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No one's story is self-contained. Everyone has reasons why they are the way they are. I can only write about how I see it. The challenges and opinions of my life and the lives of those around me. Opinions is exactly what they are, too. That's true no matter who's writing. No one really knows why someone else does what they do, and only the really attuned can speak with conviction about themselves. My mother is a collection of her own life's events, as is my grandmother, and neither one of them grew up in a bubble. I will speak of them, though, from what I know and what I believe, from what I've seen and what I've been told. Who knows how accurate this tale will be, since people lie and even the honest rarely tell the whole truth.
Of my grandmother I know very little before what I myself can recall. She's got a touch of violence in her. That stands out more than anything. She's always been that way. Her personality is such that I have no qualms about seeing her, and taking my son to see her, but I will not leave him alone with her. She has little patience for children. Once, I fainted and was taken to the hospital. She came to take care of my son (something my mother arranged), and I left the hospital against medical advice to avoid it.
She confuses me. She is bound, as so many are, to her familial responsibilities. She has two daughters. Both have been, and still are, addicted to various drugs. Both have proven less than adequate mothers. There are many, including my mother and aunt, who would blame her for her daughters' faults. I find myself torn on the topic. I have always held the mother to the child's behavior. It is, in my belief, the mother's responsibility to raise the child properly. I have never held the father to this responsibility unless the mother is absent. Women are care-givers and nurturers by nature. A man is a hunter and provider. Biologically, this is how we are made, and I believe in instinct. On that note, I must say it is her fault that her daughters cannot function properly as adults and mothers - because she failed to teach them how.
However, with that line of thinking, I should not be able to function, either. I suppose there are many who think that I don't, and again that is a matter of opinion. I am strong, though, and my mother and her sister are not. I have never hidden from my life behined a hazy veil of drug-induced happiness, or the artificial love of abusive men and their promises. I have not abandoned my son to someone else's care, or neglected him for the sake of my own satisfactions. If I am not functional, because I do not conform to the need for family, or because I reject the idea of foregiveness for the sake of foregiveness, then I am at least more functional than they are.
No matter what her daughters do, she is always there for them, and the same goes for their children. Not that she doesn't judge or talk bad about them, but she's always there with money and her own personal brand of advice. She drains herself doing this, in most every way that a person can be drained, and it does them no good to be coddled and foregiven. I have councelled her repeatedly that she should stop helping. It would be better for her, and them, if she would look out for herself and not constantly be handing out her money and health to others. They will not learn if they do not have to. She has her own opinions on these things, though, and I cannot make her change.
I have heard the stories, from my own mother, about how my grandmother beat her. My mother claims that the only reason she has let so many men abuse her is because she grew up thinking that was how it should be. I do not accept that excuse, since she is aware now that it isn't right, and I believe she always was aware. She never hit my brother or myself. If she believed that abuse was how it was, then why would she refrain from abusing her own children? Even during the depths of her substance abuse, she never abused us physically. She knew it was wrong, and yet she let it be done to her. But I am getting ahead of myself.
When I was seven years old, my mother went to prison for some version or another of murder. Involontary manslaughter, I believe was what they called it. Whatever the title she earned, she killed a man who had a son my age. She was drunk, as she always was, and went chasing after my cheating step-father in her Camero. She struck the man riding his bike down the street. I always wonder what happened to his son.
My father was a poor choice for gaurdian, according to my mother and grandmother, and who was I to argue. My brother and I were left in my grandmother's care for the year our mother was gone. Grandma is a fan of using humiliation as punishment. Public beatings and insults were a near-daily event in that house. I can remember my female cousin, also being raised by my grandmother, had a bad habit of chewing on the ends of her hair. One day, my grandmother pulled out a pair of scissors and chopped off all of her hair so it was too short to reach her mouth. My hair, which reached my waist when my mother left, was cut to the ears within a week of her leaving. Hair brushes and ping pong paddles were Gram's favorite tools for spankings, and she would hit us hard enough to break them.
Still, of all the abuse I"ve taken in my life, that was the least of it, and so I hold no grudge. The others of my blood line were far worse to me, and so, in comparison, my memories of that year are pailed. When my mom was let out of prison, she moved in with my grandmother as well, instead of moving us out. Shortly after that, I told the teachers at school about the abuse. This forced a change of address. I was eight years old then, and already I was angry at my mother. She knew how my grnadmother was. She blaimed Gram for her own problems, and yet she left us there to take her wrath. When she got home, Mom still allowed us to be in that place. She failed to shield her children. I had to make public the abuse to make it stop when my mom failed, and I felt disappointment and betrayal at that. I was eight! I was a child. Why was I the one who had to have the courage? Why did I have to stand up to the adults? Why did I have to take the looks and the comments?
I have felt those feelings and had those thoughts many times in my life, during and after many trials. Looking back, standing up to my grandma and my mother then was good practice for the real hardship that was going to come when I turned 13.
