my mother the asshole
my mother has been a great ally as my marriage ship has been sinking….she, in general, is attentive, caring, considerate….you'll tell her you enjoy swimming and the next time she sees you she'll have an article pulled out of the paper about it, or an idea how you can get to the pool more often. you could call her at 4 in the morning and tell her to meet you at the airport with a toothbrush and $100,000 in cash and she'd do it, and even bring some meatballs to snack on. she's loyal. crazy loyal.
she's also controlling, and her response to any stressful situation is to pull the reigns in even tighter, and she's cold. as i kid she was an ice sculpture, technically doing the job but in a way that left freezer burns. i remember coming to her as a 6 year old because it was my turn to get picked on by the neighborhood kids, and simply wanting to climb into her lap and make it my warm, safe oasis. instead she gave me a lecture about how if i feel bad it's my fault, no one can make you feel bad except you, and she pushed me right out the door with instructions to confront my attackers using the $10 psychobabble words of the moment. ironically this is usually what i was being made fun of in the first place, one of those delicious cycles of childhood pain grownups don't get. there was nothing soft to her. and i had two younger brothers who apparently needed her more than i did, and by 6 my childhood was long over, my baby brother woke me up in the mornings to give him juice and breakfast. no wonder she though it was weird an adult wanted to sit on her lap.
as i got older i understood her reasons intellectually….i was a honeymoon baby, and she was young and overwhelmed and didn't know to ask for help, and was never really parented herself, so it was important to her that she empower me and teach me to stand on my own two feet. yeah, i get it. as a parent now, i get it. thank god i only have a son, i think i would be teaching my 3 year old daughter how to fire assault weapons. but it didn't change the feelings, and it left me with a chill in my bones i have never been able to successfully warm.
as the years passed i tried to work on my relationship with her, and we had some knock-down drag-out fights that were completely unsatisfying, she became interested in psychology and used every new tidbit of knowledge as a weapon. once taking a car trip we were fighting and i reached into the glove compartment for a lifesaver, and she couldn't WAIT to point out that i was doing that because i was nervous, because i was being triggered. like that was her goal, and by admitting i needed a mint made her the winner. like somehow my argument was weak because i was upset. i needed the lifesaver because i smoked my bodyweight in bong hits before we left and my mouth was filled with cotton, because i knew the only way to survive the trip in the first place was to be stoned to the gills. but even that didn't work.
eventually i became stronger at standing my ground and establishing my boundaries, although my first instinct was to run and cut off ties with her. (being italian, that was simply not an option. but i dreamed about it like i had a crush on it.) still, at age 33 the news that i was moving in with my boyfriend resulted in a 6 hour debate, with her questioning me like a murder suspect "…let's just go over this one more time." if she didn't like what i was doing she wouldn't come out and say it. she would try and convince me that i made a mistake, this is NOT what i want to do, i instead want to do what SHE wants me to do. ultimately, i told her if she didn't like it she didn't have to visit. she got over it. still, that was a long freakin night and i was 33 years old. i wasn't trying to extend my curfew for prom night.
she softened a little with age and we met somewhere in the middle, and now we have a pretty good thing. i'm glad, i would not have been able to support her after my dad died if our relationship wasn't in a solid place, and it was and i did. all in all i'm happy we've come so far and i appreciate that not everyone can have a mom like i do. i get that she loves me with a ferocity of a mother lion and would literally murder for me. BUT.
there was a point where i had thrown my ex out, and he was not allowed to come back into the house and we had a fight on the phone at like 11pm that got dicey enough i woke my sleeping son up. i hung up on the jackass and went upstairs to calm my son and put him back to sleep and when i came down my ex was standing in the living room. it scared the hell out of me, being alone in a house with a child sort of turns the paranoia up to 11 under any circumstances, and for a second i thought it was someone breaking in and the fear hit me in the face like a shovel.
he had come to assure me he would never ignore any of my boundaries. wasn't i silly to be tense?
