What my parents have taught me
Contrast and contradictions
And ways in which love is shown
My mother taught me to put perfume on my neck and chest and inner wrists.
My dad taught me to slide down hills on a cardboard box.
My mother taught me the disappointment that comes with betrayal.
My dad taught me to be myself, unafraid and unapologetic.
My mom taught me affection could be shown by cleaning and cooking.
My dad taught me I could be brave.
My mother taught me vulnerability was dangerous.
My dad taught me to use a kite.
My mother taught me to be cautious and distrustful of every other human aside from her.
My dad taught me how to make pulleys with legos and sticks.
My mom taught me to enjoy music.
My dad taught me empathy.
My mom taught me sympathy.
My dad taught me to make useful things out of lego.
My mother tried to teach me to read sheet music.
My dad taught me to laugh unabashedly.
My mother taught me to be quiet.
My dad taught me gentleness.
My mother taught me niceness.
My dad taught me reassurance.
My mother taught me to share.
My dad taught me I could be selfish.
My mom taught me sacrifice.
My dad taught me determination.
My mother taught me guilt.
My dad taught me responsibility.
My mother taught me to shave my legs.
My dad helped me shave my mullet’s sides.
My mother taught me to pluck my eyebrows.
My dad didn’t speak a word or blink or do anything when I stopped shaving.
My mom taught me cross stitch embroidery.
My dad taught me to build a PC.
My mother taught me not to wear foundation.
My dad taught me to use knives and a screwdriver.
My mother taught me how to set a table “correctly”.
My dad gave me a basic circuits and electronics toy.
My mother gave me a barbie with a baby.
My dad gave me a microscope.
My dad taught me to use a cutter.
My mom taught me the meticulous order in which to put up a christmas tree and its decorations.
My dad taught me how to make scrambled eggs, rice, and pasta.
My mom taught me how to voiceact when telling stories.
My dad sang lullabies quietly to lull me to sleep and tuck me in.
My mom would cuddle my brother and I and we’d fall asleep in the same tiny bed with her, all tangled up.
My dad taught me confidence.
My mother taught me, indirectly and directly in different ways, strength of character.
My dad taught me how to love.
My mother taught me obsession.
My dad taught me to enjoy giving gifts; making others happy.
My mother taught me how to act proper in front of others.
My dad taught me how to lay boundaries.
My mother taught me that boundaries could still be violated.
My dad taught me to eat what I wanted.
My mother taught me self consciousness.
My dad taught me vulnerability didn’t mean weakness. (I’m still trying to really learn this one though).
My mom taught me to share yummy food with loved ones.
My dad taught me to be vulnerable with others.
My mom would make us chocolate in Santa Claus mugs when it was cold and we had chocolate.
My dad makes hot chocolate when it’s a cold day too.
My mother taught me how to lie.
My dad taught me I didn’t have to lie.
My mother taught me to hide.
My dad taught me to exist.
My mother wouldn’t let me get up from the table until I ate everything.
My dad trusts me to know when I’m full and has never forced me to eat when I don’t want to.
My mother taught me anger.
My dad taught me how to calm down and let anger dissipate.
My mom was great at tickling my brother and I. She’d make us breathless with laughter but she was gentle, never digging her fingers in.
My dad tickled me until I was breathless too, laughing with me all the while.
My mom taught me to value my work.
My dad taught me to value myself.
My mom taught me to dream of new possibilities.
My dad taught me I could reach for those possibilities in reality.
My mom taught me and my brother to love each other, to care about each other.
My dad taught me to apologize when I hurt someone.
My mother taught me to give excuses.
My dad taught me to have hope.
My mother taught me that being hopeless is poisonous.
My dad taught me to save money.
My mother taught me to worry about other’s thoughts. (Thankfully i grew out of this).
My mother gave me instability.
My mother dragged me back to a haunted house.
My dad buys sweet things when I’m on my period.
My mom used to buy me mint chocolates when there was extra change.
My dad cooks my cravings when he can tell I’m having them.
My mom would share her snacks with me.
My mother would never listen to me.
My mother never wanted me to be me.
My dad has made me cry only once in my life. He apologized.
My mother made me cry on the regular. At least twice a week. She never apologized.
My dad taught me to take the bus.
My mother would rather me never leave the house than take a bus alone.
My dad didn’t blink when I picked a pair of shoes from the boys section.
My mother criticized my shoes and lavender shirt to the point of tears.
My dad doesn’t blink at all when I wear a dress shirt from the male section of a thrift store and a nice tie.
I think my mother would have had a heart attack if she was alive. Or cried. Or both. Or insulted me until I felt enough pressure to take it off.
My dad encourages me to go out into the world, carve out my own life.
My mother cried and begged me not to leave her.
My dad hopes I’m able to move out into my own home someday.
My mother wanted me there forever. My mother dragged me back to a haunted house of nightmares because she couldn’t accept the distance.
My dad would sing me to sleep as a baby and take me to the park.
My mom made sure my baby self wanted for nothing. She rushed to me when I cried and played with me.
My dad played with me until I stopped playing as a teen.
My mom played with me when I was a baby. Then ocassionally, every once in a blue moon.
