She was always sick. There was the gall bladder surgery, tuberculosis,
pneumonia, pleurisy on her lungs. And drugs; endless amount of drugs. In the
60s and 70s it was Valium. After that it was Zanex, years and years of Zanex;
along with a host of other drugs for just about everything you could think of. Along
with all of this she drank; Jim Beam, sometimes right from the bottle. Her “nerves”;
I heard more about her nerves than I ever did about how she really “felt” about
anything. And endless stories of illness and operations she’d had. This was the
center of her life; herself and her “nerves”. She was my first mother.
My second mother had bleached blond hair and wore ruby red lipstick.
She paid attention to me and I think if I hadn’t been her husband’s daughter,
she might have loved me. I know she tried to convince herself and me that she
was more of a mother to me than the drugged up alcoholic, and to a certain
degree she was right. But she could never get past her jealousy of me. She
could never take me fully into her heart and feel about me like she felt about
her other two daughters. She just wasn’t capable.
And then there was my third mother, who was actually my
first mother. She gave birth to me, held me, then gave me away to strangers she
had never met. She lied to the agency about her heritage and set my life on
path of a never ending quest to find out who I really am. When she had a chance
to right this horrible wrong, not only did she not want it, but she refused to
tell me the truth and turned the woman who could have been my true sister
against me. For no other reason than she didn’t want her to be close to me. She’s
been hiding something for years, something about my real father, and I will
probably never know what it is.
Mother’s day is coming in about 6 weeks. Did you know that
Mother’s day in England is on a different day than here in the United States?
For most people, mother’s day is a day to remember how good their mothers were,
to make them breakfast in bed, and celebrate her motherhood. And for women who are mothers, it’s a day to
be pampered by those who love you. For people who have lost their mother’s, it
is a time to remember their mother’s life and celebrate the fact that they had
them as long as they did.
Mother’s Day was always a hard day and continues to be so
even though now, I have a son. I raised him from the time he was twelve and
took him into my heart as my own. From the time he came to live with us (he is
my Ex-husband’s son actually) Mother’s Day got a little easier. Because instead
of thinking about the fact that I had had three mothers, all of them messed up
in some serious way, I thought about my son. Looking back, I made some
mistakes, I wasn’t perfect, but they don’t give you a manual for these things
do they? And because I didn’t get him till he was twelve years old, there was
damage already done that I just was not able to undo. But I love him anyway,
very much and in my heart he will always be my only son. So though he’s
twenty-four now with a son of his own and his father and I are separated, I
still think of him on Mother’s Day.
For the past couple of years though, I have also been
thinking about my own mothers. They laid down this horrible blue print on my psyche.
From years of torment, neglect and abuse I became this woman who lets people
into her life without fully examining who they really are. Once my brain
decides I want them in my life, it shuts off the part that recognizes the alcoholic,
the man who uses people because he is alone and isolated in a remote part of
the world, the habitual liar who lied when I knew him TWENTY FIVE years ago and
never changed, and the man who was completely unavailable to me and yet called all the time. It pretty much did me in and even though it’s been months, I’m still
trying to come to grips with that one.
I let these men into my life before I fully realized what I
was dealing with. I pushed down all the red flags and ignored what was right in
front of my face. And now, now that I know this blue print exists thanks to my
ever dedicated therapist who saw me for over a year and helped me understand
what was actually happening in my brain and why? Now, I can’t let anyone in. I
can now see the normal man, the man who loves his children, the
man I’ve known since I was in my twenties who tells me
he loves me, the man who texts me every day with something nice and has been
there for me through thick and thin for the last five years. There are lots of
normal men, and women as well that I could let into my life in order to not be
alone. But I think at this point, I want to be alone. I don’t want the
responsibility of being involved with people. I’m scared. I don’t want the heartbreak,
the drama, the roller coaster ride.
I’ve had people who have read my blog ask me why
I bare my soul in this public setting. I do it because I am compelled to write.
I do it in the hopes that something I write will strike a chord with someone
else who is maybe going through or has gone through similar things. I do it
because sometimes it helps to know that there are others like you in world. I
believe for the most part, most people have had good experiences with their
mothers but not all of us have. And so I write for those of us who haven’t. I
write for those who never knew the security and warmth of a mother’s love and nurturing.
I write to let others know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Even
though I actually may not be able to see it at the moment, I know it’s there. And
I’m just praying like hell that light is not the light from an oncoming train.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
