Why My Relationship With My Mother Is In Shambles
A Letter To Ma
Dear Mom,
I haven’t liked the way you treated me for a long time now. It took me years to even notice because you’re like a pufferfish. You give off the image that you’re a big person with a big heart when in reality you’re just a small little thing.
You have neglected me since the moment I was born. You left me in my car seat and barely interacted with me. Then as I grew up you found ways to keep from interacting with me. Whether it be my step-dad, work, my behavior, fatigue, etc. and you still can’t admit fault nor accept responsibility for neglecting me. You constantly guilt me, punish me, or hurt me to keep me at arm’s length so you won’t get hurt. Then when I moved to my dad’s, rather than try to keep our relationship afloat your response was to reject me before I could reject you. Then proceeded to play the victim as if it was my fault that our relationship is bad.
It was like I was Nora from “A Doll’s House” Being your son. You only interacted with me when it was convenient for you and those interactions were superficial. Watching TV and playing video games is hardly an intimate interaction. Perhaps the best example of this was when I first came down for the summer after moving. Rather than, like my dad, taking off from work or making sacrifices to spend time with me, you instead still went to work and slept through most of my visit. The only interaction I had with you was watching TV. On top of that, you made no plans to make my visit fun. Dad would plan trips to Las Vegas, North Carolina, New York, etc. whereas the only thing you had planned was taking me to meet your work friends so you could show off your “smart kid” who was going to college off like a trophy.
Every action you take is for your benefit. Your words still ring in my ears from when I asked you to leave my abusive step-dad: “Your brother and sister need their father.” It wasn’t an objection to love, it was an excuse. If my siblings having their father was so important, why did you turn my dad away when he offered to marry you on the account of my conception. Where was my happy ending with my dad?
In reality, you wanted to stay with Mark, my step-dad, because the social dynamic caused us to worship you or see you as a hero. Every time Mark would go too far by hitting me with a frying pan, throwing a bucket at me, knocking on my head with his knuckle, starving me, etc. you would step in and save the day. You made yourself the knight in shining armor when you were a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In addition, you never invested in my future or made sacrifices regarding my interests. For instance, music, math, and writing are just a few of my interests and all you could muster was buying me instruments that were cheap and often broke within the first week. Also, you took full claim of investing in my interests when my dad more often than not would bankroll my interests for you, like the bass you got me. If that wasn’t bad enough you also didn’t get me any instruction on how to play those instruments. Since I was a kid who was indoctrinated into the public school system, I was convinced I had to be taught by someone and couldn’t teach myself. In addition, since I didn’t have a computer, smartphone, or device with internet access, I was unable to research to teach myself.
You like to say you’re a good mother because you got me clothes I like, presents for holidays and birthdays, food, and made sure I had a roof over my head. But clothes, food, and shelter were required to keep me, presents and my style preference kept me happy and blind so I wanted to stay, and the roof and me sticking around were for your happiness.
If someone doesn’t agree with you, you feel the need to punish them. You’ve made that pretty clear by neglecting me, ignoring me, and shaming me the past few years for choosing a better life for myself. Since I went against what you imagined for yourself, your attitude towards me has changed. Rather than treating me as “your favorite child,” you treat me like a deranged sociopath because I no longer worship you or see eye to eye with you. That is why you feel the need to critique me. “Suggesting” my brother get his GED after dropping out of high school is like telling someone to drink water when they are dehydrated, but telling me to go to a better college when your son graduated with a bachelors 2 years early is like saying I should eat healthier when I already eat healthily. It’s insulting and a backhanded way to make me feel bad about my success and accomplishments.
Lastly, you constantly try to seek out conflict with me. If I were to say the sky was blue you would argue that it was neon orange. For instance, When my high school graduation happened there weren’t enough seats so I said you could come to my college graduation which was perhaps a bigger accomplishment considering I graduated the year before my high school graduation. Yet, you decided to try to bulldoze your way into my high school graduation and ended up coming to none of them.
Most recently, you saw a post about me celebrating my college graduation for my bachelor’s and decided to call me. Rather than congratulate me and say “I’m proud of you,” you proceed to try and make me feel bad and ruin my whole day. Then you do the same thing the next day at my graduation. Then when I brought this up to you and decided to discuss our relationship, you tried to put all the blame on me. Essentially you said the reason you’ve been treating me like a sociopath was that I “wrote you off” when in actuality, I was doing everything I could to try and resuscitate our relationship.
These are the reasons I believe we can’t have a healthy relationship aside from your constant manipulation. However, you do have a place in my life I can’t ignore, you’re my mother and we have good memories. But, the bad far outweighs the good. If you were anyone else but my mother, I would have “wrote you off,” but since you are my mother I feel the need to keep the doors unlocked. However, I’m done trying to fix you and make our relationship work because you obviously don’t care about our relationship enough to get help or try to make changes such that we can have a good relationship. So I’ll see you on Facebook, oh wait you blocked me. I guess I’ll just get the random call on days that have no particular significance.
