I was ‘raised’ by people with one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel.
I vividly remember hearing over and over how ‘Uncle Sam’ was going to pay for grandpa’s funeral because he helped build the pipeline in Alaska.
The irony? There have never been any funerals.
Not for my grandfather whose Alzheimer’s had him wandering off and having long conversations with dead relatives before lung cancer waltzed in and took him out.
Not for my grandma who grew up a ‘rich Oakie because they had 2 mattresses,’ picked cotton in the fields, turning her skin into papery wrinkles in her late forties. The family ‘upgraded’ from the silver Twinkie by the river into the double-wide in a park in town because of 2 of my grandma’s car accidents. A police officer hit her and driving away from the courthouse, another one rear-ended her.
I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.
Not for my father who spent most of my life drunk or high, hiding from me- the reminder of my mother that he couldn’t face. The woman who broke his heart that he never got over.
My father got custody of me and my younger brother in the divorce, so that’s where I was raised- in a house with my brother and father with his parents as the backup babysitters for the times we couldn’t be home alone.
I was raised in a house where, by the time I hit puberty, I knew I didn’t belong. I wasn’t one of them. I was like my mother. “A champagne appetite on a beer budget, riding my high horse” all over the little 2-bedroom condo where we lived. My father’s bedroom was the garage.
When finally left and I moved in with my mother at 16, it became apparent quickly that our similarities were so much that she saw me not as a child that needed to be parented, but as an equal. An adult.
Someone that she didn’t need to protect from anything- not her lecherous husband who kissed his grown daughters on the mouth and talked about our breasts at the dinner table. Not the patients at the rehab center they ran where I was a staff member- the grown men whose beds I eagerly hopped in and out of under their roof.
Not her best friend who was threatening to kick my ass. She was the girlfriend of the staff member with who I was involved for several months. Her 31-year old boyfriend was 3 days out of San Quentin when we met. It took less than 2 weeks before we were exchanging passing gropes in dark hallways and love letters, carelessly discarded where my mother found one.
Funny story- I’m Facebook friends with Mr. SQ and he’s popped up over the years. The last time we talked, I mentioned how young I was when we were together.
He remembered that I was young- too young to be sitting in a bar in the Haight with him, too young to be walking down Ashbury looking to score meth, too young to be talking about running away to Europe together. Too young to be the one comforting him in secret when his girlfriend miscarried their son.
He didn’t realize I was that young. He was shocked when I told him that I was only 16 when we were having those adventures together. Then he asked how I knew what I was doing. Then he apologized. Then I gave him the link to Twitter for my alter ego- a creator of BDSM leaning adult content.
For all our similarities, I had to unfriend and block my mother earlier this year. Between her dismissive anti-feminist comments during all of the ‘me too’ posts to her anti-vax stance during the pandemic and all the insanity in between, I just couldn’t do it anymore.
When I tried to talk to her about I’d spent my entire childhood being told how ‘smart’ and ‘mature’ I was for my age rather than being parented, she replied that I was always the one teaching her things.
More proof in her mind that when, at 3 years old I looked up at her, hands on my little hips, and scolded, “When I was your mommy that’s not how we did it!” it was the truth. She managed to make that my reality, despite not being my custodial parent.
My mother was just released from the hospital where she was battling COVID.
She had been there a few days before my brother finally tracked her down. She was so disoriented that the nurse asked him to verify that she has 2 children and where she lived.
I had a video chat with last week her where she paused between each word to take jagged breaths as she described her lunch- seemingly the most amazing cheeseburger she’d ever had. She’d been calling friends to tell them it had been “swell” and that she didn’t think she was going to make it.
Now, she’s in a rehab facility somewhere near my brother in Utah. She didn’t tell him she was getting out of the hospital or where she went.
He still seems to think that the stories about ICUs running out of beds are just media propaganda. He also had COVID last month, right after his wife had surgery. He went to work as a Walmart manager for a full week, thinking he had a cold before he lost his sense of smell.
These are the people I came from.
One foot in the grave, one foot on a banana peel. And no matter how hard I fight it, I feel myself slipping.
Work, couch, bed, repeat- the hamster wheel life of the pandemic.
Hubungan antara anak dan ibu boleh jadi merupakan hubungan yang paling unik diantara hubungan-hubungan lain yang ada di dunia. Ibu, sebagai orang yang melahirkan kita ke dunia adalah orang yang secara mendalam kita sayangi. Namun demikian, luka paling dalam juga sangat mungkin terjadi karena kita merasa terluka oleh beliau atau juga sebaliknya.
Idealnya, anak memiliki hubungan yang baik dengan ibu sehingga ibu menjadi satu-satunya orang terpenting di dunia, yang cintanya dicari, yang lukanya dihindari, dan yang kebahagiaannya menjadi semangat kita dalam menjalani hari-hari.
Tapi, kenyataan yang ada tidak selalu berbicara demikian. Ada anak-anak yang memiliki hubungan yang cukup rumit dan tidak ideal dengan ibunya. Alih-alih mencintainya sepenuh jiwa, ia bahkan merasa tidak memiliki alasan untuk mencintai dan membanggakan ibunya. Ada pula yang kebingungan bagaimana caranya untuk dapat menjalin hubungan yang baik, lekat, dan dekat dengan ibu. Tidak hanya itu, ada juga yang masih menyimpan dendam atau kebencian kepada ibu atas luka-luka pengasuhan yang pernah terjadi. Kitakah itu? Bagaimana bisa kita berdamai dan menyelesaikan itu semua.
Yuk, diskusi di kelas Heal Yourself periode Desember ini dengan tema Heal Your Mother Issues bersama @gorgeouspipi pada tanggal 13 Desember 2019 nanti. Untuk pendaftaran, silakan melalui http://bit.ly/healyourmotherissue
All I did was say that I thought something said marvel instead of margarita and she starts going ape-shit about how I always disrespect her. Then when I answer another one of her questions, actually going into why the hell I always talk about things she doesn’t care about, she twists my words from “everyone ignores me” to “you always ignore me”.
Does anyone else have this problem with their parent? I need to know if I’m alone here or not