Betrayal and disappointment. How often have I dealt with those emotions when thinking about my mother? She was only 15 when she had my brother, and 17 when she had me. She grew up in an abusive household in the 70s and 80s. I'm not sure when the drug addiction really started, but I know that it was before I was born. She tells me she was clean when she was pregnant with me, but I'm not sure I believe her. I see no reason why she would have been, and plenty of reason for her to lie. I have hormonal problems, and I wonder if she is responsible. I suppose it doesn't matter, really. Nothing to be done for it now.
My father was on drugs as well, and everything I've heard about it was that he beat her and cheated on her. I've never seen any proof, but I don't disbelieve that. She left him when I was only two, and I have no memory of life before that divorce. I don't have the whole list of drugs that my mother has done, but I'm sure there weren't too many she didn't. The alcohol was the most prominent. I remember that and the pot very well.
I remember she worked a lot, two or three jobs at a time. She supported two kids, her husband (I don't remember him working, but he may have), and her habit. I didn't see her near as much as I needed to. At that time, and for a long time after, I still needed her. I needed her at least to try. I needed to see some sign that would solidify for me that she cared about me more than her addicitons... more than her fear... more than herself. I knew even then that she was weak, and it frightened me. I knew I wasn't strong enough then to stand alone, and if she wasn't there to protect me, who would be?
I remember my step-father as well. He beat my mother horribly. It was the normal story. They would fight, she would leave him, her wounds would heal, and the alcohol would help her forget. Then he'd be back. She has always sworn that she would never let anyone hurt us, but how could she not know that it did? It damages a child to see thier mother like that - bleeding and hurt on the kitchen floor or the bottom of the stairs. Parents are supposed to protect. Children need to see in their parents strength and security in order to feel safe. How could my mother protect me if she couldn't protect herself?
I have a memory of being about five or six, standing with a baseball bat. My mother was on the floor behind me, bleeding and crying, telling me to go back to my room. My step-father stood in front of me with two clenched hands. I remember thinking, "Please hit me. Just once, hit me. She'll leave you for good if you'll just hit me. Hit me!" He didn't, of course. He was too smart for that, and that was about as smart as he was. He wasn't gone from my life until that last day my mom drank.
The night she killed that man was the last night she drank, too, as far as I know. I have only one really clear memory of that time. It was when she came to tell us what had happened and that she was leaving. I had been at my grandma's house that night, and she came the next day. She sat me on the steps (I'm sure my brother was there with me, but I don't remember him), and she told me exactly what had happened. She said that she had seen it on the news, and she knew it had to have been her. The car was wrecked and she had blood on her clothes. The man had gone through her windshield when she hit him. She saw the story of the hit-and-run on the TV the next morning, but she had no memory of having done it. Blackouts were normal for her. I had to give her credit then, and I still do, for turning herself in and for facing us with the truth. I remember being proud of her. She had shown me she had some strength... and she wasn't drunk. At least, that's how I remember it. I've learned not to be too confident in my memories. I have gaps. Parts are missing, and I was always a dreamer (it helped me hide). So sometimes, things blend together, and some things are lost all together. I know that pride was real, though. It was the first time I ever felt pride in my mother.
We really never talked about that incident again. I never got a chance to tell her I was proud. She doesn't really seem to deal well with being confronted with her demons. I wish she could cope better. It would make it easier for me to talk to her, and maybe we wouldn't have as many problems between us as we do.
After her time in jail, she came back clean. She lived without alcohol, and she worked without alcohol, and I had hope for the future. My sexual abuse at the hands of my grandfather had already begun some time previous, but it started to look like we had a chance. At what, I'm not sure. I tried to clean the slate with her then. I decided that what had come before this was past, and she was a different person than the one she had been. She was a new person now, and this time she was going to do it right. Some things had changed, though, and some hadn't. I won't give her the excuse that this is just how she is, because all people are constantly evolving and learning. She should have learned from her mistakes, accepted them and moved on, and some she did -- others she did not. When I look back I know that my own ability to accepted and move on was learned because of how she had failed in my eyes. If she had been strong enough to do that, would I have learned that lesson? I know that many of the weaknesses in others are responsible for my strengths. I learned from what I saw in them, and what they did to me.
She was clean, for the most part. No one will convince me that pot "doesn't count" or "isn't harmful". I have seen too much to believe that. But she was far more capable than she had been when she was drinking. She was more attentive, more aware, and at some point she went back to school. I was growing more and more proud of my mother. She was getting stronger. She was growing into the mom I needed her to be. We were happy, for a long time. She had trouble with men, which at the time I was very sure was because men were "wrong" in some way. That isn't something my mother taught me, but I didn't understand the dinamics of relationships then, and they rarely went well for my mom. She had finally attained that infalible status that a parent should have with her child, so when things went down hill between her and some man, it must have been his fault.
She managed to hold that status with me until that day over breakfast when I was thirteen. Abused children can usually identify other abused children. I always tended to have friends from hard backgrounds, because we understood each other. We had the same reactions to things, and the same coping mechanisms for hiding from the realities of our lives. We were an unhappy, outcasted, and misunderstood group. One of these friends of mine, during a heated argument we were having, broke down and told me how her father was raping her. It hit home. I was scared. My grandfather had only touched me. He hadn't gone that far. But what it he did? I didn't want that to be me, and that fear gave me strength.
