Matricide

I'm going to admit something pretty horrible here. Sometimes I'd really love to just, at least, pop my mom one. You know?

Every time I think I've reached her. Every time I think maybe I get her, she turns around and makes me wrong. It hurts in ways I can't begin to describe. I wrote to a friend today:

Oh, the overwhelming desire to have the mom we dreamed of. The supportive, honest, wholesome mom who makes us feel good about ourselves and lifts us up before God. The Mom who other girls want for their mom's, but who is both a mom and a friend. The mom with morals and a sense of humor and perspective. It's hard, because she does exist. They are out there, right? I've met them. Only when I talk to their real daughters it's never that simple... but their moms are still better than mine... I think. Why can't my mom be like my Dad? He's so perfect at this... Now. But then that's good because for all my mom's faults and problems, when I sit down and "chronicle" the destruction of my self esteem as a child, Dad is just as big a factor as mom, sometimes bigger... So even his current "perfection" came at a terrible price.

So maybe all moms are awful. No, they can't be, because as I said, I've met the good ones. They are still human, still flawed, but they are good. They are a blessing to watch. I'd like to believe that my Nana was too. A good mom. Can't tell by her children though. How is that fair?

It really is a toss-up between being angry at her for making me feel like this and angry at myself for letting her make me feel this way. Every time I think I've got this nonsense licked... Here we go again.

This is why I am not married. This is why I won't have children. What if I'm just like her. Even if I'm not, why would I bring some one else (And then children) into this mess! Mental illness is really and truly the gift that keeps on giving...

Obviously I would be sad, hurt, devastated if my mom was gone and yet I've started dreaming about what my life would be like without her. Then I feel awful for the thought. I actually dared her to go ahead and kill herself once. I was so tired of the threats and the manipulation. Her therapist called me and asked that I not help like that in the future. I was 24 at the time. It was my first year teaching. I was wearing a heart monitor because we were trying to figure out if I had MVP and mom was more interested in having the world focused on her... I guess I lost my temper.

When I was in high school I wrote a poem about mom. When I read it you could have heard a pin drop. There were jaws open all over the room.

But the word truth has no meaning.
Past her lips the promise dies,
leaving me alone in heartache
because I believed her lies.

It's the most depressing and dark poetry I've ever written.

The worst part about this is that I love my mom so much. More than anything I wanted us to be close. When I was little, my Dad was my hero, but my mom was my example, my template and my best friend. She could build, fix or make anything. She tiled floors, painted the house, made crepes and home made pasta, created paper mache' works of art, knew where the best flowers were, could make dresses and dolls, she went to nursing school, grade school, nurse practitioner at one of the best medical schools in the nation. Who wouldn't want to be like her?

So tonight, I'm just angry and hurting and maybe even a bit broken.

I'll be fine tomorrow. I always am. I am my mother's daughter and I'll live. I just wish I could be more my father's daughter and learn to quit this.