I rarely sit still. I don't relax like most people think of relaxation. When my house is clean and organized, I feel less anxious. When the grass is cut and clear, I enjoy sitting outside more. I love pulling weeds. It gives me such satisfaction taking the junk out of the ground and manicuring flower beds, by yanking them out and getting dirty. I don't typically sit and just watch television. I'm either on my phone scrolling or working on something on my computer. I'm a veracious reader of non-fiction, historical fiction or stories that involve warrior women overcoming societal norms. Never just fluff reading. Reaction being part of my nature, its been a growth challenge for me to PAUSE. As a leader I've always believed that I needed to have all the answers, that I needed to have immediate solutions or that everything was urgent. This led me to burnout, making too many mistakes and going back on initial decisions. Being so reactive also caused me not think about ...
The little girl that I would do crafts with, play mermaids with in the pool, sit and watch Twilight with, is totally gone from me. I feel like I've lost one of my best friends. I feel constantly rejected by her and that I'm worthless in her eyes. However.....with my mother, they are like giggly girlfriends, which I can't help but be jealous of.
One part of me is very thankful that they have a great relationship, but another side of me, is very bitter, because my mother and I have had a tumultuous relationship in the past.
As a child, my mother had serious anger and mental health issues. She would frequently get enraged over the smallest inconvenience and take her anger out on me, physically. There were MANY instances that my mother would smack, hit, pinch me but there were others that would be categorized as downright abuse; like breaking spoons on my legs, hitting me with the metal side of the belt and thrusting the back of my head into walls.
One of those instances is when I had several friends over at my house, I think I was about 8 or 9 years old. We were building a fort in the back yard, taking folding tables, sticks, blankets from the house and putting them together to create a massive fort. I don't remember all the details, but eventually we didn't want to play anymore and we started piling things up. My mother brought out more blankets and I told her that we were done playing. She got so upset that she brought the blankets all the way up from the basement and she threw the blankets down, grabbed the back of my hair, pushed me across the patio. The patio had a little two foot pool, which then my head was forcibly pushed down into and my mother held my head under the water, while my friends looked on in horror. She pulled my head up, told me to clean up all the blankets and other things we used for the fort and screamed for my friends to leave immediately. She went back into the house and left me there alone. She attempted to drown me, she humiliated me in front of my friends and I never understood what I did to cause so much rage and anger.
Needless to say, those kids never came over again.
Another instance is when I was in 3rd grade. We were eating breakfast in the morning before school and as a child does, I spilled milk on the table and it dripped down to the floor. I believe my mother was washing the dishes and took the frying pan that she was washing and wacked me on top of my head with it. She screamed at me to clean up the milk, stressed that I was being wasteful for spilling the milk and that I needed to hurry up to get to school. I cleaned it up and walked somberly to school. I sat in my 3rd grade classroom, with a headache, I probably had a concussion. I didn't smile and I just wanted to crawl in a hole and be left alone. Then I see my mothers face in the hallway door window. She knocks on the door and peeks in. She asks the teacher if she can speak with me in the hallway. Everyone was looking at me, everyone was looking at my mother and I was mortified. I slowly walk into the hallway and she tries to hug me, she tries to apologize for hurting me, but by that point I was done. I wanting nothing to do with her, I was tired of constantly being treated like shit and never having what I thought should be a "normal" mom, a "normal" life.
I reached out for help, I told me teachers what was happening, I told the school social worker what was happening, but I didn't get any help. My mother was highly involved in the PTA, she was a lunch supervisor, she was a "popular" mom. They didn't believe me.
One person, I'm not sure who, called my house and asked my mom if I was having difficulty, because I was telling staff about the abuse. I remember her talking to the person that called, as I was peeking my head out the door of my bedroom and trying to hear what was said. I was so excited to finally be heard, to finally be helped, but it went in the other direction. My mom denied everything and had such a positive happy voice/tone and said that I must being saying these things to get attention and she will work with me at home. The next moments were in slow motion for me. I was not going to get the help, the abuse, pain and hurt was going to continue. My mother gently put the receiver of the phone back, turned around and saw me peeking from the doorway. Within what seemed to be two steps, she had grabbed me around the neck, lifted me up off my feet and pushed my entire body into the wall. She said through gritted teeth, that if I ever tell anyone what happens in our house again, she'll do even worse things, then what I'm saying happens, then punched me in the stomach. She left me curled up in a ball on the floor of my room, crying and knowing I had no one.
I was alone.
It was when I was in 6th grade when I started pushing back, figuratively and literally. That is when I rebelled and was out of control.
My mother and I didn't interact. I didn't understand how someone who is suppose to love me, could do this to me. How could the person that is suppose to protect you, purposefully and continuously hurt me.
It wasn't until college that I really started talking to my mother. I would call home and let me family know what was going on in my life, the fiends that I've met, my classes and the activities that I've been doing. She started to be really pleasant, she truly seemed interested in my life and seemed to miss me.
One of the parent visit days in college, she came to visit and went to a local rock garden and we actually had fun. She was being nice, she was listening, she cared about my life and I too listened to her, and cared about what was going on in her life.
Our relationship continued to grow from there. I always wanted my mother to pay attention to me, to care about me and to give me positive attention, instead of always flying off the handle for any little thing. She's never apologized to me, but I think she has tried to make amends by having the positive relationship with my children.
It took me an extremely long time to feel comfortable with my mom being around my children. I don't think I will ever fully trust her. Actually I have difficulty trusting anyone, which is a theme to talk about next time. But, there have been times where I see a change in her facial expression or in her tone and it brings me back to when I was a child and I know its time to leave.
My children are my priority and I've learned to set boundaries with my mom. I've learned to be open and honest about how I'm feeling and letting her know when she's gone too far and that I will not subject myself or my children to that type of behavior.
So when I see my daughter laughing, chatting and having a genuinely good time with my mother, I do feel totally left out. I never got that, I never had that opportunity to fully enjoy my mother as a child. Of course there were a few great memories, like dancing in the living room and spending hours at the library together, but a lot of those memories overshadow the many horrible and harmful memories that I had. When things were going well, there was always that looming feeling that at any moment, she could change, she could turn and then I would have to retreat to my room, or be careful not to upset her even more.
That is also why I'm struggling with how my daughter is currently treating me. She has everything she could ask for, not to an over spoiled point, but just enough that she isn't struggling with teenage life. There have only been a few times that I've smacked her and it was usually because she called me a bitch or saying hurtful things to me after a request. She's never had any object broken over her body, never been pushed down the stairs, never had to protect her younger brother by acting out so he wouldn't get hurt from my rage. Yes, there is yelling and arguments, but nothing to the extreme that I had to live through.
I hope she understands that I've chosen to protect her, to do better than how I was raised, to give her the love, care and opportunities that I had to fight for. I've never told her the details of how I was treated by my mother, that is not something that she needs to be burdened with and I do want her to not have a relationship with my mother, I just wish I had one first.
We can't change the past and we can't change people, we only have control over our own reactions to situations. Hopefully my daughter having a positive relationship with her grandmother will be fulfilling for her and enhance her life more than I had. That is ultimately what we want for our children to have it better than we had. But it still hurts and I just have to accept that hurt, not judge myself for feeling hurt and see the joy and positive change that has come out of my mom. She is a better grandmother then she was a mother and I need to be grateful for that and the closeness that we share now.
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