My dad loves me. He has never even raised his voice at me, much less a hand or a belt. He has never insulted me in any way. He makes an effort to know which series I’m watching and which books I want to read. He makes mental notes of small comments I make, which result in christmas or birthday gifts down the line. He hugs me and cries with me when I cry. He helps me breathe when I’m having a panic/anxiety attack. He asks me if I want a red or purple tie. He remembers all the stories I’m writing because I’ve rambled so much. He doesn’t question why I dress like I do, or cut my hair like I do. He doesn’t push traditional feminity onto me at every turn.
My mom must have loved me at some point. When I was a baby, a toddler. A tiny person with no developed will or personality. She cradled me close and made sure I didn’t cry for long. She dressed me up in nice dresses and cute outfits. She let herself imagine I’d be who she wanted me to be. I think she did love me then, maybe. Maybe then it was love.
My mother’s love was obsession. It was violent and poisonous. She didn’t really love me; she loved the idea of me. Of a companion, friend, and confidant. Not a daughter, not a person with their own will, personality, wishes and opinions.
She insulted other older women who got too close to me and cried later asking me if I was replacing her.
She hated that I dated a guy.
She disliked all my friends, encouraged distrust and suspicion.
She disliked family members I was close to, sowing distrust.
She rose more than her voice and a belt at me, more than once.
She insulted me and swore at me many times.
She criticized my clothes.
She made indirect jabs at my weight and appearance.
She hated that I was hairy and blamed my dad’s genes.
She made light/fun of me for my panic/anxiety attacks (many which she caused).
She pretended she was blonde all her life and blamed my dad for me being a brunette (I had the shock of my life when I learned after her death she was actually a natural brunette).
She blamed my dad for me having pimples (as if they weren’t a normal part of puberty and hormonal changes).
She manipulated me emotionally, made sure I felt guilty and responsible for her and my little brother; guilted me into going back to that house I hated, where all my traumas took place (and when I had nightmares while staying there, made light and fun of me even as I cried and tried to comfort in her embrace).
She wanted me to ditch higher education, look for a call center job and maintain her and my little brother, all so I would stay with her. (Of course, she wouldn’t get a job, but she’d rather me forsake my future, my dreams, my education, and my life back home for her.)
At a point, it didn’t even feel like familial attachment anymore. It felt….weird. Just bloody weird. Creepy. She was unhealthily attached to me.
She didn’t want me to have other older women as friends or confidants, she didn’t want me to have male friends, she disliked all my friends period, she felt jealous of adult women who were close to me in any way, she cried and begged when I said I wanted to study abroad, she resented the fact that I got along so well with dad, she didn’t like me being independent; in her own bloody words, she’d rather us all starve together than me being safe, happy, and stable in another country. In her own words, she always wanted a confidant, a friend, a little doll she could dress up and confide in.
“I dreamed of having a daughter. A built-in best friend, a companion, and confidant who I could hang out with, talk about everything, dress up, who I could trust, and wouldn’t leave me.”
The more I think about it the more icky it feels. She had a bit of a “boy mom” personality, as they call it. But with me, her daughter(or who she perceived as a daughter anyway)…
Some interactions felt… weird. I don’t want to say inc*st8s but…looking back there were many weird ass moments that I can’t really think of an excuse for.
She wanted a pet she could keep by her side as a companion and dress it up however she wanted, train it to act a certain way, have it agree to all she said and give her attention all the time. And pet is the word I use because no person would behave like that.
I wished making a list like this, of good and bad, of contradictions and contrast, would perhaps reveal more positive sides to my mother. But it didn’t not really. It just reminded me that the bad outweighed the good.
Because no amount of bedtime stories and mint chocolate could possibly make up for the insults, the manipulation, the gaslighting, the physical violence, the victim blaming, etc.
The sad truth is my dad is my hero. And for a very long time, my mother was a villain in my story. My dad allowed me to move forward. My mother dragged me back three steps with every move I made.
I’m still working through all of it. All the trauma and resentment, and the bitterness I feel over the unresolved everything she left with me when she died; having never taken accountability for her actions.
I grieve for what could have been. I mourn the good moments, but remember the bad above all. Because some good moments and kind actions, don’t make up for all the bad ones. It’s not comparable. The scales are not even. You’d drive yourself nuts trying to measure it out. It’s not as if one really good moment equals to 60 kilos and one bad moment is 30 kilos in comparison.
It doesn’t work like that. Trying to figure out a weight and measuring system for good and bad moments in an abusive relationship would drive anyone nuts.
Sometimes it’s harder to accept that they might have loved you at some point, than to accept that they never did. Because to accept that maybe they did at some point, is to accept that they stopped.That something in you, in who you became, made then stop loving you.
But she did love me at the beginning-maybe. Before it turned into a poisonous obsession. Before there were shouts and hits, there was love. And in between the bad memories, there are bite sized moments of affection. Not quite love, because love is not a momentary thing. It shouldn’t be this temporary thing you only get scraps of sometimes. It is a state of being.
But there were moments of affection. 
And perhaps, I can learn to live with that. She didn’t really love me, but she had her good moments. The good doesn’t outweigh the bad.
However I’m getting better at holding both strands of thought in my mind:
She loved me. She cared for my wellbeing. (at the start)
She didn’t love me. She didn’t actually care for my wellbeing in any way (at the end).
Sometimes processing childhood trauma and abuse means having to sort out when love stopped being love. What love is, and how it should never be.
And sorting and categorizing the contradictions of the cycle of abuse: the few good moments and the many bad moments.
