Monday, August 29, 2011

Opening the bag...

As with many posts, I've been sitting on this one for awhile and sorting through emotions to see if I still truly feel what I feel, and whether or not I can share it coherently.  I've spent the last few months recovering from my mother's most recent departure from my life and analyzing the bigger picture to see if it was me or if it was her.  I'm leaning more toward the latter as I go over our history time and again.
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I am a woman with four moms. My friend's mom who was there to stand in when mine wasn't, my stepmom who was the mom I needed and really didn't have to be, my sorta-stepmom who still claims me even though she hadn't heard from me in nearly 14 years, and my birth mom who dragged me along for 15 years then left me for greener pastures... but still claimed a stake in my accomplishments and bragged like she was responsible for me doing well in anything.

I may have learned lots from my birth mom, but damn if I can find any warm-fuzzies for her right now.

I, as many of my contemporaries and peers, had a f*cked up childhood.  I helped raise my mom, and apparently, I failed.  I was born in 1980 to two early-twenties, blue collar folks.  Dad was a mechanic who could fix about anything with wheels and some things without.  Mom was a drifter who could weld and do just about anything a guy could do- well, up until she ended up falling at work and earned a full-torso cast until her back healed.  I'm still fuzzy on how they even came to be in the same town long enough for her to take notice of him, but they were, she did, they got married, and I was created.  Then things went south sometime after I was born and she took off with me on this grand adventure of f*ckery.

I could just be sad for the times I was told we'd go to the park and didn't, or play dolls and didn't, but there was sooooo much more wrong with our relationship and life than that.

By the age of eight, I had memorized the numbers for the police, the sheriff, and my two closest living relatives.  Not because it was something cool to do, but because occasionally, husband or boyfriend of the year would go off the deep end with the booze, or I'd wake up alone in the house in the middle of the night... neither are great scenarios when you're an eight year old.

When I was in third grade, I was not only qualified to help her make decisions on relationships (when to divorce/dump), but was also ready to take on house parties if her man of interest was also sporting a third grader.  Imagine my confusion when after being taken to a house party one weekend, I shared for show/tell what I had done that weekend, and my teacher said something to the effect of "I don't think that's an appropriate activity for someone your age to participate in."

By the time I was ten I had moved more than twenty times, usually because we were moving out of one of her relationships.  Some of the places we lived in were so far beyond an acceptable standard of living I wonder how none of the family members managed to call CPS.  It was an odd life.

When I was a freshman in high school, she dumped me.  Well, maybe not dumped.  She had run out of date-able men where we lived and had hooked up with some cowboy from the Oklahoma/Kansas border area and gave me the option of either moving away from my friends to come live with her and her new (and infinitely creepy) boyfriend, or stay in the town I grew up in with someone who she used to be married to.  I chose the latter.  A year after that I moved to my real dad's house though for some stability away from her.

When I graduated high school, she and her meth-head husband (whom we will refer to as #6) came to my graduation party, but had to leave early to go score 'meds' for him.  She was a rack of bones from shooting the shit herself, but the inner puppy in me was just happy mom came to my graduation.  I didn't want to see the situation for what it was... a photo op for her picture frames and another story of my success as a human being for her to share with others.

A year after high school, mom and #6 took me on a 'family' trip to Colorado.  I was 19.  #6 decided that after a long day on the slopes, the responsible thing to do would be to go to Blackhawk, CO for some black jack and craps.  All his (15 year old) son and I wanted was to find FOOD.  We wanted to eat a meal.  You have to be 21 to enter Blackhawk, CO.  Two 'adults' in the car, two teens.  She decided #6 had a great idea and told us that I was to pretend to be 21, the boy was to pretend to be 18, and we would sit quietly with a roll of quarters apiece until #6 had enjoyed himself fully and was ready to eat, too.  It's all fun and games until the Gaming Commission agents show up... yeah, interrogation by the gaming commission was awesome.  I was humiliated and ashamed for even allowing myself to go along with this idiotic plan.

When I turned 23, I married my first husband.  A couple weeks before that though, we visited her.  Come to think of it, we really hadn't even talked about marriage yet at that point... I did some stupid things back then, but I digress.  I was 23 and smitten with a guy.  I had brought him to meet her, and we were on our way to meet his mom.  Mine thought it would be a great idea to go to a party at her friends' house where there was going to be booze, fireworks, and eventually food.  The first two are always a bad combo.  I was the only relatively sober person there, and because of her stellar decision making, had to stay at a party that I didn't even want to be at.  I fell asleep in my chair and had to leave the party with third degree burns when her friend lost control of the drunken fireworks display.  

When I divorced my first husband at 26, she was divorcing her seventh husband at the same time.  She took it as a sign that we were like totally close and in tune and stuff.  I took it as a sign that we both made REALLY BAD DECISIONS and that I had a cycle to break.  Being 26 and starting over again from scratch sucks, but seeing a woman nearing 50 and starting over again and again and again and again... having nothing to show for all those years but a trail of paperwork of bad decision making and horrible financial management skills, well- that wasn't for me.

