The ins and outs, ups and downs.
Current mood: sad
Category: Life

I make it through my life, day to day, still breathing, still "feeling" but sometimes, sometimes I just collapse. Sometimes the feelings of loneliness and despair are so strong I can barely move.

My mother has that effect on me at times. I have spent my whole life trying to get her to notice me, to want to understand me but all I have ever been awarded is her blind eye, her aggressive indifference. The things in her life are more important. If I am not in the hospital or about to be homeless, her mind is checked out, on vacation. This may seem like nothing, this may be more than some people get. I know this. I know that some peoples mothers abandoned them, I know that some peoples parents abused them, I know that some people have no parents. I am not talking about them. I am talking about the way it feels to be alone. To feel as though you have nobody to reach out to, nobody to be proud of you, nobody to recognize that you have emotions that are a little different. because the person who is your designated parent is just a body that only exposes surface emotions, a person who checks out 90% of the day and has no interest in who you are. They are all consuming, they are big and dramatic but they EXIST. What does it do to a person to never have them embraced? Recognized? It turns them into me, a beaten down, commitment phobic, attention starved little girl in a womans body.

I talked to my mother today, told her about my art show…like I always do. She acted like I was not talking, like she always does. She just continued to yell at the dog, talk to my daughter, intermittently seguing into coversation about my brother, his wife, her eye dr. visit. It was like my emotions were just being sucked into a void, disintegrated in the fire of her fear. Her fear of my heart, my weirdness, my intensity. How are you unconcerned with your own flesh and blood? How do you overlook the things that matter to your only daughter most? Does it stem back to her childhood, back to her abusive mother that pushed her into abusive relationships with men later in her adult years? Meanwhile, trying to tow two children around, children with no fathers to speak of, children who only managed to burden her in her quest for a man, her need to indulge her insecurities with sex and attention, children that she eventually left behind, left with her mother, her lifejob far too tiring. Or is it just me, is it just that I somehow inspire this sort of behavior., this need to hurt me, shoot me down, make me know that I do not matter that much? Or is is just sheer disappointment in who I have become? No need to acknowledge her art, she should not be doing it anyhow. She should have a job "in the real world" being "successful", doing what her mother did…going to school, getting a "real job". Now keep in mind that I have long since understood what "success" means to me and it is not necessarily monetary. Not that it would not help but ultimately, I want to make money doing something I love…and I will, I have drive, I have initiative, I have desire. I have just taken the long way around and that is what has put me in the place I am In currently. Success means raising my children to be good, open people while giving them the attention that they need and proving to them that with a little hard work and initiative you can do whatever you want. That is why I do what I want. That is why I try to explore my own mind, my own emotions. To teach them that they can too. Success means knowing my children and learning to love the people they may grow up to become. Success means learning to love myself. Jesus. Sounds so cliché but it is just so true.

None of this matters and in the long run, the way my mom treats me, the way she is so good at sucking the wind out of my lungs, forcing my stomach to ice over, my limbs to turn to lead just from her indifference in the face of my very real excitement…it does not matter because it will not change. The only thing that can change in a situation like this is my ability to deal with it and grow, keeping up with my forward momentum. I will not let let my pain arrest my development any more. My life may already be 1/3 over, maybe less than that. My mom has issues, she has transferred some of them onto me but I am creative. I write, paint. I love to paint. I need to paint, it lessens my lifes hurts. Keeping up with it helps me move through my self loathing, my insecurities, it gives me strength and proves my mother wrong…I guess. God, after all of this, I know that I would still rather her have her be proud of me, be impressed by me and my strength. I want her to see that I learned to be a good single mom…against the odds. Ah maybe that is exactly it. She knows that she let me down when I was young, deep down she knows that but does not understand that I love her anyhow. I want her to love me anyhow. Maybe she instead, feels a little bit of anger, a little bit of jealousy, a little bit of insecurity. Maybe? That sounds egotistical but what else could it be? I know this is deep and way too exposing but I bare my soul to strangers for a reason. To know tha t I am not alone, I am not the only one who has felt neglect, I am not the only one who is scared, overwhelmed and unsure. Unsure of my place in the world, in my mind, in my heart.

I know that I love my kids. I know that. Maybe this is a sign that I need to pull my head out of my own stressed out ass and pay attention to my kids. Don't do what my mother has done. Break the cycle.