Monday, February 28, 2011

The Betrayal of a Mother

If you are a mother you know what true love feels like.  Your children bring out an emotion in you like no one else can do.  You love the way they smell, the way they feel, and the cute way they smile at you.  With them you understand what unconditional love means, and your dreams for them have no limit.  You want them to have more than you had, and you pray they won't make the same dumb mistakes you made. 


If you are a mother, you are unselfish, and give of yourself freely, sometimes to your own hurt.  No, you are not perfect, but you do the best you can.  You would never dream of hurting your child, physically or emotionally, and you take care to ensure you are not the cause of their suffering or pain.  This is what mothers do. They love, and even when it does not feel reciprocated, you love some more.  Even if you do not have children, you are sure that if you ever do have a child you will give them your all.  Is giving your all not a part of what mothering is about?


Being a good mother should come naturally we think.  Most of us could never dream of a mother hurting their child, and yet we see it on the news all the time.  There are mothers who hurt their children physically, and those who hurt their children by negligence.  There are some mothers who hurt their children by leaving them in the care of men they are not very familiar with.  Yes, mothers hurt their children all the time, but many times we don't know it until it is plastered on the news, and we are too late.


Not all mothers hurt their children in ways that are obvious.  While it seems we are in the minority, children, and more specifically, daughters, who have been treated poorly by their mothers, are actually a larger group than many would care to admit.  But we are out there, and I know this because of the response I have received to the articles I wrote on this subject on Associated Content (When Mothers Hate Their Daughters).  Out of the woodworks came stories from other daughters revealing what thier mothers had done to them and how sad they were about their circumstance.


What exactly had their mothers done?  While no one provided in depth detail due to limited space, I got the sense that their pain was as real as mine, and that, like me there was a hole in thier hearts that would never be filled.  Our mothers had betrayed us.  They let us down.  The one who we should have been able to trust more than anyone else, and who should have loved us more than anyone else, did not meet our expectations.  But why?  I can only tell my story...


It's hard delving into the details.  I am at a place in my life where I have chosen the path of oblivion.  I've tried anger and sadness.  They got me nowhere.  I tried passive aggressiveness and I tried screaming.  It all got me nowhere.  You see, my mother will not understand, and I am convinced, she will never comprehend exactly what she has done to cause me pain.  No, talking won't help, and neither will letters.  In her mind, she is right and above doing wrong.  With a person who simply refuses to look at the reflection in the mirror, getting to the point of mutual understanding becomes impossible.


My story begins like any other.  I was born and my mother was happy.  Fast forward to Kindergarten, Halloween parade.  I was dressed in some costume and mom was dressed as a witch.  We stood outside in the sunshine at school watching the parade go by and admiring the costumes.  Then mom pushed me to the side, hissing at me to move over so she could be seen. 


When we got home she was livid, screaming at me and asking me why I kept standing in front her, as if I had deliberately chosen to stand in her limelight.  Her limelight.  Only the parade wasn't about her, it was about the children.  On that day, for whatever reason, I became her rival, someone she had to compete with.  At the age of five I remember feeling confused, not sure what her ranting was about, but knowing deep down inside that something about her attitude just was not normal.


Things floated along until I became a teenager.  I met a boy.  I ran away and started exerting my independence.  I put her through hell, and because of it she started disliking me tremendously.  She could not rebound from the fact that I had had sex.  I suppose in some way she saw it as a direct betrayal of herself, instead of understanding that I was just being a bratty teenager.  What I did in my teen years proved to be too much for her to handle.  I got pregnant and again it was about how I had hurt her, as opposed to how I had hurt myself.


As an adult she floated in and out of loving me.  Some days she was in a good mood, happy to go shopping with me.  Other days, totally unexpectedly she would greet me at the door with a scowl.  It came to the point where I was nervous every time I went to her house because I didn't know what type of mood she would be in.  On those days, when she was in a pissy mood, I would wrack my brain, trying to remember what I had done to offend her, and try to find ways to make it better between us.  But just like an abusive relationship, and dealing with an abusive husband there was no way to please her.


