Ready for heavy? Let's dig in.
Growing up, life was a struggle. It wasn't all dark corners and horror stories, but it was rough.
My mom was/is extremely insecure, immature, violent and angry. Like everyone, she had reasons for her baggage. Valid ones. Unfortunately for me and my sisters, she never chose to deal with her demons.
When it came to parenting, she couldn't find it in herself to put her children first, instead viewing us as competition -- we took attention away from her needs, she wasn't willing to share my dad with anyone. Our youthful "neediness" (aka needing a caretaker) struck a raw nerve in her, the one that reacted with anger, physical and verbal abuse.
My sisters all had different ways of dealing - my oldest sister felt like a failure. The second became a mother to the rest of us, the third simply turned off feelings and stayed below the radar. My coping mechanism was probably the worst for my mom's fragile personality - I chose to challenge, question and push change. This angered my mom and led to abuse of one kind or another, which led to more of me fighting back and saying I didn't deserve to be abused. Which...well, you get it, wicked cycle.
I knew instrinsically the abuse was wrong. Nor was I buying that I was as bad as she said I was. But still? I wasn't able to stop myself from internalizing the way she saw me.
In her words:
Worthless. A bitch. Mean. Fat. Ugly. Combatitive. "Brutally honest". Unntrustworthy. Unlovable.
I couldn't fathom a family life where every day wasn't underpinned with stress, fighting, namecalling and hatred. I never knew until college that other people's mom's didn't call them a "fat ugly bitch". It was a joke that she once swung a 10 lb. block of cheese at the back of my head and I nearly blacked out.
I remember when she finally put down her boxing gloves and stopped throwing plates, books and wine glasses at me. It was when I was big enough to hit back. It happened twice that I socked my mother. I hate that I had to resort to violence to dissolve that part of our dysfunctional relationship.
Sadly, it didn't stop what I continue to think is the more painful scars - the verbal abuse. I had enough resolve to survive the physical piece, but the verbal abuse just gets in there. Sticks in crevices of your memory and can't easily be excised.
It's been my focus as a married adult to deal with my anger, to deal with feeling unloved and to slowly attach and develop bonds of trust with others. I've come a long way. The world's not at bay while I look through cynic-tinted glasses anymore.
Recently, tho, I've taken two steps back. I'm overwhelmed by the challenges and unrooted. I'm hearing her looped voice in the backdrop that says I'm useless, that I'll never do things right.
I know there's something I'm supposed to take away from understanding all these pieces about her, and about me. Intellectually I know I'm lovable, that I deserve love and that, in exchange, I am capable of giving love to others. But right now it's the most vulnerable place in the world to give my love to another.
I keep my mom in my backpocket when I struggle with these issues.
8 comments:
Your mom sounds like my dad. I'm not sure which is worse - the same sex parent being like that or the opposite - but either way, it sucks.
I struggle often, less now than before, with believing that I deserve love and that I am lovable. It was driven so hard into me that I was only worthy of love if I did wonderful amazing things.
And so the endless overachieving cycle swirls.
Challenging the change is a tough role - it shows a lot about you. Not only as how you have coped as a person, but how you'll be as a parent.
Kudos to you for believing in yourself and knowing the shit. Sometimes it's just the pointing out of the crap that makes the biggest difference (instead of just thinking that's how it's supposed to be).
Fizz,
I don't know what to say. I didn't have to deal with that as a child, but my mom did. She made a very, very concentrated effort not to repeat the cycle. I think that I don't realize how hard that was for her.
I think about myself and how hard some of the days are when the kids are needy and challenging. I think that all of us at some time or another WANT to yell at our kids. I remember once when Lu was very small and crying and I remember thinking "if she doesn't stop crying, I am going to spank her...." and I realized that spanking her would make ME feel better. Yikes. The difference is that most of us are able to not ever have it go through the thought phase.
I am so sorry that you have to bring this with you into your adult life. I really am. It must be really scary to think about being parent. I can't imagine having a parent undercut the basic truths about who I was as a person. Those words cut deeply and stay a long, long time.
You are clearly a person that has stamina and endurance and discipline. That is what you need to parent. You have that in spades. I admire you for all that you do. I have had you on my mind all week and couldn't shake it. I have been hoping you are ok.
I wish that no one had to carry that around.
Out of hiding to say...
