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.

Ten things. Ten things you do not know about me. Fair enough: there’s probably a lot you don’t know about me. But remember the 25 Things thing that went around Facebook a while ago? I didn’t do it. I had no desire to do it. I couldn’t do it.

I’m going to do this, but I have to do it my way. My painfully (pathologically?) introspective way. The way it makes sense to me. I’m going to write Ten Things I Don’t Know About Myself.

_______________

I don’t know how to act my age, which is 53 days shy of 40.

I don’t know when I became obsessively thin.

I don’t know if I regret not having a daughter.

I don’t know if I will be able to walk tomorrow. Because MS is terrifying. And it is my reality.

I don’t know why I changed my name when I got married. I regret it.

I don’t know what to do. At this moment, I have no goals, no dreams. Nothing beyond making it through today.

I don’t know if I would have been pretty, if this hadn’t happened. If. But I like to think so. If.

I don’t know, in response to Big Little Wolf’s post, if I am hot.

I don’t know why I am not a vegetarian.

And I have absolutely no idea why I am an irrepressible optimist. Why, in spite of it all, or perhaps because of it all, I know deep in my bones that my life is painfully beautiful.

_______________

And where, you ask, is the bravery in this half-drunk list? It is, I suppose, in not explaining, not excusing. Not to you or to myself. The courage is in just letting this be what it is. In letting these questions answer themselves. In being patient.

The courage is in letting myself be who I am.

This post is brought to you courtesy of Momalom and their Half-Drunk Challenge, Big Little Wolf and the Sugar Doll Award, and Bailey’s and my coffee pot. And my husband, who is kind enough to be entertained at the sight of me getting buzzed at 9:45. In the morning. Thanks to all.