And it seems to do me good, despite airing so much in public. I take and use all the tools I can find to claw my way up the muddy cliff face of my life. I’m not proud. I will use anything that works. If what I need doesn’t exist, I invent it. Anything to move forward, any distance.
I have likely said this before, because I have thought it many times, but if I were on my deathbed, the last person in the world I would want to see is my mother. She makes everything worse. She induces anxiety in me; she has never diminished it.
I would take my chances on the Hispanic cleaning lady who doesn’t speak English, or the night nurse.
In reality, of course, my children would be there, my ex-wife most likely, and 3-4 friends.
But I would ask them not to let her in.
I wonder how many people feel like this. It’s impossible to say, since I think many have never allowed themselves to go there. Many of us are taught a sense of duty to mothers.
But I can honestly say I have no memories of interactions with my mother which resulted in me feeling anything but worse. Perhaps I have forgotten. Perhaps this is my repressed memory. But nothing in me feels this is right. I got the fuck out of my home the first chance I got. I went back periodically, but nothing changed.
My mother, for her part, senses this–I am not the only one who feels this way, not by a long shot–but I think she has so robust a capacity for self delusion that she has always been able to convince herself that if people knew who she REALLY is, they wouldn’t feel that way. I think she herself will die believing this. I have given up hope that any meaningful relationship between us will ever be possible. Whatever happened to her, she will never get over. This is not my fault, and not my responsibility to fix.
Our duty is to look to the future, not the past, to heal our children, and leave the dead to bury the dead.