Mommy Dearest

I figured at some point I should post a semi-coherent rambling post based on my mother. She is largely the reason I am who I am, and that isn't always a compliment.

Way back when the eighties were fresh, my mom ran off with a guy, a guy who wasn't exactly a pillar of the community. Those times were littered with vast amounts of alcohol, drugs, lies and the occasional fist flying into her face. And then the glimmer of me came along, my mom turned up pregnant. She was young and not ready for what having me meant, but circumstances caused her to step up more ways then one. A friend had decided to move in with my mother and father while she was pregnant, simply to protect her (and me) from the mean drunk who contributed to half of my DNA. When I was about two or three months old, she realized fully that she couldn't raise me in that home, with him. With that fear that still seems to linger within her to this day, I don't know how literal she means it but she calls me her lifesaver because of it. I will probably be devoting a future post to "dear old dad" as I have unresolved issues there, but today is about mom.

With me perched on her hip, my mom made her way back home to my grandma in southern California. Tight lipped and obviously changed, we went on with our lives. For the first ten years of my life I was sheltered. Mom worked, grandma took care of me after school. I only had one friend, the daughter of my mom's best friend. There was no yard, and the highway was two houses down so going out to run and play didn't happen often and never unsupervised. I spent most of my time playing a lonely game of pretend and living vicariously through all the colorful characters on television. My world was small, but my mom did her best.

When I was about nine, my mom's longing to move back to the northwest (and away from grandma's rule) pushed to the surface and the planning began. We packed for months, not knowing when we were going to move, just that we were. Opportunity came in the form of my mom being fired from her job, right after getting home from vacation, and right before Christmas. Yeah, my mom's boss was a bitch.

And so the adventure began, driving over a thousand miles to this completely unknown world. I say unknown because of the way I had been raised to this point. We lived with a friend of my mom's for several weeks, there was too other kids there and I was completely baffled by the dynamic. There was a yard, we got to go out and play... with no one watching! You should have seen my wide eyes when our mom's gave us some money and told us we could walk to the store to buy candy. Walk to the store? Alone? CANDY?

My new world was hindered, by me, by the way my mom sheltered me. Somehow I was instilled with this fear, of everything. I never took risks (to be honest, I still don't.) All the neighborhood kids would go down to this ravine and play on a rope swing strung up across a creek, at least I think so. I was never able to conquer my fear and actually head down that ravine. I would sit alone at the top waiting for everyone to return with stories of flying on that swing and catching newts, snakes and crawdads. I was always jealous.

I always had trouble making friends. Up until this point, my friends were built in, children of my mom's friends. I didn't socialize much in school, I was quiet and kept to myself. After we moved away from grandma, it was just me and my mom, us against the world. Quaint but isolated. As junior high and high school came along, our routine became gray. After school I'd come home to an empty house, maybe make myself a snack, do my homework if I felt like it, watch television and zone out on the computer. Then mom would get home. After screaming at me to do my homework (whether I had any or not) and then making me cry over popping some popcorn as a snack, she'd make just herself dinner and head to her room, close the door behind her and watch her pre-recorded soap operas and smoke weed.

You may have noticed that I said she got mad at me for making popcorn and that she made only herself dinner. Let me explain, I have always been picky when it comes to food, part of it probably has to do with what they fed me when I was little but oh well. I am a big girl, I've always been chubby and looking at my family, I am supposed to be. So why at age eleven was my mom trying to feed me diet shakes? Who knows, but at about twelve my mom gave up and said I had to fend for myself when it came to food. And yes, I would get in trouble for making popcorn. If my mom smelled it when she came home, there would be hell to pay and there would be all sorts of threats about locking the pantry and fridge. All of which I might have been able to handle better, but my mom was a complete hypocrite. She'd say sure, I could get some ice cream at the store, but only the cheap store brand, and only vanilla, and I can only have some when given permission. Then she would grab for herself, the name brand chocolate peanut butter ice cream which I wasn't allowed to have. (She drove me nuts with this, she'd melt peanut butter over her ice cream, and again tell me I wasn't allowed to do the same... mm.. peanut butter.) She'd buy two boxes of the name brand chocolate chip cookies and stash them in her closet. When I would ask her for some for dessert, I would get one, sometimes two. Cookie hoarding bitch, sheesh.

