My Mother part 1 in over whelmed...?

Today I want to write about my mother. I am obsessed with her. I dont have very many framed photos in the house but 90% of the ones I do have are of my mother. I don’t talk to her very often, I live an ocean away, and even when I lived on that wretched little island of England I only saw her twice in the full year I lived there. And yet and yet I obsessively think about her. I probably think about my mother more than I think about anything else. Usually it is this nagging thought that I should call her and then avoiding calling her and then feeling guilty about not calling her. Sometimes it is a question I may want to ask her, or something happens and I want to tell my mother about it, or I see something and I want to show it to her. Often it is simply trying to understand our relationship and figure out how it got to be what it is.

I guess I have been thinking about this more and more lately because I am 40 and childless. I think part of the reason for that is because my heart would be completely and utterly broken in ways I can not even fathom if I had a child who treated me the way I treat my mother.

(Side note: My husband and I got married when I was 35. We basically woke up on a Wednesday, went to the court house, got married and he went to work. We are pretty practical that way. Anyhoo I came home and called her to tell and she asked me if we were planning on having children. I braced myself for the argument that I thought was coming when I would tell her no. She said, “Good.” I was speechless. For what was probably two seconds but what felt like an hour I had a million and twenty thoughts about how I have misunderstood her all along, about how maybe she did just love me, how this could be the turning point of our relationship and such. Then she said, “Because you are too old now anyway.” And I laughed, because what else can you do?)

I love my mother. I know she loves me. I am pretty sure however that we really do not like each other. Or understand each other. Or have anything in common. I am absolutely certain that I am my mother’s biggest disappointment. Having said that when I got divorced she stood by me, she came in an instant and helped me get my life together, same when I had surgery, she stood by me when I met and stated living with my current husband which when you are my people is fucking unheard of. I know she loves me. But she makes me feel like complete shit about myself. That sounds so trite. I can’t explain it. I want to try and explain this feeling and maybe then I can understand it. It feels like a void almost. Like a constant feeling that something is missing, that I am disappointing and hurting someone all the fucking time by simply being myself. Wow, such dramatic words, it’s really not that dramatic, just more lingering.

(When I was 18 I lived 45 minutes away from my family. My mother’s therapist was close to my apartment so every Wednesday after her appointment we would have lunch. It was actually really sort of fun and I looked forward to it until one day she told me that her therapist wanted to have a session with me. I guess she had convinced this fucking professional that I was the root of all of her problems. I went. We accomplished nothing.)

My parents had an arranged marriage.They had met once when they were kids. My mother came from an incredibly affluent and influential family. She was the second to last of 13 children. From what I have gathered I don’t think she had a whole lot of attention from her parents. It sounds to me that she was raised by a bunch of nannies and housekeepers and elder sisters. Her own mother was very critical of her and often compared her to other people, she has mentioned this to me in the past and it clearly seems to bother her.

I gotta go make dinner. This is going to be a lot bigger than I had anticipated. Also thank you for being here. I have been trying to catch up and it is like curling up on the couch with a different old friend every evening. I find it unbelievably comforting. You have all been through so much, both good and bad. Thank you for being my creepy internet friends.