i was stalked years ago, and let me tell you, the feeling that if you can't outrun someone and get your apartment door opened and closed fast enough they will force their way in and stay as long as as they want and do whatever they want regardless of what you do or say stays with you FOREVER. him showing up in the middle of the night triggered a panic in me that would not sleep, and i spent the next 12 hours hyperventilating and shaking. so i was distracted and didn't get the increasingly nervous texts from my mother…"how is everything? are you ok? if i don't hear from you in 10 minutes i'm coming over…..ok i'm coming over" so all of a sudden i look outside and she's pulling in my driveway, and i am a panting, sweaty, beady-eyed mess, i look like i've been doing crystal meth for 34 hours. usually i try and have myself a little more together in front of my mom, i can't be all the way myself in front of her. she says she doesn't judge. she judges. but that's an issue for another day. anyway she comes in the door and gets one of a very few uncensored, un-airbrushed, full-on hysterical me moments, and she asks what happened and i'm too burnt to soften it so i just blurt it all out in this high pitched standing-on-a-ledge voice, and as i'm talking she's talking over me "oh you need to make this legal…..oh you can't let him…..oh you have to tell him that…." like as i'm talking, she's reaching into my mouth to form the words i should have formed, and feel the things i should be feeling. 'no don't think that think this' 'don't give him the satisfaction of letting him get you upset you blah blah blah' all easy things for someone on the outside to say, WHILE i'm trying to talk, and barely keeping it together. finally, something cracked in me….my ex doesn't listen to one word i have ever said, and to be standing in front of someone else not listening, undermining, invalidating…..i felt my ribs cracking. i started yelling OVER her yelling over me…i started screaming, then shrieking I CAN'T HAVE ANOTHER PERSON WHO DOENS'T LISTEN TO ME IN MY LIFE IF YOU'RE NOT LISTENING GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!!!! i wish there was something larger than all caps to really express that. i have never said that word to my mother by the way. we don't speak like that, ever. i came at her, too, ready to physically escort her ass out the door. i completely became unhinged, making her the second person on the planet who can turn me into that. the first one is my ex. why are they both in my fucking living room? and why, when writing that, do i immediately hear my mother's voice in my head say "you're the only one who can do that, no one has the power to "make" you into anything." well i don't completely agree, but the first person that made me make the choice to turn into that is being cut out of my life, mom. whats your advice about what i should do about you?
so i've talked to her about this. she argues with me, likes to act like i don't know her and shouldn't speculate about her motives, but after a lifetime of intellectualizing over loving i've gotten pretty good. so eventually she acknowledges that this is something she does out of her own anxiety, which of course comes from the fact that she loves me like crazy and can't stand watching this happen. i get that. but she's really always more concerned about appearing one way or the other in front of my ex. i don't ever let him see me sweat or be sick, he thinks he is powerful when that happens so i don't let it happen, but she wants me to act un-angry, and i just can't do that. my ex lives in a fantasy world, so when he confronts me with it i give him a hard dose of hostility to put things back on the ground. if it hurts him thats fantastic but i really do it to protect myself. i can only stand watching him make smalltalk and say asinine things like "should we throw a birthday party together?" for so long before i implode, and that damages me more than anyone. so i'm the gatekeeper, and i use hits of anger to keep the fences strong until the rest of me is strong enough that i don't have to. thats my strategy. is it too much to ask for simple support without telling me all the things wrong with it?
not for anything, but when i complained about this same stuff to my mother years ago, she said 'so what….stop dwelling on the negative…..why do you care what he thinks about anything, do things for yourself" like everyone else. i am the one who lived it. i am the one who cracked the code. i am the one who went around handing out dick-d glasses so everyone could see who he is. me. don't you think it's safe to assume maybe you DONT know better? maybe you could trust for one second that i have thought about this and came to a decision over time and simply respect it and hand me a little cup of water as i run the 800th mile of this nightmare?
today its the same thing. my son's teacher wants to meet me, because his behavior is getting out of control. i sat in the car and cried after she told me, feeling that it's my fault, knowing my rage and impatience and mood swings are affecting him. and i don't want to hear my mother say to stop it, like i don't know that. and i don't want to hear again that he wins if i'm angry, that doesn't fucking help. and i don't want to hear that i should handle my stress better, thanks for the judgement when i already feel like crap. i am doing the best that i can, and it's not good enough. stop acting like i'm an asshole for thinking that and feeling that. i don't believe you can will yourself to not be hurt and i don't believe making me feel crappy about it is going to make the hurt go away on later reflection. i am so sick of being told how to be. so i sit in the car and cry. later i tell my mother i'm pulling back on my ex's visitation, i want to dilute his influence on my son as much as possible, and she starts in immediately….'don't let him see him then…don't do it that way" i have to yell again. get angry again. explain again that my ex is a 2 year old and if i pull everything out all at once he'll drag me to court to be a dick and not care what it does to our son. she's telling me 2 days in a row is too much exposure, like he's a total stranger wanting to hang out with my son and not his father. like backing an abuser into a corner has ever ended well for anyone.