Anyway (sorry, I got sidetracked) I seem to have a truck load of issues now, all because of the way my mom did things. I can't eat a cookie now without feeling guilty about it in some way. Which sucks because baking is one of the things I can do quite well, but I never end up tasting my creations. I am freaked out about heights because my mom used to make me do all the ladder worthy chores because she was freaked out by heights. I need constant validation for little things like vacuuming and doing the dishes, because according to her, I always did it wrong. I am afraid to get a cold because I always feel like I am trouble, because with her, being too sick for school was a punishable act. Because of her I seek compliments that don't include the word "but." I still never take risks, if I feel as if I could end up foolish in any way it's just not going to happen. I am terrified of bugs (not sure how my mom is to blame for this, but I am sure she is.) I think I may be a borderline hypochondriac, which I recently found out through talking to my mom, that she kinda has been too, she just always tried to not let me see it. Apparently that didn't work. I can't seem to form a long lasting good relationship with a woman, again, another of my mom's traits.

One thing I regret most from my teenage years is the fact that I never stood up to my mom. Not once did I yell back (still haven't actually.) She'd yell and scream while I cried, occasionally I even got in trouble for crying. Homework and chores were usually how it started, but it always ended up with her taking her bad day at work out on me. Oddly enough, I don't hate her, I even don't completely blame her. I believe that she tried her best in a situation that she wasn't ready for and didn't expect. Looking back, I know now that she was dealing with depression without the aid of medication and the stress of life and having no one to share the burden with weighed on her more then I could understand.

When I moved out of her house, I had the highest of hopes that our relationship would become something better. In a way it has, but in a few other ways, we just seem further apart. After I moved out, my mom got a boyfriend. Completely weird because the whole time I was growing up I don't think she went on a single date. She moved her boyfriend in, without mentioning it to me by the way, and things have changed a lot. For one, she is happy. Happier then I remember having seen her in years. She goes out to eat, she goes on little weekend vacations to the beach, and best of all, she doesn't sit in her room anymore. I don't know the guy very well (even though it has been a couple years now, we are both the shy types so conversation hasn't really been abundant) but he makes her happy and that's all that matters. All this is great, and I am happy for her, but I can't help but feel sad at the same time. He is getting a side of her that I didn't. The side that is fun and that laughs and actually enjoys life. It makes me miss her, but how can I miss a side of her that I don't know?

We talk about once a week now, only five miles apart but we probably haven't seen each other since Christmas. She'll tell me to call her, then while I am telling her what is going on in my life, it seems like she just wants to get off the phone. Honestly she doesn't offer much information up about her life, which makes it hard when I am talking to grandma and she asks what's up with my mom. When she says she is going to call me, I wait for it, because she rarely calls when she says. She once waited three weeks before calling me, because she figured I'd call her. Ugh. I have been talking to a girlfriend of her's a lot. The mother of my first and only friend in California. She see's the way my mom is, and perhaps understands it better then me considering she first met my mom when she was five. Because she knows, she has offered me some of what my mom hasn't. A nonjudgmental and sympathetic ear, free advice, confidentiality, even gas money if I needed it. I can't ask my mom for any of those things because they are always laced with guilt when they come from her.

What else can I say? I love her with all my heart and nothing will ever change that, but I am not ignorant to her mistakes. Hopefully that will make me a better parent in the future. No mother/daughter relationship is perfect, and I realize that and embrace the good things that I had that others perhaps didn't. I don't consider myself broken because of my experiences, perhaps a little more cynical, and a little more sensitive, but I take satisfaction in knowing that I am just as screwed up as the next person, just in my own special way.