(Pre-Post Warning: For those of you who have family histories of abuse, this may trigger. It is going to be a rather heavy post.)
I’m back today with a somewhat introspective blog post, something that has been bothering me for some time. It’s going to be somewhat difficult to get out, not because it bothers me that much, but simply because it’s one of those subjects that I find it a little difficult to adequately put into words. We all have those. This is mine.
As I mentioned in an earlier entry, my parents had decided that they would come to my wedding and behave after all. My father and his mother seemed to honestly have a good time- my mother’s behavior was another animal, but then again, in the back of my mind, that is what I was half-dreading, half-expecting.
She decided that it would be a good time to make nice with her side of the family. We were all waiting on baited breath; my grandmother seemed to be dreading the call, as much as she had said she would love to get the family back together. My mother hemmed. My mother hawed. She delayed, and made every excuse in the book for not calling, and then she finally decided to take the plunge- and called at 10:30am, April 21. Six and a half hours before the wedding was to happen.
My grandmother was taken aback by all of it. She had assumed that my mother would not, in fact, be coming. They had a conversation and as I would have expected her to do, my grandmother told my mother that it was all water under the bridge. That the family could come and have a good time together; my mother told my grandmother that my father was unhappy about coming, but she told her, just like they had always told me- the people who want to be a family can be a family. Those who choose not to be a part of it are the ones who are missing out.
So, things were arranged thusly. The day came and went, everyone behaved at the very least calmly, if a little strangely. My aunt and I noticed how strangely my mother was acting, but assumed that it was perhaps related to the large amount of sedatives that she claimed to be taking, and left it at that. My grandmother, I think, was so happy to have the family back that she didn’t even notice.
She called my mother the day after the wedding and talked to her for a little while. Told her that the past was behind us, and that in order to make things better, we all needed to move forward. My mother took this as an opportunity to assume that nobody would ever bring up what’s happened in the past- that there was to be no discussion, and certainly, no apology. My grandmother, knowledgeable of the bad financial situation that my parents have managed to get themselves into, offered my mother a chance to come back up to their house and work, even to earn a little bit. My mother said she’d have to ask her doctor on May 3rd, and then never called my grandmother back.
My grandmother hasn’t heard from my mother since April 22nd. After my mother made such an ordeal over how happy she was to see everyone back together, I wish I could say that I was surprised by her behavior. Thomas and I went down to their house to visit one day when we had come from dinner. My mother had “a friend” there- maybe mid-twenties, a little older than me. Didn’t speak. Stared daggers through Thomas and I while we were there. My father wasn’t home. You do the math.
I didn’t feel like I could allow my grandmother to sit there and sink under the weight of not knowing what had happened again. I told my aunt what had happened, and it was like they had to go through the trauma of finding out what my mother is doing all over again. After the charade of her coming and acting ‘respectable’ at the wedding, the jig is up. I know they wanted her to be different, but as cynical people often say, ‘a leopard can’t change its spots.’ And it is very hard to deal with my mother without being A Cynical Person, even though in every other case, I would be An Optimistic Person.
In the past year, my mother has: showed up for my college graduation, made up an elaborate story as to why she couldn’t come see me in person after I graduated, told my father an elaborate story about how Thomas and I said we were going to come by after my graduation dinner and then didn’t, told me all the details about a graduation gift she was going to buy me that never materialized, insisted that Thomas and I come over to my grandmother’s house for Christmas and allowed us to go out and buy gifts for them and then showed up with positively nothing for us, made up another elaborate story about how she was going to get Thomas and I both something later, no-showed a family gathering on my birthday with no excuse and nary a phone call, refused to call me in the months leading up to my wedding even though she had my phone number, allowed my aunt, grandmother and Tommy’s parents to foot the bill for a wedding and reception and then had the nerve to show up with a new dress (and of course, no wedding gift), and refused to have anything to do with me after the wedding except shuffling Thomas and I out of the house as fast as she possibly could. It seems that I focus a lot on the gifts- I’ve often wondered if it’s my own selfishness at work, feeling so hurt by that. But then, sometimes I think that incidents like that become sort of symbolic for me of broken promises and refusals to take any opportunity whatsoever to show care for her own child. She only has one- she’ll never get to help any other daughter plan a wedding, but she’s let the opportunity go by her without a solitary peep from her end.
This is not meant to be a running list of injuries that I can hold up on some self-righteous scroll to show how I’ve been hurt. But it is exemplary to me today as a continued pattern- my mother does what she does, without any regret, without any thoughts towards the consistency of her words and her deeds, and more importantly, without any thought as to the consequences of her actions.
