So this blog entry has nothing to do with food. No. Not today. I need to vent about my ongoing struggle to find a functional relationship with my own mother. My mother drives me to the edge with her unwillingness to LET GO of her assumed position as an authority figure in my life. I am 35 years old and expecting a child with my husband in 5 weeks. I am a healthy, intelligent and happily married woman in the prime of my life.
5 years ago today, I moved far away from her. I moved to the other side of the country to start fresh, to shed the baggage I carried because of my parents. I found a job in medical research entirely on my own, starting at the bottom of course as a lab assistant. There I battled a couple work place bullies. They were attempting to make my life a hell at work and push me out of a job I was good at. I stood up for myself by going to the management then the union. I handled it with poise and skill and the outcome was wonderful: I was promoted to a higher position where I was aiding scientists in their research and got a nice pay increase to go with it. I am very satisfied in my line of work. I feel I serve humanity so it is very spiritually fulfilling to me.
I am a happy and successful person in the world. I am strong but kind. I am fierce and fragile all at once. I love the person I am that I have created from the choices I have made. So why can't my mother?
She is stuck in some sort of way of relating to me that expired 15 years ago when I was 20 and living on my own. In all those years she still has not been able to learn to treat me with the basic level of respect she would give another adult. Any time Is peak to her on the phone all she does is nose and pry for bad news. It's like my stress or bad news gives her some sort of satisfaction. Like she feels its an opening for her to be the authoritative mother who can advise me, condescend to me, criticize me and basically treat me as though I was a stupid child.. This enrages me to the point I explode. I swear at her and insult her. I cannot handle it. She drives me to the edge.
She says she is trying to help but all she is doing is making things worse for me. I've talked, no pleaded with her, so many times in so many different ways to please stop trying to mother me, just be my friend, that's all is needed or wanted from her, but she refuses to get on board. She wants tot be the mother in charge of me or nothing at it seems. She cannot let go of that role ad it is too the point where I feel I need to cut her off completely.
It is TOXIC.
It's bad enough I had to grow up with no stability because of her mental problems. But now I am becoming a mother and I don't need her toxic dysfunction poisoning the psyche of my baby boy. I want to protect him from what I had to see. He deserves better. My husband and I do not scream and yell at each other like my parents did. If I let her come around I will be screaming and yelling at her and the cycle is then perpetuated. I will not allow her to poison my new found happiness with her presence.
The dilemma is that as much as I hate her I also pity her. I feel a deep sadness for her as she is pushing 70 and living alone. She does have siblings and friends to keep her engaged but I know she is terribly lonely. I truly feel for her. I am torn between my hatred and my pity and there don't see a resolution. I hate her because I pity her, and I pity her because I hate her. It is a lose-lose situation.