and now i am left unresolved, undermined, unheard, again, left to pace around my house with visions of putting my hands around her neck and squeezing until she's dead. gee mom, how could i have ended up with someone cold, unfeeling, controlling and unconcerned with what i say? where could i possibly have learned that that was love?
she's also controlling, and her response to any stressful situation is to pull the reigns in even tighter, and she's cold. as i kid she was an ice sculpture, technically doing the job but in a way that left freezer burns. i remember coming to her as a 6 year old because it was my turn to get picked on by the neighborhood kids, and simply wanting to climb into her lap and make it my warm, safe oasis. instead she gave me a lecture about how if i feel bad it's my fault, no one can make you feel bad except you, and she pushed me right out the door with instructions to confront my attackers using the $10 psychobabble words of the moment. ironically this is usually what i was being made fun of in the first place, one of those delicious cycles of childhood pain grownups don't get. there was nothing soft to her. and i had two younger brothers who apparently needed her more than i did, and by 6 my childhood was long over, my baby brother woke me up in the mornings to give him juice and breakfast. no wonder she though it was weird an adult wanted to sit on her lap.
as i got older i understood her reasons intellectually….i was a honeymoon baby, and she was young and overwhelmed and didn't know to ask for help, and was never really parented herself, so it was important to her that she empower me and teach me to stand on my own two feet. yeah, i get it. as a parent now, i get it. thank god i only have a son, i think i would be teaching my 3 year old daughter how to fire assault weapons. but it didn't change the feelings, and it left me with a chill in my bones i have never been able to successfully warm.
as the years passed i tried to work on my relationship with her, and we had some knock-down drag-out fights that were completely unsatisfying, she became interested in psychology and used every new tidbit of knowledge as a weapon. once taking a car trip we were fighting and i reached into the glove compartment for a lifesaver, and she couldn't WAIT to point out that i was doing that because i was nervous, because i was being triggered. like that was her goal, and by admitting i needed a mint made her the winner. like somehow my argument was weak because i was upset. i needed the lifesaver because i smoked my bodyweight in bong hits before we left and my mouth was filled with cotton, because i knew the only way to survive the trip in the first place was to be stoned to the gills. but even that didn't work.
eventually i became stronger at standing my ground and establishing my boundaries, although my first instinct was to run and cut off ties with her. (being italian, that was simply not an option. but i dreamed about it like i had a crush on it.) still, at age 33 the news that i was moving in with my boyfriend resulted in a 6 hour debate, with her questioning me like a murder suspect "…let's just go over this one more time." if she didn't like what i was doing she wouldn't come out and say it. she would try and convince me that i made a mistake, this is NOT what i want to do, i instead want to do what SHE wants me to do. ultimately, i told her if she didn't like it she didn't have to visit. she got over it. still, that was a long freakin night and i was 33 years old. i wasn't trying to extend my curfew for prom night.
she softened a little with age and we met somewhere in the middle, and now we have a pretty good thing. i'm glad, i would not have been able to support her after my dad died if our relationship wasn't in a solid place, and it was and i did. all in all i'm happy we've come so far and i appreciate that not everyone can have a mom like i do. i get that she loves me with a ferocity of a mother lion and would literally murder for me. BUT.
there was a point where i had thrown my ex out, and he was not allowed to come back into the house and we had a fight on the phone at like 11pm that got dicey enough i woke my sleeping son up. i hung up on the jackass and went upstairs to calm my son and put him back to sleep and when i came down my ex was standing in the living room. it scared the hell out of me, being alone in a house with a child sort of turns the paranoia up to 11 under any circumstances, and for a second i thought it was someone breaking in and the fear hit me in the face like a shovel.
he had come to assure me he would never ignore any of my boundaries. wasn't i silly to be tense?
