Tomorrow will be two months since maybe the last time I’ll ever talk to my mom. I’ve been feeling really good for a few days and told myself “You can handle reading the last message she wrote you that day. It can’t be that bad.” Not sure how bad I can say it is but it isn’t encouraging. Nothing in it tells me responding is a good idea.
The message essentially stated that my mother “shut down” and “always has” when someone is angry at her. Her request is that she be able to hang up the phone or disconnect with me whenever she is too uncomfortable. We spent four months not talking because she decided I told her not to contact me and now I guess we get to spend another couple months waiting for her to get comfortable confronting her abuse of me. She’s obviously allowed to disengage from contact with me – she’s done it for most of the past year.
Nothing was stopping her from hanging up the phone which is what she wanted to do after I didn’t fall for the usual emotional bait and switch where she withholds emotionally charged information until you’re mad at her and then she goes nuclear to get you to back off. She was in fact speaking and I know this because I can recall her saying “I’m sure that’s what you’ll tell yourself” and “I’m sure that’s what you think” and “maybe if you had a relationship with your sister you would know…” and “you have hurt me enough to last a lifetime” and “you aren’t perceiving this correctly” and “you don’t want to listen to things you don’t want to hear.” What a thing to hear from the person whose voice wakes you up at 3 AM saying the meanest shit about you anybody has ever said.
Our memories of the time shared together are very different and at this point all I can do is laugh to keep from crying. Apparently while “shut down” my mom told me that first off I have no relationship with my sister which was news to me! Every time I have confronted my sister with the fact that we have nothing but superficial contact she has told me that there’s no problem and that of course I matter to her! Of course mattering to my sister or my mother means that you start and stop existing the moment you can offer them something.
And I guess the next nugget of wisdom I need to not remember (because it’s not something I want to hear) is that I’m just telling myself these things are happening. In my mind I reached out and gave my mom an ultimatum to get therapy or get out of my life and she followed that with “okay” and four months of silence but I guess I just made that up too? I’m just telling myself this is giving my mom a second chance. Man, it’s so crazy how I can not only hold down a full time job and take care of myself as an adult but also repeatedly bail my mom out of her latest bad decision but I don’t know what’s going on in conversations with other adults.
It’s the same old same old. They do what they want, they make it clear they’re fine without me and the price of admission to come back is agreeing to the narrative. At this point I know I’d rather fucking die because I almost did.
My mom used to always tell me that who I was when I was angry was who I really am. She was just talking about herself. She was just warning me. She did try to warn me. If she was a boyfriend I would have never stayed after the statement “you should be afraid of me” but I guess I was just fifteen years old and didn’t have much of a choice. Boyfriends don’t get 18 years of federally protected isolation with the person society tells you defines your worth and deserves your loyalty.
The conversation I had with her, the anger I felt and how I talked to her has no place in my life. It isn’t part of a healing experience. I find no healing in having accountability for abuse compared to the abuse itself. I find no healing in being talked to the same way as her ex-husband, my other abuser. In the gaslighting so deep and constant that I truly have to consider if my mother has problems with memory or perceiving reality.
Then I remember, no, she’s just a fucking asshole to me. She talks to me the way she does because it has worked for her all her life and I do mean WORKED. That’s all that’s happening. Just like my ex. My brain has tried to find a reason why people treat me like they do and honestly I think the answer is because I don’t leave. Almost a year ago my mom told me “Tell me when you’re almost ready to walk away.” That question in and of itself – to let you know when you’re about to lose me so then you can start trying – is devastating. Let me know when I should start trying. The only real answer to that question is “before now but I guess at this point never.”
Queer Pandemic 