Things usually remained cordial until a new man would come into my life.  Instead of spending my days shopping or gossiping with her, I might spend a day with a new guy friend.  She felt affronted and neglected, and our relationship would cool until the guy was no longer an issue and I could spend my time with her. She was trying to exert her control of me and she did it by manipulating my emotions.


I had been in an abusive relationship for a few years and had dropped out of school.  Once I was out the relationship, I decided to go back to school.  When I was accepted to a well known college I was full of excitement and couldn't wait to tell her of my good fortune.  She had dropped out of school when she was young so I was sure she would be excited that I was bettering my life.  In my mind I could see the smile on her face when I told her, the congratulatory hug.  Instead, she never turned around from washing her dishes and simply mumbled, "That's nice." 


I could go on and on, detailing the many things she did to derail my success, how she never once, in all my years of schooling, asked how school was going.  I could tell of all the ways, after I had children, she tried to turn them against me, or how she constantly tried to control me.  I could tell you how she never acknowledged by accomplishments but was always the first to point out my failures.  Yes, I could go on and on, but I'm sure by now you get the drift. 


Of course I have only written the negative.  I would be wrong to paint my mother as a monster.  She was not.  We had our share of good times, and when we were growing up she single handedly raised us to the best of her ability.  When we were younger, she was a good mom, but somewhere along the way she made poor choices as it concerned me.  Let me also point out that I was no saint.  As I noted, as a teenager I put her through hell, but as an adult I tried my best to make it up to her.  She was unable to let go of the past and her insistence on controlling my life persisted until I got married, and even then, in her passive-agressive way she tried to retain some form of control.


I tell this story, and I will tell more in the future, to better help you, the reader, understand that you are not alone.  As you read, you may be saying to yourself, "Aha! That's what my mother has been doing all these years."  Many times we have a habit of rationalizing away her behavior because it simply seems impossible that our mothers could actually want to hurt us.  You might suddenly get a revelation that your mother is not the person you thought she was or hoped she would be.


Honestly, what my mother has done pales in comparison to what other mothers have done to their daughters.  I would say that for the most part, what my mother has done has remained relatively tame.  Not every daughter is so lucky.  There are daughters who have been humilated in front of friends and other family members, daughters who have been sued, and daughters who have been neglected, all because their mothers have psychological and/or emotional issues that have not been addressed.


Again, I would love to hear your stories.  While I am saddened to hear the stories of others, it also helps me to deal with my situation to know that I am not alone.  In the future I plan on getting more in depth on how to deal with the mother-daughter situation. Hopefully I can give you tools to help you cope with your mother issue and help you regain some control of the relationship.  It is important that you not allow the relationship with your mother take over your whole life.  It can be very easy to spend too much time feeling bad about what has happend instead of accepting what now is.  Until next time...blessings, Miss Angel

4 comments:

  1. My mother told me, when I was about 14 and starting to strain at the very tight leash I was on - 'I THREW YOU AGAINST A WALL WHEN YOU WERE A BABY - AND YOU BOUNCED! Then she laughed. She has also tried to strangle me a couple of times (always goes for the neck - like any good predator) - and of course, that was my fault also - I MADE her do it! Yup - zero accountability. No contact. The woman is a murderer at heart. Comes across to every one else as a sweet old lady who wouldn't hurt a fly!

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  2. Wow, your mum sounds like my BITCH of an egg donor. I REFUSE to call that PIECE of human waste an m.

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  3. Maybe if you Americans all got over yourselves it would be a different Universe entirely. What she did to you--you did no differently but just chose a different route.

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  4. Maybe if you Americans all got over yourselves it would be a different Universe entirely. What she did to you--you did no differently but just chose a different route.

    ReplyDelete