This post isn’t mine. I am honored today to host an anonymous post from Momalom’s Half-Drunk Challenge. I am doubly honored to host a beautiful and daring piece of writing. I don’t know who wrote it. But I commend her.
Sometimes I wish my mom were dead.
And I wonder what kind of mom that makes me. (Yes, there are bigger questions to be asked. Like, what kind of daughter—OK, what kind of human being—would wish their mom dead? And, should someone call the authorities?*)
As a child, I feared my mom. She beat me. Sometimes with her hands. Sometimes with her silence. Most often, with her words. Stinging words that included “stupid,” “selfish,” “disappointment” and “shithead.” Words that stung, because, and I say this in all honesty and without any trace of conceit, I was a really good kid. Take my word for it. Actually, take my mom’s. Today she is happy to tell all kinds of people what a wonderful kid I was. At least that’s what she tells me she tells other people.
But here’s why I sometimes wish my mom were dead.
My dear hubby and daughter Z have never known my fearsome, cruel mom. Somewhere along the way, mom changed. There was no turning point, no crisis or epiphany. Just a gradual deterioration from a scary but strong mom into something else entirely: a bat-shit crazy mom.
Mom no longer hits. She no longer yells. At least as far as I can tell. She just says and does outrageously inappropriate things.
Like?
Like blaming me for my miscarriage six months ago. “I think maybe it happened because you are doing too much,” she said, as if my balancing work and family—something she had done—had snuffed out the life the fragile little being inside me.
Like not once in the hours, days, weeks or months following my miscarriage, stopping by or calling or dropping off food or giving me a hug and asking, “Are you OK?” despite living 8 minutes away from me.
Like never in Z’s three years of life taking her out to lunch, taking her to the playground or attending an event for her at school. Forget about babysitting—I have tried to get mom’s help a whopping three times when we couldn’t find a sitter. “Maybe you’re not paying enough,” was her response.
Like saying no when, the day Z came down with pneumonia, I asked her to pick up a prescription so I could keep my kid indoors, where it was warm, and not drag her out to the drug store in the cold. “Do you go to the store near you?” mom asked. “Oh, that’s too far away.” (8 whole minutes.)
Like falling apart over every challenge life throws at her. Whether it’s a tick on her dog. (“I can’t handle this!” she yelled at me when I suggested it was no big deal.) Or asking me to water her plants. (“I know you’re too busy, but,” sob, “I just,” sob, “don’t know,” sob, “who to turn to…”) Or a herpes scare. (“I never even had an orgasm until I was 46,” she wailed. “And now God is punishing me.”) I can’t hear her quavering voice or look at her quivering mouth, dripping nose and watery eyes without feeling disgust.
Yes, my mom has turned into a stupid, selfish shithead, and a disappointment.
And I wish my hubby and daughter didn’t have to know this. I wish that my mom were just a memory, a story I could tell them with a catch in my throat. A photograph I could share with a sigh. Because having her in our lives is killing us.
My hubby has seen the crazy—the woman who pees with the bathroom door wide open when we visit. Who cancels Thanksgiving when we tell her we’ll be there Wednesday, Thursday and Friday but not Saturday and Sunday. Who tries to commit suicide and then, the next day, insists we all go shopping. He has seen me try to reason with her, to talk to her the way he talks to his mom. He knows it can’t be done.
Still, I feel him draw away from me a bit every time mom pulls one of her stunts. As if he’s wondering how long it will be before I turn into bat-shit crazy mom. I don’t blame him.
As for Z, someday she will ask me why she sees her other grandparents, who live three-plus hours away, as much as she sees Grandma L up the road. Someday she may ask me why Grandma L doesn’t spend any time alone with her. Or why Grandma L says nasty things for waiters or postmen or neighbors to hear. Or why Grandma L is crying—again.
And I am not going to know how to answer. Because as much as I sometimes wish mom were dead, I know Z deserves a chance to love her. They deserve a chance to develop a relationship with each other on their own terms.
I guess in the end that makes me a good mom. Maybe a crazy one to hope that things will be different between Z and my mom. Just, I hope, not a bat-shit crazy mom.