When I was in my 28th year, when I became pregnant.  I lost the first pregnancy that year, but a month later conceived again.  When I lost the first one, she was angry because she had already told all of her co-workers that she was going to be a grandma and now she wasn't.  I was angry because she had the gall to say *that* to me as well as demand that I have a D&C done just to make sure "nothing was left behind"... believe me, after what I went through, nothing was left behind.  I did however leave her behind when we conceived again.   I left her out of the loop until around, oh, 14 weeks or so.  I didn't even want to tell her then, but I slipped up and you can't un-ring that bell.
I spent the rest of the pregnancy with weekly phone calls from her demanding that I tell her names we'd picked out, the sex of the baby, and everything that we weren't even telling our *close* friends and relatives around here.  I hated it.  I hated talking to her because every call spiraled down into her demanding that we give her *something* because she's my mother.  I wanted to give her nothing, because she was more of an anchor around my neck, or a group of crabs in a bucket, than she was the wind beneath my wings.

Four months after our son arrived (it's not like it was a surprise, she knew he was coming but didn't prepare or save any money for a trip up here), I had to spend $300 to get her up here to see our son.  And it was like a negotiation to get her to plan for time off for this trip.  Then she spent the time she was here either shit-faced, smoking, or obsessively cleaning our house.  She managed to tell my husband that his depression was going to make me divorce him (yeah, because I was totally bluffing when I said "for better or for worse" in my vows...).

Fast forward to April of this year.  After nearly two years of hearing every week how she wished she was closer and that she'd like to be a part of my and my son's life, she decided she was going to move here.  To my house.  We didn't believe her until she actually did it... and it was terrible.  First came the obsessive cleaning.  Then came the man-bashing.  The re-telling to my husband that she was sure I'd leave him someday.  Her pets destroying property.  Her meltdowns.  The confession that she was really drying out because her last week before she moved she spent in a drunken daze with the boyfriend she was leaving.  The smoking.  Ignoring her only grandson in favor of being on the phone all her waking hours.  Telling people she shouldn't have given away her horse to move up here.  Telling me that if there were ever a custody battle that no one would back me and she'd be all I had to help me keep my son.  Telling me that she's never given up a pet, they're too important (but she's given me up three times now).  Telling me that I just don't know how hard it is to quit substances (yeah, I totally don't.  That's why I've been sober for five years and some change.), and that she just can't do it.  She left me for the last time in June.  After saying horrible things about and to me, my husband, and my child.

I'm sure some of her behavior could be explained by some psychiatric/psychological disorder words: narcisistic personality, bipolar disorder, disociative personality disorder, etc.  I suppose she could be considered the reason I have a BS in Psychology, because I spent most of my life wondering what the hell was wrong with her.

I guess I can't say she didn't do *anything* for me.  Through her bizarre behavior during my childhood, she inadvertently taught me several things.
1.  Other people are not responsible for my happiness.  Not spouses, friends, children, or even pets.  I am responsible for choosing to either be happy or not.  Nobody deserves that kind of expectation placed upon them, and by placing that expectation I will only be disappointed.
2.  Commitment does not mean constantly looking for loopholes and reasons to leave.  Commitment means being fully present and unswervingly dedicated to something- whether it's to a cause or to a relationship, if you're in, you're in. (yeah, I didn't learn that one from positive examples)
3.  Marriage is between two people.  Not two people, plus whomever would make one happy in the moment or would be a great piece of revenge.  (see #1 above)  Plus, it's damned complicated to add more than one person to a marriage...
4.  Parenting is important.  A full social calendar is not.  My son will not be waking up completely alone in the house during his childhood, because I will be here.  If I am not here, there will be someone here.
5.  People are more important than things, pets, and the like.  If it comes to a choice between a cat and my child or husband, I'd willingly put down the pet for them.  Hell, I'd sacrifice the pet on an altar if it guaranteed my family's safety or something like that.
6.  There is not a substance on this earth that can replace real love and happiness.  Nothing will ever come out of a bottle to do that, and it's pointless to keep trying to find it there.  So I don't.
7.  There is no statute of limitations on the hurt you cause your child.  Make commitments and keep them, no matter how small.
8.  Just because you're related by blood does not mean you have to keep taking the same crap.

That's right.  I have committed to breaking the cycle.  I have no desire to even have her in my life anymore because it always ends with me being a bragging point for her and her leaving me for whatever makes her happy in the moment.  So, it may seem cruel and callous, but I haven't talked to her since the day she left.  She doesn't need or want me in her life, she wants the idea of me in her life.  I'm sick of just being an idea.  I'm more than an idea.  I'm a person, dammit.  I'm a person who deserves to be loved and cared for, who deserves real and meaningful relationships, not just some pretty postcard bragging right status.

After thirty years, I've established that I deserve better.  So I have better.  I still have three moms who are all of that and more.