The wedge that has been driven between my mother and I is deep. I do not know what sort of slights she is punishing me for, or even if I’m innocent of any wrongdoing- I’m sure that I’m not. I’m sure that I’ve done things that have hurt her in the past, but surely, much of this is done without reason. I didn’t call her on Mother’s Day for that reason. I went to get my aunt and grandmothers gifts for the occasion, because they have all been far more maternal and nurturing than my mother could ever be. I called my grandmother to ask her about getting Kelley something that I thought she would like, and she insisted that Thomas and I didn’t need to spend the money. I, inexplicably, found myself in tears at the prospect of not being able to show them how much their support has meant to me over the years.
My mother has made much over the fact that she has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and is currently in treatment for it. Supposedly, she sees a doctor- a doctor who has prescribed her with a good deal of medicines, some of them powerful sedatives, others anti-convulsants that are supposed to be mood stabilizers. She claims that she has been in therapy, but it’s my suspicion that she’s only seeing a psychiatrist, and not actually doing any sessions, because she claims to only be visiting once every six weeks- the perfect timing for medicinal adjustments, but too soon after being diagnosed with bipolar to start reducing hardcore therapy sessions.
There are two things that A Cynical Person immediately observes: one, psychiatry provides an opportunity for my mother to get her medicine fix. She’s always been the type of person who enjoys popping pills, and at one point was offering to get me hydrocodone tablets whenever I wanted them. My aunt told me that at one point after my mother had her appendectomy, she was badgering her internal medicine doctor about diet pills. That, combined with the fact that she told me that her psychiatrist prescribed her sedatives for being around the family leads me to a somewhat disturbing conclusion. What’s painted is, essentially, the picture of a chronic medication abuser. Someone who tells a physician whatever they have to in order to get drugs to pump into their systems. Or abuse. Or sell. In my mother’s case, it could be all three- I’ve never really looked at the details deeply enough to decide which or how many I think it is. Two, this provides a convenient excuse. My mother was absolutely overjoyed when my grandmother said she didn’t want to dwell on the past- so overjoyed that she called my aunt and claimed that my grandmother said nobody should even *talk* to her about what has happened. Yet again, it is a convenient way to avoid responsibility, and continue doing what she wants to do.
My mother is a very sick woman. Looking at her state right now, there is no denying that she has a disorder, and that disorder is affecting very aversely her relationships, her coping skills, and her quality of life.
But I have to wonder, at what point do you stop blaming the disorder, and start asking the person to accept responsibility? I have struggled since I left the house with whether or not I was emotionally abused. I know, deep down, that the answer is yes, but there are times when I can’t really admit to the fact. I don’t know if it’s because some of that abuser’s mindset is still retained- I feel like sometimes I’m making a big deal over nothing, or that I’m ungrateful for what my parents have done for me. No matter how ridiculous that may seem, it is the mindset that is instilled in you after living for years in a household with someone who always sees herself as the martyr, and always finds a way to never be wrong about anything. It is hard, very hard, to come out of that mindset with any kind of self-confidence. For years and years, I’ve lived under the assumption that something was ‘wrong’ with me. I never knew quite what it was- I was ungrateful, selfish, and uncaring, and that later turned into ugly and undesirable. By the time I was 21, I pretty much saw nothing of worth in myself. Every day hurt. It was a vicious cycle to wake up and see nothing of worth in the mirror, and go to bed feeling exactly the same way.
Since I’ve left home, I’ve realized just how much of that was the atmosphere, and not myself. I am not an inherently bad person. I have a big heart. I give people lots of chances, even when they may not deserve them, because I am An Optimistic Person, and most of the time, I believe that people can and do change. I’m not that bad looking- there are times when I can look in the mirror and think I’m a pretty sexy woman, even if I’d like to shed a stray five or ten pounds.
My mother has continued in her path. If anything, she is less covert- much more open about her sleights and slaps in the face, like missing my birthday, and refusing to come see me after my graduation. Like lying about anything and everything, like using my so-called ‘abuse’ of her to make herself look better. I can’t count how many times she has made up stories about how I treated her- she has told people, variously, that I slapped her, pulled her hair, tried to push her down the stairs, or went after her with a meat cleaver. She’s told these stories to cover up her treatment of me- to make it seem justified that she has alienated and shunned me for years, and helped to bury my self esteem so far beneath the earth that it has taken years of digging with a spoon to finally emerge and see the light again.
I’m doing much better for myself. But there are days- like today- when I just hurt. When I feel like I need to cry, and write blog entries with my eyes swimming with tears. I don’t have to ask why I feel this way, because I think it’s obvious enough that it is both justifiable and expectable for me to be feeling this way- I have to believe that, or I go back down the slope to feeling like an abuser was justified for treating me the way that she did, and there is no justification for scarring someone so deeply.
