To Mother – With Indifference
I read an article once about how evolution depends on a mother falling in love with her child, and the child falling in love with their mother. Without this bond, the instinct to protect her offspring from harm would not exist, and the chances of the child’s survival went down exponentially. This first attachment is apparently imperative to the perpetuation of our species. Reading on, I felt this knotting up in the pit of my guts with the unyielding question “What about the child that does survive? The child that goes on existing against the odds - without the nurturing and protection and attachment and maternal care? What about her?” It didn’t take me long to realize I was asking about me.
My mother is a force of nature. A power house. She is painfully beautiful the way most poisonous things are. Those moments where I had her complete undivided attention were so rare. She was always somewhere else, physically or mentally, just out of reach. Holding her attention for even a single moment felt the way Moses must have felt when God spoke to him. It felt the way a shot of heroin feels when you push the mix of brown and blood into your vein and suddenly there is nothing but warmth and the sense that everything is going to be okay. Oh, the absurd and ridiculous things I would do to stay in her favor – the parts of myself I destroyed to stand in her light. Love is still a drug if called by any other name. Except, this wasn’t love. Not really. I worshipped my mother, and I think that was the point. That was always the plan. She was the sun - I was the moon. Always meant to complement her, like her token set of peacock feather earrings, but never outshine her. See, because love is also a weapon, especially when it’s snatched from underneath you like the very ground you stand on. It’s a strange feeling knowing at some level that you are in competition with the woman who is meant to love you more than she loves herself. The person you depend on for your very survival. Be smart, but not too smart. Be pretty, but not prettier than me. In those moments of cold disapproval the silence felt like it stretched on for days. Sometimes it did. It was like walking a tight rope, constantly trying to find that balance between gaining her approval without stealing her spotlight.
I have a daughter now and my greatest fear is passing this curse on to her. I feel like to some degree I have caught my mother’s disease like fleas – narcissism by proxy. Emotional attachment is as ungraspable and distant to me as reality is to her. So, I had to sit with the big questions. “What do I want this to look like? How can I stop this pendulum that just keeps vacillating between enmeshment-withdrawal, enmeshment-withdrawal, enmeshment-withdrawal?” Now that I’m a grown woman myself, I started noticing things that never felt right but I couldn’t pinpoint where they came from. The way I questioned every single thought and feeling to determine whether it was appropriate, or rational, or going to make anyone uncomfortable. The way I knew I had this voice and these words desperate to come out, but they always got stuck in the back of my throat. The way I am incapable of emotional intimacy with another human being and not even understanding what that might feel like.
It’s bizarre how confused I once was, but how easily I can trace each of these things back to her today. I had no defense. Compliance was my only option, or I risked being the bird left in its nest to be devoured by some predator. And in some ways, I was anyway. There were these pivotal moments, milestones almost, where I needed so badly for my mother to be a mother, and she simply didn’t have it in her. At best I was an extension of her, like a limb she would become infuriated with when it wasn’t in her control, or a Barbie to be proudly displayed and spoken about always in regards to her superb parenting. At worst I was an inconvenience, a nuisance, the little pebble in her Tahari heels. I was ignored, shamed, and rejected simply for not being whatever she needed me to be in that moment. I was always second to whatever man she was trying to lure into her trap. She would endlessly wail about how my substance abuse was just “Almost more than a mother could bear” and would tell all of her friends how she used tough love and courage to get through that difficult time. I can count on my hands the amount of times I spoke to her during that 3 year period of my life. I always called her. Once or twice she called me and lashed me in that familiar tone about how all of this was affecting her. She lives 900 miles away. If my mother were a character it would be called “The Strong Martyr”. She is the lump in my throat. She is the doubt in my mind. She will not leave.
I’ve done a lot of work on my Mother. I’ve been in therapy, gone to Family Constellations, Woman Within, scrawled her name too many times to count on 4th step inventories – always with the intention of understanding her. Why is she like this? What can I do to help her? What is my part in this? How can I better empathize with her? Her, her, her, her, her. Even in MY healing, it’s always been about her. How she feels. Some people call this “Trauma Bonds” but I prefer “Stockholm’s Syndrome”. The saddest part is that my feelings have been discounted and invalidated for so long that I accepted this. When everyone oozed on about how the solution is connection I bought in like a child racing to the dry well for water all over again. No more. I do not choose connection.
I’ve often considered a grand confrontation. I’ve played out these come to Jesus moments where I put it all on the line, finally telling her exactly how I’ve felt all these years and how I am still affected today by the horrors she treats with unsettling nonchalance. The problem is - I’ve been trained not to. The reality, as it is and not how I would like it to be, is that my vulnerability would be smothered and invalidated by complete denial and minimization. I’m so dramatic. I’m so emotional. That wasn’t her intention. She’s always put me first. If I pressed the issue, the way I’m sure my blinding rage would insist upon, it would finally end in the weeping victim whimpering about doing the best that she could and how hard her life was, leaving me feeling like the bad guy. There is no win for me in challenging a person who sees no issue with their behavior. To tell a narcissist that they are in fact a narcissist is both self-defeating and futile. It is in her very nature to be oblivious to her faults.
My goal isn’t to hate my mother- not at all. I do not want to feel that fury and rage welling up in my belly as I’m shaving my hair and eyebrows off at 14 years old in defiance of her diets – in rebellion against her gross syrupy superficiality. I do not want to wallow in the pain I felt when she moved across the country one month before I had my first and only child, and was absolutely baffled and appalled when I wouldn’t Skype with her on demand. The woman who asks me “Where did your ass go?” with that toxic glare, after I got sober and looked beautiful for the first time in a long time. Always holding my breath. Always waiting for her reaction. My goal isn’t to yearn for my mother either. The sad desperate longing of a beggar holding out his cup. I will no longer be the starving child who knows god damn well there isn’t a scrap to be found in the refrigerator, but can’t help opening the door every 5 minutes with that tiny inkling of hope. Just in case. Just in case.
I will grieve for the mother I will never have. I will grieve for the childhood I did not get to experience. I will cry in frustration. . Self-nurture. I will embrace all of the feelings that I still don’t fully trust. I will take care of myself. I’ve had to learn how to give myself and my daughter the love I never received.
My dream is indifference. My goal is the utter emotional freedom that can only come from total detachment. To respond to both her hysteria and her carrot dangling from a stick called “love” with – nothing. Total disregard. I do not want to waste one more precious minute of my life hustling for my worth - Trying to convince the woman who is supposed to love me unconditionally that I am, in fact, loveable. Trying to fix the unfixable. Vying for unattainable acceptance. Trying to prove my blood wrong. Today I choose autonomy.
I’ve been trying so hard to give myself permission to love my mother.
Instead, I give myself permission - to love myself enough to let her go.
Submitted June 17, 2016 at 01:38AM by doc_sluggo http://ift.tt/1UlRJSZ raisedbynarcissists
No comments:
Post a Comment