And not in the way that one might think.
When I became pregnant with my first, I knew things had to change. Up until that point, I had been fine-totally content-with the parental relationship my mom and dad had created.
But that moment of awareness that I was a mother was like a shattering of the illusion that I had been so content to ignore. I was plunged into the immediate and undeniable horror of the perspective of my baby. It wasn’t even conscious enough to be a thought. It was a full on paradigm shift without volition, choice, or awareness.
I started asking my parents questions. Over and over and over I brought up my experiences-crippling shame, anxiety, dissociative terror, nightmares, intense depression, manic depression, suicidal impulses, etc etc etc. My awareness of myself grew mostly through Self therapy. And then one day I heard my mom utter something.
I had been sharing about my experience of her as Mom. How I felt terror, shame and guilt. How I only wanted her presence when I was little but had precious little of it- maybe a few hours on the weekend if it was free. How I was treated by her; told that she did not like me, that I was selfish, a brat, made her life oppressive, was never grateful, was a bad daughter, a disappointment. I cried that I didn’t understand how she had been my mom even though she insisted that she was the greatest mom ever. I heard her start to say “why would you even want to-?” When she cut it off, as if suddenly realizing she was speaking out loud.
Up until that time, my mom insisted that I should obey her and listen to her. She was as much a control freak as I knew anyone to be. But in that moment it was like she realized something very fundamental, deep, and which changed her relationship to me.
After that she withdrew. I didn’t hear about how I wasn’t enabling her to visit. She stopped complaining that I would not respond to her. She wasn’t anymore offended to the point of injury that I preferred not to exclusively hang out with her during outinga. It was like she just decided to leave me alone.
I didn’t realize it until today, as I was speaking to DH about his dad’s fuckery. But my mom gracefully bowed out. Somehow, it is like she recognized that all she was doing was dragging me down. She always has been. She had an insight about how the relationship she created only served her and not me. And she stepped aside.
I can respect the hell out of that.
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