Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

I wish things could be different.

I believe that everyone wants their mother to love and be proud of them, and I am no exception.  People whose mothers are missing from their lives are on a more difficult path than those who have the comfort of knowing they are always going to be unconditionally loved by the person who gave them life.  Some lose their mothers early or never knew them at all.  Some are separated by geography.  And then there are the ones that lose their mothers not to death or distance.. but to stubbornness and anger.

You are not dead, or even far away; all the same, you aren't here.

Last year, just before my birthday, you told me that you "couldn't handle being in my life right now."  We asked you to reconsider, to please celebrate with us if not for my birthday then at least for Christmas.  You coldly refused.

It wasn't the first time you'd thrown me away.  As a child I endured the silent treatment or banishment to my room 'until I could come out with a smile on my face.'  As a teen I was ignored.  As an adult I've suffered multiple total banishments and withdrawals of your love for months at a time, never knowing when or if you would accept me again.  This hurts everyone in our family - not just me, but my child and husband, siblings, nieces, aunts and grandparents, too.  It is a very big deal.

So last year, just after my birthday, I decided that this would be the last time you'd get the chance to abandon me.  I wasn't going to do what I had done in the past - the usual monthly phone call to tentatively check if you were willing to have me back in your life again.  This time I would leave it up to you.  Although circumstances have necessitated contact a few times we haven't spoken.  You never tried to contact me, nor my daughter, your granddaughter.

In spite of my best intentions not to contact you, early on I did write you an email.  I tried not to say things that would make you angry, but I asked to have a family meeting where we could get everything out on the table.  You refused.  After that I wrote what I would have wanted to talk about at such a meeting, hoping that maybe we could 'discuss' it in writing.  Nope.  You told me to leave you alone.

I spent months trying to sort out how I'd deserved this.  I have always believed that every argument, every accident, every rainstorm was my fault alone.  I have heard from you over and over that I am:
Horrid
Hateful
Angry
Mentally Ill
Impossible
So powerful that I can hurt everyone by simply walking into a room
More trouble than I am worth
Hysterical
Ungrateful
Hard to Love

As a tiny little girl I remember you bending over me and chiming, in a sing song voice "There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.  When she was good she was very,very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid."  It was repeated so often that eventually you'd just glare at me and say "There was a little girl!"  and I knew.  I was bad.  I was a bad girl through and through.  It was clear that to be loved I should never ever misbehave, or cry, or disturb my father, or wake you up at night.  If I did, I had days of being perfect ahead of me, desperately trying to win back a smile.

I don't remember cuddles.  I don't remember "I love you."

I remember that when I did great things you were happy.  I earned the lead role in plays, achieved straight As, was pretty, got awards, won Student Council President.  You would tell people about it, bursting with pride.  You would marvel at the way I could charm people because I was young and beautiful and smiled all the time.  This impressed you to no end.  But then I'd snark at you for something as teens sometimes do and it was back to square one.  I was dirt.  I would have to pay.  There was no such thing as a little squabble while making dinner and then a pleasant family meal once it was on the table.  Your anger was long and dark.

I'm almost 40 now, and as if the anniversary needed to be celebrated, we spoke for the first time the other day.  In that conversation you slaughtered my character again, literally going back to when I was 2 years old.  You belittled and mocked me for many things, but got particularly nasty over the fact that - months ago when you asked me what could have been so bad about my brother's childhood -  I'd brought up my father's abusive behaviour towards he and I.

"So what he hit you sometimes.  Do you know how BAD you were?  You were a rotten kid!  What's a little water thrown in your face?  He pinched you ONCE and gave you a big bruise.  So he'd chase you around the house and terrify you, big deal!  Get OVER IT!  I should have hit you myself!"

You dragged up my most difficult year, when I had first been abandoned by the father of my child.  You didn't  tell me you were proud of my for holding down a full time job, raising a child, going to night school, and taking care of a house all by myself .. no, you told me indignantly that you shouldn't have had to go through that!  What did you go through, exactly?  I paid a babysitter, never needed your money, hosted the family dinners at my house and wouldn't even see you for weeks at a time!  I'm serious, I have no idea how that was so difficult for you.

All I  wanted from you the other day was to hear that you understand that I didn't deserve your banishment any of the times you've used it to punish me.  I wanted you to say "I look back on those times as a mistake on my part. I see that it was too much,  and I shouldn't have done that.  I know it hurt you and I will not do that again.  I've missed you, I've missed my grand-daughter and son in law.  Let's work this out."

That's what would have healed us.

As sad as it is, Mom, you chose to come at me with your teeth bared, once again.  If this were last year I would be devastated by your words, and tricked by your manipulation, thinking once again that the real me is a terribly ungrateful and hateful person.  I would think to myself that it must be true, if my own mother says so so often, with such conviction.

But this is this year, and I was surprised to learn that I've grown immune to your tantrums.  I have too many other relationships that I can look at and see the 'real' me reflected back from to believe that I'm the person you make me out to be.

I've also grown wise to your games.  I know that you like to re-write history (sometimes even as it's happening!) and so this time I recorded our conversation.  When you tell people that I heaped screaming abuse at you, I can be certain that that wasn't the case.. and if ever I need to prove it to anyone else, I will be able to.   You can pretend that you tried, you really tried to patch things up, but that 'as usual' I was hysterical and abusive and you just couldn't reason with me.  You can even believe it, if you like.

But the truth is the truth, and finally - FINALLY - I don't see it filtered through your eyes.

I get phone calls sometimes urging me to fix this mess.  Family members believe it to be part of the cause of my brother's alcoholism.  Others think that it's just unnatural for a child not to speak to their mother.  One or two though do understand.  They've been in my shoes - or still are.  They are the only ones that know that it isn't fixable - it takes two to untangle, too.

If ever, by any slim chance, you are to see this, I know that it will just be another nail in my coffin with you.
But hey, what's one more nail if the relationship is already dead?  And I need this... this exhalation, this expurgation.

I wish it could have been different.

Love,
Sherri