Choosing love

I saw "33 Variations" tonight--the rehearsal, that is, which is a good thing, because it was triggering, so I was glad to have the space to leave if I needed to. Which I didn't.

The degenerative disease at the center of the play, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is not the same that ails mom, but there are commonalities nonetheless. There are also commonalities among the mom characters--the fictional and the mine--that further depressed the trigger. But I'm going to try to stick with the medical aspects. I guess what surprised me the most (about my own emotional reaction) was how painful it was to see the fictional character in physical pain. Because it hurts me that mom is in physical pain. It upsets me, a lot. It upsets me even more because she's so stupid about it, but maybe being smarter about it (i.e., eating well or at least regularly, and making a point to sleep) wouldn't make much of a difference. Still, I wish she would try it.

Recently, but before I saw the play, I set an intention of trying to think as well as possible of mom, in spite of the constant fodder she provides for the opposite. She's given us plenty of material over the years; she's given me plenty of reasons to resent her, but she's failed, because I don't resent her. I don't even resent her for resenting me, but I'd prefer for her to stop, because it's only hurting her. The point is, even though I've filled these pages with stories largely unflattering to mom--and I have no regrets; writing about mom was the best way to cope with her unrelenting overbearingness--my intention is to hone in on the lovable human being buried under all that overbearingness. It pains me that when I think of mom these days, the first thing that comes to mind is 'the woman who tells me I'm fat," etc. So I'm reprogramming my associations with mom; I'm choosing to focus on all the things that make mom unique (in a good way). I'm choosing to remember the being full of love whom I know is there, concealed behind the resentment and negativity. I'm going to do my best to drown out the resentment and negativity, and I know it won't be easy because she wants it there. But all I know is that I have a choice in how I think of my mother, and, particularly with the bullshit well-documented, I choose to think on the good stuff.