“I never fought back then, and they did. I was the model child—good grades, no trouble, etc. Guess I’m rebelling late in life. I’m not ugly to her, but I can’t be as loving as she wants.”
I’m sorry to hear that - it must be incredible painful. When we think of “mother” we like to think of nurturing love.
It sounds like you have managed to become a different kind of mother to your children.
I hope you find the strength someday to find peace and forgiveness.
When I think of some “difficult” people in my own family, I often wonder how much is grounded in mental illness - or some sort of defect in their personality that they wrestle with (addiction problems - inability to trust or show empathy).
Sometimes people are what they are. We can’t figure them out - we can’t change them.
But we can be the best person we can.
God bless you and your family.
Thanks. I love my mom. Do I trust her? No. I think you’re exactly right about mental illness or personality defect. Mom shows all the symptoms of a raging alcoholic, but that’s what she grew up with. Insane rages about nothing, temper tantrums followed by coldness followed by smothering. If you dare suggest she get counseling or go to AA, it’s a bad time.
Mom has this whole Jekyll and Hyde personality thing going on, and you never know which one will appear. When she’s nice, she’s really really nice, when she’s not—look out.
I think, too, she says things she has no idea how to rescind when she gets out of her comfort zone. Her reaction colors our responses. My reaction is not to respond, becasue I refuse to get drawn into one of her pointless arguments. She takes that as uncaring on my part.
Case in point—Last week she came to our house after church with this long sob story about someone at church who was really upset and needed prayer. She kept talking and what it ended up being about was the woman’s son had joined the Marines. I’m just looking at her, waiting for the horrible part. The horrible part? They gave the young man a gun and were going to send him to Iraq to kill people.
How can you reason with that?
I’m very proud of my mom. She raised 5 kids (sort of!), wnet back to school when my baby sister was big enough, has a good secretarial job. She’s just...different, and difficult.
Ideally, she should have married some rich older guy, had one kid, and spent part of her time volunteering for worthy causes and and the rest in bed with the vapors, complaining about what a tough life she had! LOL