My Mother (written April 23rd)
Let me tell you about my mother. She’s 80 years old, I’m 45 and I feel our time is running out. If we could become friends for even one year, would it make up for 4o years of the stress of abuse, indifference and strained tolerance. I think it would. I keep reminding myself that she can’t help it. But deep down inside I don’t believe that, I believe that she doesn’t want to help it. She doesn’t want to change, she doesn’t want help. She likes making other people miserable. For over a year I have had to do without or beg for the basic necessities of life. Not that I believe she is obligated to keeping me up, but in our particular circumstance I do believe I deserve so much better than this. I have put up with so much. Happiness has been sucked out of my life, my strength has been drained, my confidence crushed, my nerves wracked, my peace of mind reduced to rubble and my courage defeated. I have no honor or sense of self.
Will I ever get beyond that first memory of my mother beating me when I was six years old for getting her pink bedroom slippers dirty? Will I get past being that 6 year old little girl? Or the 7 year old she kidnapped and told that my daddy didn’t want me. Or the 8 year old little girl in my red, white and blue sailor bikini she called fat. When I was 9 my favorite toys, a cradle my grandaddy had made me and an art easel, disappeared and she told me my brother burned them. When I was 11 for reasons unknown to me to this day I was mean and abusive to my disabled cousin. When I was 12 years old she called me stupid. The 13 year old she blamed for her marital problems and made me strip in the kitchen in front of my grandmother because I was wearing my sister‘s shirt. When I was 14 I stayed up all night Christmas eve and cleaned the kitchen and family room. I washed every dish in the house. Swept, mopped, washed the windows, dusted. Sprayed the curtains with Lysol. I even baked Christmas goodies and decorated the kitchen table for the big day. I knew my daddy would be proud. What I didn’t know was that my mother would beat the hell out of me. Not exactly the gold star I was expecting for being the cleaning fairy. When I was 15 I still tried to love her and told her so. She pushed me away and told me I didn’t love anyone but myself. Same year she took me to the doc to make him tell her if I was still a virgin. When I was 16 she told my grandmother that if my boyfriend was anything himself he wouldn’t be having anything to do with me. But all of this, none of this would top or come close to when I was 17 and was raped and she called me a liar. Will I ever be able to jettison this baggage?
The following year I only remember my nephew. I babysat him 8+ hours a day every day, I baked cakes and taught children’s art classes for spending money. From 13-19 I worked at the Patch Work Shop, an art store owned by a friend June Tebault. She was a life saver. She was an artist and she encouraged me. She was the mother I wanted to have, sister and best friend too. My first mentor. She took care of me. I could talk to her, she was molested by her father and her mother denied it. She died in 1989 when I was 25 years old in school at Guilford College.
At 19 I started school at GTCC. I should have studied commercial art or architecture, but no I went into Law Enforcement. I wanted to work with juvenile delinquents because I had been labeled one myself. I don’t regret the direction I took because I met my best friend Mariann from 1983 until she died in 2001. I also met who I thought was the love of my life. Ironically he and Mariann shared the same birthday May 27th, she couldn’t stand him. He was actually my first real adult date for New Year’s Eve 1983. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t allowed to have a normal teenage life of dating and friends and flirting. That is still one of the areas I feel retarded in. Although I had already had sex I would have satisfied with just kissing him forever. Less than a month after our first date, less than 6 mo after meeting him we had sex. I thought it was magical and I knew that night, also the same night I met his parents for the first time, awkward to say the least that this was a story to tell our grandkids one day. He asked me if I was a virgin. I clung to him like he was a life raft. I became jealous and obsessive. I don’t blame him now, knowing how I acted, but at the time I didn’t know any better. I thought I was damaged goods, I didn’t think I deserved to be treated any better. I’m 45 now and have never had a healthy normal relationship with a man.
I still want a husband, I want children. I want a family of my own. I want to be happy, healthy and a productive worthwhile human being.
I have learned one thing I didn’t know at 14, not to expect anything from my mother.
Posted in: on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at at 4:56 PM
