sobre mi madre, II

Wednesday was the day my mother was supposed to have shifted her address to one about 25 miles away from where I live. I think she took a week to drive here, because I know she left her home in Florida last week. But she didn’t really fill me in on the details of how she was making this trip.

I am in an emotional state of near-panic about this. Most of the reason is that I have absolutely no idea what to expect from the next six months (I don’t know if it’s six months or a year that her fellowship here runs). I don’t know if she’s going to want to spend more time with me, which could end up making things worse between us, or if she’s going to be too busy to spend time with me, which (despite being glad for not having the potential conflict hanging around all the time) would psychologically be yet another rejection of me on the part of one or the other parent, just as hurtful as all the others.

I don’t know what she’s going to want. When I said this to BF’s cousin and MM at Thanksgiving, BF’s cousin asked, “Well, what do you want?” This question stopped me cold, and I said “Uh,” about four times with my mouth open like a codfish before I finally decided that I could not answer that question and said as much. It made me think, though, and after thinking about it for three weeks I still have no idea what I want out of our relationship for the next six months.

I have no idea what I want out of our relationship, period. I confessed in therapy that I wanted my parents to be more like BF’s parents, more loving and involved and genuinely interested in my life instead of solely their own, more capable of making family a priority. It hurt badly to admit such a thing; I’d thought I was mature enough to accept what will and will not happen with my family members, understanding what I know that they can’t give me and appreciating what they can. But it turns out that I still want what I want.

Also, all I can think about lately is all the wrongs she’s done me for the last 15 years. I am suffering about them now, over and over again, unable to stop thinking about various things she’s done and said that have wounded me. Currently, she behaves like a fair-weather mother, an ADD-ridden one, who can’t keep a promise and can’t remember what’s going on with me and doesn’t seem to care about what I say. I feel that she sees me as a valuable bauble, something bright and shiny and needing minimal itinerant care, but with nothing about it that requires deeper exploration or thought. I’m worthwhile to her because she can be proud of me, bring me up in conversations as something she’s accomplished, visit me and see how attractively I’ve turned out and how cleverly I can keep up my end of a conversation. (She can also criticize and nitpick, trying to shape me into the version of me that she imagines.) But I don’t have anything to offer her beneath that, and certainly she need not offer me anything. No one needs to keep promises to such a thing.

I could be wrong. But she does not behave as if I’m interesting, or even worth her time. She behaves as if she needs to maintain me, talk to me every now and then to keep things up, keep me apprised of her comings and goings for the sake of safety. I know she loves the idea of me, the daughter who has become an adult and who loves her, but she only makes small talk with me over the phone, she does not expose her actual unmasked self to me unless I make a huge effort, and, at the heart of it, she does not know me. And if she suspects my real personality, she does not like it.

None of this should really matter, because she’s my mother and we love each other as family is bound to do. But all of these things (and many others) have allowed her to hurt me, over and over, and I am so tired of excusing her and going around her and putting up with her. I do not want to do it on a regular basis in the flesh for the next six months.

Last night BF listened to me while I told a story of some of her crappy treatment from my adolescence. He was very upset for me. It felt indulgent for me to do this, because as I told him, my parents weren’t drunks, they didn’t beat me or each other up, my childhood was not dysfunctional or bad on the face of things. But the more I look back, the more dissatisfied I am with how they parented. It was a chilly and self-involved family I lived in, a frighteningly consequence-filled early life, with two people who have no capacity to love openly and unconditionally. It has left scars. It is hard for me to bear. I can’t deny this any more than I can deny that I feel spoiled for complaining about it.

BF advises that I take things with her one day at at a time through the length of her visit here. That I just sort of see what happens, if she’s going to be in touch with me all the time or be too busy to be in touch with me, and worry about the hurtfulness when and if it happens. I think this is wise advice, but my apprehension just knows no bounds right now. Tomorrow is Dress Day, when she and my friend M will come to MM’s house and they’ll all watch me try on my wedding dress and shoes and so forth. I don’t know what to expect from her. I don’t really want to think about it too much; I just want to presume it’ll be somewhat fun and soon over, and get through it.

I guess that’s true for the next six months, as well. Soon over. But her role as my mother is not a limited performance, whether local or out-of-town, and I continue to be at a loss as to how to sit in the audience and watch her performance without leaving in tears.