i was stalked years ago, and let me tell you, the feeling that if you can't outrun someone and get your apartment door opened and closed fast enough they will force their way in and stay as long as as they want and do whatever they want regardless of what you do or say stays with you FOREVER. him showing up in the middle of the night triggered a panic in me that would not sleep, and i spent the next 12 hours hyperventilating and shaking. so i was distracted and didn't get the increasingly nervous texts from my mother…"how is everything? are you ok? if i don't hear from you in 10 minutes i'm coming over…..ok i'm coming over" so all of a sudden i look outside and she's pulling in my driveway, and i am a panting, sweaty, beady-eyed mess, i look like i've been doing crystal meth for 34 hours. usually i try and have myself a little more together in front of my mom, i can't be all the way myself in front of her. she says she doesn't judge. she judges. but that's an issue for another day. anyway she comes in the door and gets one of a very few uncensored, un-airbrushed, full-on hysterical me moments, and she asks what happened and i'm too burnt to soften it so i just blurt it all out in this high pitched standing-on-a-ledge voice, and as i'm talking she's talking over me "oh you need to make this legal…..oh you can't let him…..oh you have to tell him that…." like as i'm talking, she's reaching into my mouth to form the words i should have formed, and feel the things i should be feeling. 'no don't think that think this' 'don't give him the satisfaction of letting him get you upset you blah blah blah' all easy things for someone on the outside to say, WHILE i'm trying to talk, and barely keeping it together. finally, something cracked in me….my ex doesn't listen to one word i have ever said, and to be standing in front of someone else not listening, undermining, invalidating…..i felt my ribs cracking. i started yelling OVER her yelling over me…i started screaming, then shrieking I CAN'T HAVE ANOTHER PERSON WHO DOENS'T LISTEN TO ME IN MY LIFE IF YOU'RE NOT LISTENING GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!!!! i wish there was something larger than all caps to really express that. i have never said that word to my mother by the way. we don't speak like that, ever. i came at her, too, ready to physically escort her ass out the door. i completely became unhinged, making her the second person on the planet who can turn me into that. the first one is my ex. why are they both in my fucking living room? and why, when writing that, do i immediately hear my mother's voice in my head say "you're the only one who can do that, no one has the power to "make" you into anything." well i don't completely agree, but the first person that made me make the choice to turn into that is being cut out of my life, mom. whats your advice about what i should do about you?
so i've talked to her about this. she argues with me, likes to act like i don't know her and shouldn't speculate about her motives, but after a lifetime of intellectualizing over loving i've gotten pretty good. so eventually she acknowledges that this is something she does out of her own anxiety, which of course comes from the fact that she loves me like crazy and can't stand watching this happen. i get that. but she's really always more concerned about appearing one way or the other in front of my ex. i don't ever let him see me sweat or be sick, he thinks he is powerful when that happens so i don't let it happen, but she wants me to act un-angry, and i just can't do that. my ex lives in a fantasy world, so when he confronts me with it i give him a hard dose of hostility to put things back on the ground. if it hurts him thats fantastic but i really do it to protect myself. i can only stand watching him make smalltalk and say asinine things like "should we throw a birthday party together?" for so long before i implode, and that damages me more than anyone. so i'm the gatekeeper, and i use hits of anger to keep the fences strong until the rest of me is strong enough that i don't have to. thats my strategy. is it too much to ask for simple support without telling me all the things wrong with it?
not for anything, but when i complained about this same stuff to my mother years ago, she said 'so what….stop dwelling on the negative…..why do you care what he thinks about anything, do things for yourself" like everyone else. i am the one who lived it. i am the one who cracked the code. i am the one who went around handing out dick-d glasses so everyone could see who he is. me. don't you think it's safe to assume maybe you DONT know better? maybe you could trust for one second that i have thought about this and came to a decision over time and simply respect it and hand me a little cup of water as i run the 800th mile of this nightmare?
today its the same thing. my son's teacher wants to meet me, because his behavior is getting out of control. i sat in the car and cried after she told me, feeling that it's my fault, knowing my rage and impatience and mood swings are affecting him. and i don't want to hear my mother say to stop it, like i don't know that. and i don't want to hear again that he wins if i'm angry, that doesn't fucking help. and i don't want to hear that i should handle my stress better, thanks for the judgement when i already feel like crap. i am doing the best that i can, and it's not good enough. stop acting like i'm an asshole for thinking that and feeling that. i don't believe you can will yourself to not be hurt and i don't believe making me feel crappy about it is going to make the hurt go away on later reflection. i am so sick of being told how to be. so i sit in the car and cry. later i tell my mother i'm pulling back on my ex's visitation, i want to dilute his influence on my son as much as possible, and she starts in immediately….'don't let him see him then…don't do it that way" i have to yell again. get angry again. explain again that my ex is a 2 year old and if i pull everything out all at once he'll drag me to court to be a dick and not care what it does to our son. she's telling me 2 days in a row is too much exposure, like he's a total stranger wanting to hang out with my son and not his father. like backing an abuser into a corner has ever ended well for anyone.
and now i am left unresolved, undermined, unheard, again, left to pace around my house with visions of putting my hands around her neck and squeezing until she's dead. gee mom, how could i have ended up with someone cold, unfeeling, controlling and unconcerned with what i say? where could i possibly have learned that that was love?