I don’t know if I will ever be the person that I could have been without any of these scars, but they are battle scars, and I wear them proudly, because they were not mortal wounds. At the core, I am, and always have been, a fighter. Were I not, I would have jumped headfirst into the life many of my friends did- boozing, smoking pot, doing whatever drugs were hanging around- because it would have been an escape from the reality that I was living. Were I not, I would never have graduated from college, or had the courage to pursue what I really love instead of doing something that would make me more money than I will likely make in my lifetime. I have not ever fought alone- despite my mother’s treatment of me, there were always people who cared about and believed in me. I wouldn’t take any credit away from them. But there were parts of the battle that I had to bear on my own shoulders, and I won’t take any credit away from myself either- it’s a part of my self-confidence to know that no matter my struggles, I have always been an upward-looker and a fighter. That there was not a time when I put down the sword, no matter how much I may have wanted to.
The most hurtful thing, the thing that rips all of the old scars open for a few hours, or a few days, is when people go back and attempt to re-write the past. When someone looks at my mother now and says ’she was only acting that way because of the disorder.’ We all have a choice. No disorder is so controlling that there is no personality behind it. There was a point in time where *I* might have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had any of us known at that point that my mother suffered from it. But I have always believed that I have a personal choice- in how I life my life, in how I treat people, in how I look at the world, in everything. I write my own story, and so does everyone else. Whether or not they want to take responsibility for doing it is their own choice.
Life moves on, with or without us. I’ve chosen to get up and get on the road, sword and pack on my back, and make a journey of it. It took a lot of courage for me to get to that point, and I feel like underplaying the abuse that I underwent in my childhood and teen and early twenties years completely denies that courage. I know that I went through hell- to have other people attempt to de-intensify my experience of that hell is maddening. It is taking the side of an abuser.
It isn’t just me that my mother has visited her abuse upon. God knows, my father has endured his fair share of it, but he’s buckled under the pressure, and turns his head the other way. He refuses to beileve she’s done anything wrong- he’s still in the situation, and still feels like he can’t get out of it. My poor grandparents, who feel like they did everything they could to raise a good child, and got my mother out of it- they can’t explain it. They, nor my aunt and uncle, can explain why, at a time when a family is supposed to be growing into friends, theirs is torn apart. My aunt and uncle have to take on the care of aging parents, and despite the fact that they don’t mind doing it, it is a burden that they should not have to bear alone, because others have a responsibility to bear it with them. And there is the hurt- the hurt of knowing that someone spit in your face, and you don’t know why. You don’t know what you did to them, but they hate you, because the story they have made up in their own mind is so potent that even they believe it. That they are running so hard and so far from their own problems and responsibilities that they make up an elaborate world to support their never being guilty of anything, ever.
They say that we are supposed to forgive, and forget. I always tried to do that, until I realized that there were problems.
You can’t forget. None of us can erase our memories, nor should we try to, because that’s how we learn. If we were to forget all of the experiences we’ve ever had, we might enter into another one without thinking, and end up getting burned again. It is silly and naive to act like anybody can forget being hurt.
That leaves us with forgive- which is the important part, in my belief. Even if you cannot forget, you should always forgive. We have an obligation to grow by learning to allow people the benefit of the doubt- by learning to trust people enough to forgive them for mistakes, or even for malicious actions, if they are truly sorry.
Usually, I don’t have a problem. Maybe I’m like my grandmother or my aunt, in that I forgive lots of people, over and over and over again, even if I keep getting hurt. I don’t like holding grudges.
But this time, there’s a problem. This time, I’m hung up on the process. This time, every time I try to forgive, it’s like it hangs up in my throat. I can’t tell my mother that I love her without my stomach twinging in disgust, or knowing that I’m only saying it because she said it, and that she doesn’t mean it either. I go around her, and I feel my mental defenses go up instantly- she doesn’t get the real me, she gets the wall.
And I don’t know how to take it down. I don’t know that I should take it down, because there is still too much danger of getting impaled by one of her fast-moving attacks. It’s too dangerous for me to say ‘I forgive you.’
And it’s too much of a lie. Because I don’t. And I know I don’t. It disgusts me to think about forgiving her, because it feels like letting her have a pass on years and years of pain. That’s what she wants- to be able to pretend it never happened, and I can’t give her that. And that attacks my own belief that it is not up to us to mete out karma, because that makes us behave as though we are above its laws ourselves, when we are not.
I don’t know how to get past this step. People act like forgiveness is the big bump in the road, and if you can do that, then it’s all forgotten. But people who say it’s all forgotten are lying. I can’t forget what I went through because it’s a part of me now. And for some reason, forgiveness has become equated in my mind with never forcing my mother to look at the deep wounds she has dealt me over the years, with never forcing her to address the potentially fatal blows she struck to my psyche when I most needed a friend and nurturer to teach me how to grow.
I don’t know if I can ever say ‘I love you’ to my mother again and mean it like I did when I was a child, before I knew. That time before knowing was happier, but it was naively happy, and I would far prefer reality to that halcyon lie.
I don’t know if I can forgive her either. And I may carry that weight with me forever- because if I can’t say it and mean it honestly, then I may as well not say it at all. That weight is very heavy on my shoulders some days, casting shadows of that old darkness across the light of the path that I seek.
Slainte,
/|\
