Until I met friends who would tell me about the mountains their mothers moved for them and it still catches me off guard sometimes, I am having to train my brain into believing that when people tell me they have good relationships with their mothers or they miss them in ways that ache, I might not be able to relate to being missed by my mother but I can relate because I am a mother who ached for her kid when life got in the way for us.
I became a mother to unlearn and to learn & I dont know if I would be a better person if I wasnt a mother but I do know that being a mother saved my life many a times.
I talk to friends & they tell me about their relationships with their mothers & because Ive started being open about my experiences , I appreciate hearing about what functional love is because our parents are meant to be our first port of call in things like this, whether it being knowing or understanding love& since Ive learnt that how I understood love wasnt a healthy way of loving, ive set on the path to finding out what Love looks like to me without me wanting to run away from it or hoping that it leaves me one of these days because it was the one thing I was constantly told by my mother, so when im being hurtful to myself, i have to check where it comes from.
its difficult living in a world where one is an orphan with parents who have opted out of parenting & I spent a lot of my life trying to gain favour by committing myself to things I hoped would make me more acceptable, giving up a lot of my hopes and dreams along the way because there was always somebody with a more urgent need, or that is how it felt most of the time, so learning to put myself first feels new & i also feel like Im too old to be experiencing my firsts, ive been alive for so long & yet, life keeps showing me my first & so far so good. even with the absent parents.
It took my losing my ability to physically and immediately run away from things for me to accept that regardless of what i sacrificed, I was never going to be considered good enough & it was then that I decided to have the conversations with my mother that I knew would get her to really express her true self, it only took me until my 30s when my relationship ended with a note from my ex about how our relationship started on many unknowns to me until the last day & it took me 7yrs to admit that what was meant to be a 3 week fling ended up being an unnecessary 3yr relationship (I told my ex the same thing weeks ago) & I wouldnt have been in it, if I wasnt running away from a woman who was harming me.
We are taught to love and forgive our parents but the price for forgiveness is paid by the victims, an odd way of doing things and this is why i am not willing or wanting to make peace with my mother, the cost is too high and there are things that cant be forgiven, regardless of how thick blood is.
Im often reminded of the awful relationship I have with my mother whenever there is a tragedy, covid set off the motions to what our relationship currently isnt and I cant get over how when something bad and life altering happens, she is not the first person that comes to mind as a savior for me, when the world went on lockdown the first time, I thought of ways to get myself readmitted to rehab because even with an air borne virus floating around, i couldnt imagine my last days with the people who brought me into this world, my parents being the most dangerous people for me was never something i was willing to seriously consider before 2019, I have always left home with the aim of never returning and it took a pandemic to realise that I really was never going back and its okay.
It was her birthday recently, turning 60 something and any other time I would have woken up early to send her my regards with a gift, hoping she appreciates the effort and buying myself an extra week or so of grace before she remembers that she doesnt favour me unless I was giving something of myself and for the 1st time in my life, I chose to disregard the birthday and do something else to pass the time, it didnt sting like i thought it would but its easier to let things slide when there is no more skin in the game or the interest to buy favours. This might come across as mean spirited however self preservation does mean leaving those who harm you behind and this is what the pandemic taught me, that sometimes being an island by myself is the safest way away from family and I need to find a place that I wont feel like running away from, Im having to learn new behaviours & I cant do that with a mother who doesnt like or love me.
But I can do well regardless however its a choice i have to make for myself and I have to make it daily, especially for the days when I am feeling hopeless and directionless, I need to remember that it took me leaving for me to stop clenching my jaws in my sleep.
I have mommy issues,isnt that something
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