Dear Internet,
I often feel like a spectator to my own train wreck of a life.
After years in the making, my mother and I broke up on Sunday. I spent much of the afternoon and night writing about it, only to find that I could not wrap my brain, and apparently my fingers, around the whole episode. Thousands of words were written and thousands were tossed aside.1 Instead of the world lifting from my shoulders, I felt the guilt that often hides in the shadows and was now dancing around my peripheral heart with glee. My heart itself felt like it was tightening so hard that I could not breathe.
The cumulation of our break-up, for me, was the realization she may have lied to me about something very big. After getting over the initial shock of, “Why in thee fuck have I not thought of this sooner?”, I felt my entire world crumble and I was instantly emotionally drained
Her potential lie has two consequences:
- If what she told me was indeed a lie, then she not only poisoned me with her hatred against my father, but she ruined my relationship with him; whom I’ll never get a chance to make-up with since he’s been dead 12 years.
- If what she told me was not a lie, then why did she never protect me, ever, from that danger?
What started down this road of holy fuckery was putting the connections together after her birthday lunch earlier in the day. She and I were buffered by TheHusband and my brother, ensuring that we barely spoke a word throughout the entire strained meal. After, I spent the better part of the afternoon obsessing over how thin our links had become to the other in the last year; with TheHusband wondering loudly, and quite rightly, why I had not broken the connection long ago. I steadfastly believed, until the very second I did not, I could not be that girl. I could not, no matter how horrid our relationship was, give up on her as a daughter. I did not want to be filled with regret after she was dead for missed chances and opportunities for maternal connection. I was barely on speaking terms with my father when he died and it has haunted me for over a decade on everything I may have potentially lost with him and I did not want to go through with that with her.
I’ve never known a time when she said anything even remotely kind about him. As I got older, I started piercing together some of the mistruths she had told in relation to him and of course to me, and rationalized it was all due to, at various times of her life, depression, being bi-polar, or general bitchiness about her divorce from him. But whatever reason she may have had for what she said, in this particular instance, could only come from pure evil and I could not rationale away what she did any other way.
When that connection was made, that I knew she had lied to me in the past and that this one event that shaped much of my teenage years and beyond could also potentially be a lie, the bond between us was finally broken.
Just so we’re clear, there was a long period of time in my ’20s when she and I did not speak. However, since the death of my father in 2000, I have tried desperately in vein to work things out with her. And in the years since then, anytime I’ve tried to tell her or even just to discuss my thoughts and feelings about our relationship (good or bad), it usually boils down to she either telling me if she hurt my feelings, she didn’t mean it and she’s sorry or that I’m insanely jealous of my brother (because it is always about him) or she claims she never said whatever it is I’m supposing telling her she said. There is no real discussion, catharsis, emotional break throughs or fuck, even understanding.
In the very near future, I will be removing myself from her legal documents and transferring that over to my brother. I will be canceling and/or removing her from any accounts or services she may use through me.
While I know I may be revisiting this again and again in the future to work out feelings, she no longer exists in my world.
TTFN,
Lisa
1. The baby was not quite thrown out with the bathwater just yet. I have been using, daily, Day One for all of my personal journaling needs. Since I have it on all my devices and machines, it syncs seamlessly with iTunes and Dropbox. The tossed aside content was added as Sunday’s journal entry and will probably remain there until I feel braver discussing it publicly.