Choosing love: how is it going?

It's rough going, is the short answer. The negative associations creep in before I notice them.

This morning, I thought about how maybe I should visit my parents--at the very least, I could take some bullets for dad. He hasn't asked me to; in fact, he's acknowledged that when I'm around, all the crap, or at least most of it, is diverted to me. But I digress (see how easy it is!); I thought about visiting, which got me thinking about looking for tickets, which got me thinking about (1) mom's accusing me of not caring about her enough to spend $30 to see her and (2) mom's accusing me of not "even" giving her my frequent-flier miles. [Specifically, (1) mom suggested that I take the Chinatown bus, and I balked, which she took as a reason to not talk to me for days; and (2) many years ago, we had something like this conversation:

Mom: How much is it going to cost you to fly there?
A.: I'm using miles.
Mom: You know, you can also give us your miles.
A.: Um, okay... but I'm using them.

Mom wasn't asking for miles for specific purpose; she was merely informing me that I could theoretically give her my miles. Okay, but why would I, because I just told her that I was about to use them. Right? So she later threw this in my face as, "we gave you so much and you wouldn't even give us your miles."

See! See how easy it was--how natural it was--the day after I said I'd actively quit focusing on all the crap mom has said so that I would instead focus on the good in mom? Not only do I fall into the pattern of justifying my comment by contextualizing it, but I also fall into judgment: what the f* is going on in mom's mind that she even goes there? what must be going on in her mind that she has to twist those kinds of conversations into weapons, against her daughter? WTF??

I am practicing non-judgment; I mean, literally practicing, i.e., actively choosing to do it, even if I don't quite have it yet. The first step is catching myself in these judgmental/justifying thoughts and running a different script. And that script is, good memories of mom. But the search for those memories set me back to judgment: I couldn't think of anything recently. To come up with happy mom memories, I pretty much have to go back to my early childhood.

That's not a coincidence: when I was little, mom didn't have to act out for control, because she had the control. When I was little, I wasn't yet a f*-up: I hadn't taken college classes she'd disapproved of, much less jobs she'd disapproved of; I had no career yet, so she could not agonize over what she perceived as my career failures; when I was too little to date, she couldn't see me as a failure for being single. She certainly could see my as a failure at all the extracurricular activities she'd enrolled me in, and she did. Which overwhelms any potential there is for thinking, "I'm so grateful to mom for exposing me to all those activities."

As always, it's not that I can't find things to be grateful to mom for; I just struggle for happy memories, especially recent ones. If I go far enough back, I remember her reading to me every night, no matter how tired she was--in part, as she later reminded me with pride, because I'd have a meltdown if she didn't. I also remember her taking me to the same movies, over and over and over again.

But the older I got--the more I came into my own, and the more daylight that opened up between my own and her image--the more she rebelled against the person I was becoming. And the more I rebelled against her rebellion, and the more fit hit the shan on both sides. Soon, just about every occasion was marked by acrimony. And it's only gotten worse with age, and it's only gotten worse with sickness. And yet--the age and sickness make me want to rip the Darth Vader mask off my mother, almost as much for her as for me--it's an imperfect analogy, since getting rid of the mask will only help her live--but also for me. I am trying, even though I didn't succeed on the first day. The only thing to do is keep trying, to keep practicing.