I've spent the majority of my life struggling with two things; trying to be a daughter to a mother who didn't want me and trying to be a mother to a daughter I didn't know how to mother. Both relationships were and are completely dysfunctional and incredibly painful.
I have not seen or had a conversation of substance with my mother in over a decade. After much soul searching and years of trying to fix it, I finally accepted that the toxicity of my childhood stampeding full-force in to my adulthood were too much to bear and I walked away. It was not an easy decision, and one that I struggled with for years after. I tried and tried and tried, hoping that the picture in my head of the mother that I always wanted . . . . the mother that my friends had and so graciously shared with me . . . . would actually get to be a reality for me. I was 29 years old when I let it go. This for me was the worst case scenario, the worst type of relationship to have with someone. A non-relationship. And it was the benchmark that I measured every relationship against on the how-screwed-up-is-this-one scale.
Let me backtrack a little . . . . .
My mother was 5 months pregnant with my when my parents got married. You could say they "had to get married" as was the standard back then when such a thing occurred. While there are several theories that have been floated by different members of my family over the years as to the why this happened, the fact is that clearly my parents "did the deed" before they were "supposed to" and I was the result. Presto - marriage time! Fast forward two years and my mother is a 22 year old woman, married, with two children under the age of 2 and a husband who was never home because he worked three jobs trying to keep a roof over their heads. Somewhere, something went haywire because this wasn't the picture that was in her head of what her life was supposed to be like! My parents didn't have a great marriage - it lasted 10 years but I think that had to do more with circumstance and family pressures and less with them actually wanting to be married to each other that long. My relationship with my mother was always a struggle. I don't have one memory as far back as my mind will go that is something positive between she and I prior to the age of 19. Her favorite line during my teen years was "if abortion had been legal in 1970, you wouldn't be here". Nice, right? That was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to making me feel unwanted, unloved and insignificant. I've attempted for years to psychoanalyze her reasons and what made her the way she was and figure it out. To justify or excuse it somehow. At the end of the day, I chalk it up to personal choice. She picked a path, stayed on it, didn't course correct when she saw it falling off the rails, and never owned the damage she did. Thank the Lord for my father and my grandmother or I'd have been a bigger mess than I was!
At 21, I became a mother myself. More "deed doing" before the appropriate time resulted in the birth of my oldest daughter. The cycle repeats! Being a young mother, I struggled with insecurities and the baggage of my own childhood. You never remember the positive things you hear as a kid when you are overwhelmed with the negative. The bad things are easier to believe. Those insecurities about who I was fundamentally, compounded with the dysfunctional relationship I had with my own mother as well as my daughter's father, destroyed any shred of self-confidence I had in my parenting abilities. When her dad and I split up, I tried and tried to pick myself up and to push the negativity aside. To be almost 23, work a 12 hour day with a child in day care, and feel like I was doing the right thing. To realize that I wasn't the failure that everyone was telling me that I was. That I could be and WAS doing a good job as a mother. I wish that I had been stronger, but I wasn't. I surrendered to the negativity, believed what others were saying about me (as well as the voices in my own head), and believed that my daughter was better off without me. I let her dad take her to live with him full time, and I walked away heartbroken and believing that I was doing the right thing because I wanted her to have a better life than the one that I could give her. She deserved that. She deserved better than ME.
I saw her, but not often. Certainly nothing that could ever be described as regular. I did the best I could then. I tried. I now know I should have tried harder. Should have . . . . should have . . . . . should have. The list of things I should have done haunts me. Its longer than the list of things I missed between the ages of 2 and 6; the milestones that can never be re-created. Potty training, sleeping in a big girl bed, loosing a tooth, the first day of school. All things that she didn't have me for because I believed that I wasn't worthy to be her mother. Her father wasn't exactly wanting me to be in her life either - he didn't from the moment we split up. It wasn't the most functional of relationships, and co-parenting wasn't such a big focus back then. As I grew up, got therapy, learned some things about myself, and took steps to be a more regular presence in her life I was met with a significant amount of resistance. This would be the standard for the remainder of our dealings with each other. But this story is not about her dad and the choices, right or wrong, that he made. Was he as supportive of me as he should have been? Probably not, but it's very easy to arm-chair quarterback those decisions 14 years later. I can only hope and pray that he made choices from a place of love and concern for her and that's all I can do. I have to let the rest go. It's about my daughter and I. And trying to be her mother, the best mother that I was capable of being as soon as I figured out that I WAS worthy of doing the job.
Unfortunately, it took me too long. The connection that she and I should have had with each other was permanently fractured and time has not been a neon pink cast that made it all better again. That's on me. I OWN IT. We have never gotten to any place of "normal". Certainly not to any picture in my head of what I wanted it to be . . . . what I though it should be. Don't get me wrong, we had good times. Times when we have been close. Times when she genuinely seemed to like me. But our relationship is like a hamster stuck on a wheel - it spins and spins and spins until the hamster gets tired and hops off. He takes a break and then jumps right back on again. Like a glutton for punishment. We will go four, fix, six months and everything will be great. Then she will get mad at me and punishes me for whatever sin she feels that I have committed at the time. No talking, no visits, no communication for months at a time. I cry. I'm heartbroken. And I am angry because I feel like I am being manipulated. But then my guilt kicks in and I always try to fix it. I always apologize. I grovel, I beg, and I do whatever it takes to get her to talk to me, to spend time with me and her little sisters. Back on the hamster wheel for another round! The dysfunctional cycle starts all over again, and the times of "hopping off" are repeated because the fundamentals of our relationship don't change. But I kept doing it, time and time again, regardless of the damage it was doing to me. Partly because I felt, deep down, that I deserved it. Mostly because the benchmark for the worst relationship possible was already there (the non-existent one between my mother and I) and I was going to make sure THAT didn't happen!
Then I was asked this question: is a non-relationship really the worst type of relationship for me to have? Say what? This seemed completely ridiculous when it was suggested to me, but then I sat and thought about it. Really thought about how much pain NOT having a relationship with my mother has caused me over all these years. Don't get me wrong - I'd rather have a mother. But I don't know what its like to really have a functional, productive, loving mother so I don't really know what I am missing. Our non-relationship doesn't cause me stress, doesn't hurt me, make me cry, anger me, drag my other children and the rest of my family through emotional drama, frustrate me, or make me feel crappy inside. I don't gain or lose any value to myself as a person nor do I define myself by this non-relationship. Then I evaluated the relationship I have with my daughter. It's toxic. It pains me to even type those words, but it is true. Despite everything I know how to do, the apologies I have given her over the years, the times we have talked about things, the explanations I have tried to make, and the mothering I have done over these last 14 years, it just isn't enough. She doesn't want me, doesn't need me, isn't interested in fixing the core problems, won't go to therapy with me, treats me poorly, has no respect for me, and frankly just doesn't give a damn about me. If she were anyone other than my child, I would have walked away a long time ago. Holy crap - this may be the A-HA moment of my adult life!
Coming to this awareness about my daughter and our relationship has been very painful. I hurt beyond words. I love her very much. I loved her the first time I heard her heart beating. I loved her when I first felt her move inside me. I loved her when I first saw her beautiful face. I have always loved her. Even when I didn't feel worthy to be her mother and I stayed away because I thought that was what was best for her, I still loved her. But me loving her isn't enough right now. I think I need to let her go until she is ready to accept that I cannot change the past (Lord knows I have tried!), I have done all I can do to repair the damage caused from the choices I made early on, and try to find a place of forgiveness. I am not a perfect mother. I am just a mother who loves her daughter. Someday I hope that WILL be enough.
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