I'm sorry. I know what it's like and it sucks. I think part of the reason I so desperately want to be a parent, especially to a kid "no one else wants", is to prevent all that crap. If I can take that pain away from someone else, maybe that will make me feel better? I don't know.
Overachievers tend to have something in common--someone who told them they weren't "enough" at some point. Well, you are "enough". You are more than enough. And people would love you even if you didn't run marathons and do Ironmans and work at a place where they keep you so damn busy you can't blog!
You will make a great mom when you're ready. But if the reason you're not ready is because you don't think you're good enough, then think again, my friend.
I don't know your real name, I've never met you in person and I don't really know much more than you've blogged about, but it's enough. You're enough.
XXOO,
Bad Girl Ex-Blogger Danielle
Hm. That's weird. Because I've always found you to be completely valued (I way value your priceless frindship), smart, wise, hilarious, incredibly unbelievably perfectly fit (seriously Hollywood divas would be jealous if they met you!), disciplined beyond comprehension, driven, stunningly gorgeous, caring, beautifully candid, a total vault and competely loveable. And I'm not crazy. But I do know what it's like to live with someone crazy. I know you completely didn't deserve it. And I also know how completely fantastic it is to prove the crazy wrong. Keep proving her wrong. I'm totally rooting you on. You rule. You didn't deserve it. You deserve the best. And you prove her wrong every freaking day. When you're a mom, you'll not only prove her wrong, you'll show her how it's done!
I'm so confused why that registered me as Laura above. Weird. Darn Google.
the hardest voices to get out of our heads are the negative ones. the first thing my mom still asks me--I'm 35--is if I'm still working at losing weight. It crushes me every time. I know how hard it is to get rid of that negaitivity and abuse.
you are strong and you are amazing. any mother would be proud to have you as their daughter.
If I could I would hug you right now. And slug your mom although I know that's totally not the right response.
You are amazing and strong and I'm shocked that this is in your past because you seem so amazingly tough. I guess some people become strong from support and some become stronger from being drug through the fire. I'm so sorry that you were the latter.
And feeling worthless occasionally. I know that feeling. Personally I rely on a little bit of therapy, a little bit of medication and a whole lot of feedback from positive people that I let in my life.
You rock. Don't let anyone ever tell you different. (And that includes yourself.)
Fiz,
Found you over at light-skinned-ed girl, thanks for the remark.
Look...I've been trying to figure out why other people have found it necessary to say really small, hurtful things to me, though we might be in the process of friendship building, or even loving each other, and have come to understand that our deepest memories are formed not in the moments when we felt warm and welcome, but in the moments culled out and shaped under the blunt-force blow of a painful act.
I have had to tell myself that the pain they are unconsciously acting out is from some scene that not only has nothing to do with me, it could not have anything to do with me. It is their own trauma, their own hurt, their own internal dialogue unwittingly (at times) seeping out; sometimes spewing.
I have actually repeated crazy, disjointed crap people have said to me, and had them cock their heads sideways and say, 'what?! why would I say something like that?'
I have my theories, believe me, but I always say, "Maybe you should consider what the motivations behind saying something like that could be for someone, anyone- some hypothetical other." And they always get it, always see how the words are daggers, when examined as the hypothetical barb from someone else.
That is not going to work with your mother of course. My mother has taken a hammer after me, and found me locking myself in a closet for hours. But then, she was off her medication. When she is well she is the proverbial lamb of God. But you know what?
I hate the holidays. Every single one of them. Even birthdays. I get deeply depressed, and have to sulk, and burn the food to get justifiably angry enough to slam my door and be alone. I have four children. Alone is not an option.
Now that I realize these things, though, I say it out loud, tell myself this is my truth, and in that way I do not try to fit this square peg into that family-holiday-gathering round hole. The family I have built went away for five days without me, with my blessings, and my gratitude. I spent Thanksgiving alone, doing a bit of the things I tell myself are also my truths, though not necessarily always manifest in my life: I studied a bit of HTML, a bit of a software application, learned to download video information, got some old information removed from websites, studied my finances, and walked everyday for miles and miles. I felt studious, in control, and fit. Hell,
I felt like the image most of us here get of you when we read your words, those projecting your on-purpose internal emotional consciousness: una mujer fuerte. A woman alive. A woman tender, willing to risk callouses, willing to run the race.
-ciao, kim
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