As wrong as it sounds, I had honestly never told my mom what was happening to me, because I knew she would blame herself. She knew as well as I did, that it was her responsibility to gaurd me from this type of thing, and she had failed again. There were other reasons as well, of course, like fear and shame, but her guilt was the one that I thought about the most. Perhaps it was just my excuse for my own weakness. There really was no way for her to know. She couldn't have known. There were others who knew. Other people who should have told her the risks of sending me over there. But that is a whole other issue. My mother did not know what to look for in an abused child. Most parents don't. No one told her, and she saw no signs, so she could not have known.
She should have believed me. She had always told me that if anyone hurt me, no matter what, no matter who... she would believe me. She lied. There is no other way to put it. She lied to me about something she never should have lied about, at the time I needed it the least. I was betrayed. My own mother fought against my abuse charges, because she had misread the signs of abuse. She thought I was a liar. She thought I was trying to get attention. I was in a fight for my life, and now my mother was one of the enemy. She didn't believe me until he confessed, and at that point her faith wasn't good enough. That day, my mother became my enemy, and she has remained my enemy ever since. She fought the initial charges, she barred me from facing him in court, and in her need to make it right, she slowed my healing. Even as an adult, she expected me to face those who had let me down, and to forgive them, because they're family. After what I have seen in my life, the word family has sickened me. Until I had one of my own, family meant lies and betrayal, abuse and neglect. That is why I have tried so hard to create my own family. I have been engaged four times, married and divorced, because all I have ever wanted was a real family. The way family is supposed to be.
After years of councelling, through depression and then healing, I have had in my mind the image of my mother standing between me and freedom. When I think of my mother, I see her as bloody body unconscious on the kitchen floor. I see her fighting me. Her distrust. Her weakness. These are the images I have of my mother, because these are the times she affected my life. There are no great milestones during that brief time she was infalable. We have never accomplished anything together. I have done things, and she has done things, and we have fought each other.
When I was in high school my mother met and got engaged to a man with money. He paid for her to go to college. He moved us to a new home, that was bigger than anything I'd known. We had surround sound, and a motorcycle, and everyone had their own car. She left him as soon as she was done with school. She accused him of cheating on her, and she left him. I always wondered if that's what had happened, or if she was just done with him. I dated a man for money once. It was plainly known, and I've never denied it. He was a nice guy, and he had a lot of cash. My family took issue with that. I became an exotic dancer, and my family took issue with that. I am confused. Is it better if I lie about using men? Is it better if I act like I like them? Is it okay to use a man for sex, but not money? At least I am honest. I learned the value of men with money from my mother. I made the decision to become a dancer while living in that nice big house. At least as a dancer, I wouldn't be sleeping with the man for his money. At least I wouldn't be lying.
Everything between my mother and I came to a head with the end of her last marriage. I will not follow behind her just because she has made a choice. When she made the announcement that she was getting a divorce, she expected everyone to stop talking to her husband. I know my mother lies. I wanted to hear his side of the story, and my son wanted to see his Poppy, so I called him. It caused an uproar. I don't know, nor do I care, why they broke up. I don't care why he wanted to talk to me. I don't care who was using who, or who stole what from who. I couldn't give a damn.
I never took sides. I never told either one what the other said. I simply spoke to them both. In doing so, I violated my familial responsibilities. I am supposed, I guess, to blindly follow the woman who has lied to me before in the most crusial of time. When I wouldn't stop talking to him, my mother accused him of sexual abuse.
I will never know if he abused her or not. If he did not, my mother crossed a line with me that she will never return from, no matter what she does. If she dared to use my past as a means of control over me, she is unworthy of title of mother, and I hope she suffers in all the guilts of her past to the end of her days. If he did abuse her, she has solidified her position as a disapointment to me. She will not claim the victim in my eyes. She is grown. She should have learned from her mistakes and never alloud this to happen. If a woman is abused once she is absolved of guilt. If she is abused throughout her life, she cannot be expected to know better. For an educated woman, a councelor!, to allow herself to be abused time and again - to fight her way out of abuse after abuse only to plunge herself into another, is not deserving of sympathy. Aside from that, if he abused her, and she allowed me and my son to be exposed to him than she has failed me again.
After the accusations, I cut ties with them both. I have since started speaking to my mother again, but we will likely never recover from the endless stream of unresolved issues and battles between us.
My mother is weak. Whatever her reasons or excuses for being so, she is a weak person, and she is not my responsibility. Blood or no, I will not rescue her, and I cannot stand behind her decisions. I have no faith in her anymore. I have no reason to have faith in her.
I have learned a lot from her. She is much of the reason I am as strong as I am. I tollerate no mistreatment from men, because of what I learned from her, but there must have been a better way to teach me.
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Posted by nashea on 2008-01-04 15:53:55 | Rating: | Views: 156
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