that is holy to us, in and of ourselves, separate from their mayhem.  I'd want follow my gut, not my heart that's been so wrecklessly toyed with.  I hope to maintain the resolve.

God bless and I hope that whatever you decide to do is right for you and you alone.

Rojo

[Anonymous]

my mother died two years ago, after many years no contact. I sent flowers and telephoned her new family and wrote a couple of poems about it. On balance that was the best I could make of it all, she was so poisonous at times even if I'd known she was dying I was too afraid of her to have spent any time with her. She made me feel suicidal.

I have had a better life without her, she made me feel so bad about myself.

Since then I have cut out other people to various degrees, some entirely and some like my father he's not allowed to telephone with his many recurring crises which were stressful.

H. is still here, but he has many good points, he's not all bad/ all mad like they were. He's not a suitable long-term partner either I don't think though, now I feel whole again and able to address my needs and look for a reciprocal relationship again.
Still working through that one, lots of practical issues to sort out.

There's a poem by feminist poet Astra which I found comforting ( ironically my sister used to sarcastically refer to our mother as 'mother dear' )


back you come

back you come, mother dear
to walk with me in my woods
and see my brook
and cut pussy willows
and drink pots of tea in my warm kitchen

let me hold your hand
and brush your petalled hair-
adam brushes mine these days
when he's not leaning my head
on his small shoulder
as i cry

back you come, mother dear
to heal some of the longing
i always felt you felt-
yearning for less
complicated complications of
parenthood  livelihood  wifehood
yearnings for countryside quietness
and honeysuckled night times
and firebright laughter

with no unruliness from me
and no competition for you
in the form of relations or friends
of mine  

           no reality intruding

back you come, mother dear
to your vision of you and me
as sisters

but this time let's make it real
with no power games-
you really running the show
and me acquiescing
just to keep the peace

this time let's have it
a little more honest-
allowing you to be you
and me to be me
and both to be different
if need be

i still want you back,
mother dear



***************************

[Anonymous]

Avery, you are very fortunate to have a stepmother who loves and mostly fills the void for you. That is so beautiful, because how often are stepmothers depicted so differently. It's interesting the you recognise and describe so well 'the bond I feel on our good days.' I had something like this with my mother, but for me it would have read, "On her good days."

That's why I think I married the wrong man and ditto for him, so to speak. My relationships were so wacky as a kid that when I grew up I just didn't 'get' gentle normal caring people, I couldn't relate to them at all. I had some really great boyfriends and a couple would have made reat husbands, but they didn't get the juices going inside me that I mistook for love. What I had with my parent that I had learned to interpret as a bond was to do with familiarity and ease. Because I'd been trained to relate in operate in a certain environment of high pitched emotions anger and hostility, I found there was a certain level of 'comfort in confict'. Once I got over, through, around, whatever this it was so clear that for me anyway the bond was an illusion. Reminds me of the line in AB FAB where Patsy's mother raves on about "when they cut the cord at birth", basically to her it meant their relationship , hers and Patsy's was severed then and meant nothing to her. I came to this conclusion with my mother, this was exactly what happened. Anyway, your comment about mother's day got me sentimental for a while and then I pulled myself up, gave myself a good talking to, wrote this to you for partly theraupeutic purposes, and hope you get something from it.

Guest.

[rosencrantz]

our conversations leave me feeling tense and nauseated

Gosh - you got me thinking there - how DO I feel afterwards.  In recent times, I've been far less able to cope with her and I'd be sobbing or hysterical after a call.  She just puts the pressure on and keeps on grinding away at a vulnerable spot - all in the name of 'love' (her need for).  I'm sorry I can't give her what she wants but there's 30 years of alienating behaviour in our history.  

Maybe she has a good dose of borderline thrown in and the way I've tried to save myself has made her worse - but whatever she's got, she's still responsible for herself and her behaviour.  And trying to keep it all a secret and get your child to sort you out is simply asking for trouble!!! (for one or the other of us!)  

Actually, I think my huge recent step forward has been simply because I've said 'I'm not responsible for you'!!!!   or should that be  

I don't want to get sucked back in again for so many reasons...I guess I'm just feeling sorry for myself that I don't have a normal mother.

I don't think you're feeling sorry for yourself.  Nor are you an idiot.    We forget just how bad it is after a time away.  We think it can't be as awful as we think it was.  

I began to realise that I'd 'forget' completely (somebody wiped my hard disc??!) what had happened as I recoveed from the last onslaught.  I had no idea I could wipe out my memories/feelings so completely.  But I'd come back up to be strong (FOR HER!), get wiped out, and come back up to be strong again.  My goodness she was a lucky woman.  But actually she'd much rather have wiped me out completely so she could act out her drama of the bereaved or self-sacrificing mother.  Yuk.

If you miss her you MAY just miss something that's not healthy (self-sacrificing, co-dependency, roller-coaster, etc) - or you may miss the familiarity or nurturing - which is a good thing to want if you can engineer it to get just that and not a whole load of grief.  

IF your mother can have short conversations, you could probably risk a ten minute call every now and then.  My mother can't do that - and anyway it takes her half an hour to go through the 'process' she has to go through in order to reach any kind of rational kindness (Stage 1 is Let's see if I can make anybody feel sorry for me; stage 2 is 'Kill!' and stage 3 is more accommodating.  I think she does it every time but I never used to be able to stick it out through the 'kill' stage to reach the kindness stage!!!!!  And when I say 'kind' I really just mean 'normal' or 'rational').  

But even the 'kindness' stage is a kind of manipulation - I feel that I'm on the end of a fishing line being pulled in slowly but inexorably to the shore.  When I stayed in for the full treatment and, with enormous effort, just pulled myself off the hook at the last minute, she 'fell apart'.  what a dreadful responsibility I felt.  No longer!!!  If I can get myself 'well' with her fighting me all the way, it should be a doddle for her to get herself well when there are so many people now rooting for her.  But she won't want to.

I think you have to watch very carefully the process that's going on behind the conversation so you can spot what it is that makes you feel uncomfortable.  Maybe even record the conversations so you can listen to them afterwards.  Write them down and work out how logical the sentences are!  When I 'hooked up' with my 'bad' shrink, I used to wish that the sessions were recorded so I could see if it was all as crazy as it felt.  But I couldn't trust myself and was therefore too trusting of others.  Trust?  Pah!  

Just keep your 'N'-antennae wiggling away and you'll be OK!  

R

[Anonymous]

wow!  you people are so insightful.  i especially love the poem.  thanks for responding.  and rose, i am so familiar with stage 1!!!  then the stage where she bashes everyone she knows, including my dead father.  ok ok ok...not feeling the need anymore to call her up.  thanks everyone!

btw...got a 99 on my test!!  woo hoo!!!    

avery

[Rojo]

Great job, Avery!  99 ROCKS!!!