One Step At A Time
It was interesting tonight at Women Talk as I shared my
motivational moment, a recent hurtful situation with my mom came to the surface and before I knew it I was sharing some the details. I had not planned that but I knew in my heart that I have un-forgiveness and that it is creating a barrier in my life.
On my way home this evening, I felt that I need to be honest about how I feel right now. That it is important to my healing and to creating forgiveness, to release the negative energy attached to my relationship with my mother.
I know that I cannot go into her home for more than a very short time, a few minutes; the environment wreaks havoc with my emotions. This hoarding… this mess… while I remember the penalty for missing a dust bunny or a toast crumb on the floor when I was growing up. Now you cannot even see a floor. I recollect one occasion of being yelled at and slapped for splashing some water from the water pan on to the floor, being told I could clean floors better when I was 4. I was only 6 at the time. It was then she told me that I would amount to nothing and that I would never be able to do anything right ever.
I invited her to come to our trailer at the campground when we were in my hometown last week. I thought it would be a happy compromise, we could spend some time together and I would not have to be in her house. She assured me she would call the next morning, the call never came that day or the next day or the day after that. I did drive by her place twice during the week and her vehicle was not home. Deep down I must confess I was relieved. It is not that it did not want to see her but I could not go into her house. I feel guilty for feeling that way, and I feel angry that she was abusive to me as a child for failing to meet her expectations and now she lives this way.
On Sunday we stopped in for a moment to see my dad, to wish him a happy father’s day. I did share with him that I waited for a phone call that never came and replied that she is afraid to drive… I cannot describe the emotion I felt in that moment…she was not home on two occasions that week and the distance from her home to the campground is merely blocks away with only the need to travel on one street from the north end to the south end of town. I needed to leave, I could not take anymore. She finds a way to drive to garage sales so she can bring home more crap but could not come see me! On the drive home I wasn’t sure if I should weep, scream or be angry. I chose to push it down until I could figure out a way to deal with it.
I don’t call often; her conversations are always filled with disappointment and negativity. My soul cries, I cannot fill my inner core with her words and thoughts. I know that I need to hear, see and feel positivity and gratitude for a change. If she would only regret things that happened in my childhood rather than regretting moving into the mobile home they live in now. She has told me enough times already about how they should have bought something else. Maybe they should have, but they didn’t and they have a choice about how to feel about the decision they did make. There is no silver lining for anything for her… I want to believe that everything happens for a reason whether it is good, bad or ugly. It is either a blessing or a lesson. Where is the gratitude? I ask her and she has nothing to say, grateful for nothing. I struggle with the relationship or lack thereof. What kind of daughter am I for feeling the way that I do? How do I create a relationship that isn’t there? Do I create a relationship or do I let go? I feel stuck, trapped without a solution. I cannot figure which emotions are going to hurt the least…the guilt, the anger, the sadness or regret in my own life. Then there are the unanswered questions… mostly why did she adopt me if she never intended to love me? Maybe she did not know how to love me or chose not to love too much. After all, she had dearly loved the child they lost just before her first birthday, close to Mother’s Day. I empathize for her pain, her wounds but I also hurt deeply for what never was or may never be for me – abandoned not once but twice as my birth mother threw me away too. I feel terrible for not trying harder to make a relationship with her when there are so many people that no longer have their mothers and they miss them so much.
I am not sure at this point the direction this will go but I know that I am on the right path, taking one step at a time to find the healing that I need.