Replies
Oh man, I hear you. Your mother sounds a lot like my father. My mother was another story, but she\'s as absent to this tale as your father is to yours. Yes, he constantly likes to tell me what I feel - because logically I \"should\" feel what he says. And he\'s right, or at least he would be right if his basic premise that true emotions are a crutch for those who aren\'t smart enough to use reason were correct. If THAT were be right, then things like \"but you couldn\'t have loved him, obviously\" and \"well of course you\'re not afraid any more\" and so on would actually make sense and wouldn\'t be invalidating bastardry.
And yes, how to handle him. My father is the expert in that too. I won\'t hijack further, suffice to say I\'m sorry for what your mother did as regards him, and I get it.
As for your son, I had a few of those times too, but trust me when I say that giving your son a cuddle will make all the difference. Explain to him when you lose your temper that it\'s not his fault, that it\'s not about him. Tell him always that you love him - I have done that through gritted teeth and almost uncontrollable rage at times, because he needs to know that no matter what he does, no matter how angry I get, he will always be loved. And that has helped. A lot. Also, when you talk to the teachers, make sure you get a good handle on what is triggering the behaviours (make sure it\'s not the school).
And one more piece of advice? Try to draw back from telling your mother everything. I get the need, the desire. But it\'s not helping you. And that sucks. I have stopped telling my father much of anything either. I\'m currently getting some family counselling because of some stuff my boy went through at school, plus my own inability to always deal calmly with his acting out. And I\'m not going to tell my father, because if he does, he\'ll just tell me the problem is a lack of discipline, I\'m too soft on the boy. He will tell me how to parent, when he never parented himself. And I will start trying to justify, to explain, and i will lose. Because we always lose these kinds of discussions, right? We\'ve lost the moment they tell us what we \"should\" do, as if we\'ve begged them to tell us what to do, as if we can\'t think of options ourselves, as if we haven\'t been through hell and come out the other side so how DARE anyone tell us NOW how to survive ffs. Well ok, that last one might be just me (my parents disowned me for a long time, so I went through the hell alone for the most part).
Lean on people you CAN lean on. People who will understand that being uncertain is not the same thing as not having a clue. Who know that needing to vent is not the same thing as needing to be told what to do. Who realise that running through options to hear how they sound is not the same thing as being incapable of making a decision.
In short, lean on people who respect your strength and who are more concerned with your genuine wellbeing than with being perceived to be a good mother, friend, whatever.
And just keep loving your son the best way you know how. Go easy on yourself when you fail, understand that you have a LOT on your plate and sometimes it\'s going to come out in unhealthy ways. And as my new family counsellor said to me yesterday - start focusing on the things you get RIGHT rather than just on the negatives. What is the best thing about your mothering? He asked me and suggested \"patience\" - I laughed and said no, that\'s probably the worst. But when I thought about it, I realised that I genuinely have compassion for my son, I feel for him when he\'s hurting (even more so if it\'s because I\'ve lost it at him because of my own stresses and issues being triggered by something relatively minor that he\'s done \"wrong\"). I can start from that, I can build on that. I can love that I have compassion for my son, that I\'m willing to support him through things rather than telling him to just get over it. And I can go further and love that I really think I am building resilience in him and an understanding that he has choices in life.
Parenting is hard, really hard. It\'s the one thing we really REALLY want to get right, all the time, because it\'s SO DAMN IMPORTANT! But we can\'t. Nobody can. Good definition of the perfect mother? She does the best she can, knows she\'s imperfect, takes responsibility for her imperfections and tries to be better.
Love your son, do what you need to do with your ex - yes, ideally you should get visitation removed, or supervised only. But you know him and how to achieve the best result you can. You know how to do this. I had to work that process by myself, with just my lawyer and a few supportive friends. And I had to walk the lawyer through it because she really didn\'t realise just how nuts he is (she learned, and ended up really working well with me to achieve our outcome). Trust in yourself. I know that\'s hard, but you have to - you know your ex, you know your son and you know what\'s most important. Trust yourself and do what needs to be done.
And if you ever need an ear, just pm me. Seriously. And I promise not to shout over your typing. ;-)