*Do not call the authorities. I’m not plotting my mom’s death. And, for the record, mom has been seeing a therapist for years and has been on and off medication during that time. I have tried to talk with her about our relationship, but—you can ask my hubby, the great peacemaker—it’s impossible. So thank goodness for blog opportunities like this one, because I wouldn’t DARE write any of this down in my journal.
This is chilling. And beautiful. You have told what must be an incredibly painful story very eloquently. I hope for you… I hope that you find answers to your daughter’s future questions. I hope that your insecurities become quiet. And I hope that you find peace with this.
Once again, I am truly honored to put this on my site. Thank you for finding the courage to write it.
I agree with Teresa. Chilling. And courageous. To have to face such wishes and truths daily must be a struggle. Daily. And to be so conscientious all the time to not carry on in your mother’s footsteps–or be seen as doing so–must be impossibly emotional and draining. I hope that you can trust in your own instincts as a mother and that knowing what kind of mother you don’t want to be allows you to thrive in your own mothering.
Thank you for this entry.
I didn’t have a great relationship with my Mom either. I hated her and she hated me. I lived homeless for 3 months in a 1980 chevette and she wouldn’t let us come stay with her. When I was young, she called my sister and I “little bitches”. She told my oldest son all sorts of bad things about me and we’re still trying to repar the damage. That’s another story. I recently told my mom that she’s partly to blame for the issues he’s endured through the years. There was a point in time that I didn’t speak to her for many years. Only within the last 2 years have we begun to talk more regularly. I got drugged and raped once in a bar and taken god knows where we were and she never even gave me a hug, even when I went to aids testing for a year. Mom’s aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. I take my Mom as an example of what NOT to be and learned what type of parenting certainly does NOT work. I definitely applaud you writing about it. I probably wont ever write about mine much because I put it behind me and have no want to drudge up all those bad feelings. I dont know what to say about how to cope other than doing what you’re doing and making sure you realize what didn’t work as a parent. (hugs to you)
Deena
Wow! My kids were thinking, as I read the teaser on Twitter, that this was going to be a humorous entry.
I don’t know what to say other than you are dealing with this the way you need to. When the way you deal needs to change, you will know and you will have the support of this community and your dear husband.
I understand. In every way possible to understand.
If you are willing – please read two posts: ‘I cannot pretend today’ (it’s long, sorry), and then ‘It takes two hands to hold the mirror steady.’
I understand every emotion you express here. Be grateful your husband is who he is. And you can still be a good, loving parent. We are not our mothers.
Jeez, the more I read and re-read I think you could be my sister.
It’s been such a wonderful experience, not reading about the pain of other’s but just being able to read and realize how much “we are not alone” in our struggles.
I feel your pain. We have cut my husbands mother out of our lives for that reason. She has never met V because I don’t want V around bat-shit crazy. The need to protect our daughter is greater than our need for a caustic relationship with someone even we don’t want to be around.
So don’t feel guilty at all for this. You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to be insulted. You are allowed to want to shield your child from all of that and give her the most normal life you can.
As an adult, it can be hard when the parenting roles are all of the sudden reversed, but, remember, it’s OK to set up rules of what’s acceptable and what’s not. If she chooses to live by your rules, that are there to protect Z, then she can have a relationship with her granddaughter. But she needs to make that choice.
Lots of hugs.
I can whole-heartedly relate, unfortunately.
I don’t enjoy my mother one bit. My siblings and I attribute her wordspinning and hurtful ways to alcohol and meth abuse but when it comes down to it, I’m not so sure her hurtful behaviors would lessen (unfortunately).
I’ve asked many people what kind of person it makes ME to want my mother dead. They usually respond the same: a smart one. They educate me about self-preservation and Darwinistic theories to support my closed-off-ness toward my mother.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for submitting this post. I feel less alone.
Thanks Momalom for posting this, I needed it.
Bre
I commend your bravery in writing this. I hope publishing your words here at Teresa’s site helps you to exorcise some of the demons that your mother has conjured in your life.
Your words are so brave and raw and beautiful. I wish you didn’t have these words to write, but alas, you do and do so exquisitely. I am so happy you had a chance to post this.