Reflections on mom

I'm making an effort to cut mom more slack in light of her age and health issues. The age part in and of itself hasn't changed her, in the sense that it hasn't altered her personality, but it has exaggerated her. She's herself, only more so. Even the memory "loss": I don't buy it. Mom has always had a poor memory, at least in part because she couldn't be bothered to use it. And over the years, I've heard her own up to using repetition as a strategy. If you ignore her once, she'll just keep asking or stating until you either do what she says or snap (see years' worth of this blog, as well as its title). Of course mom tried to make it about me--about my resentment, my bitterness, my need to count and keep score--over something little like how many times she told me to change out of my dress; it's just a microcosm for everything else. Both in the sense that counting calls her out, and in that her response to being called out is to pin it back on you.

What mom has refused to comprehend for many years now is that there's only so much BS that dad and I, among other people, will take. She may be convinced that the problem is us and not her, but she can't credibly convince us. Some people refuse to acknowledge the fact that their behavior has consequences (see second letter-writer here) and that self-respecting people will insulate themselves from abuse, often by withdrawing from you. Really skilled abusers will devastate their victims' self-esteem to the point where they think they're dependent, but mom is not a skilled abuser. She's just deluded. She thinks that the paradigm of my childhood, when she had power over me, when her anger upset me, still applies; she thinks I still care what she thinks. She thinks she can just do whatever she wants and spin it however she wants, and if she believes it, I'll believe it.

I was thinking about why her rant the other day--on why I'm single--didn't hurt me. It hurt in the sense that it reminded me that my mother is capable of saying such things. But I didn't internalize or take seriously the accusation itself, mostly for two reasons: (1) I'd already analyzed and owned up to my own bad behavior in my last relationship; and (2) Nobody with a brain buys into the idea that single people are actually worse people. There's plenty of discussion of the latter on this blog, sometimes linked to articles. But there's also plenty of evidence among everyone we know: I have a lot of single friends, coworkers. They are in no way systematically inferior to my married friends and coworkers. Period. With regard to my own behavior, I know I've written here more than once that it wasn't perfect. It also was not beyond the pale in terms of what people do in stressful situations. I was very open not only to myself, but when I talked to friends. I admitted that I said a few $hitty things (not on purpose; I didn't realize it at the time), and I also had really $hitty things said to me. Part of me even expected at least some friends, who are really, really nice people, to say, "you are a horrible person! I can't believe you said that!" but--and yes, my mom would point out that they were being polite--for the most part not only reminded me that I'm human and prone to mistakes, but that I'm miles ahead of most people they know, who wouldn't admit to any fault on their own. The overarching message from friends who heard about what happened, including the incidences of bad behavior on my part, was, "you deserve better," not "I don't know what hope there is for you." If anything--and I'm omitting details because I'm done rehashing, and out of respect for the privacy of my ex--there was a lot of, "thank god you're out of that situation." The person who had spent the more time with both of us together than anyone else said, "the person you're with should inspire you to be a better person, not dumb you down." You get the point. With all that in mind, whatever it was about me--about my personality--that inspired the latest change in my relationship status, seems to have saved my life. Mom may think she knows what it is, but what I know is that I deserve better.