My response to a past comment "... my mother. I cannot fathom the shoes she filled and how those shoes seemed nailed to the floor for so many years. Many, many times I have found myself more upset with her than with him."
As a mother myself, I consistently feel more anger towards my mother than anyone else. I see my daughter grow and at her age of nearly six, I see my own timeline unfold in everything she does. It is then that I realize that I was years into my abusive childhood by the time I was her age now. I simply cannot understand how my mother allowed such monstrous things in our home.
My mother was a sad and tormented person. She had a very difficult upbringing from what I gather. My grandmother, my mother's mother, is still living and I maintain next to no relationship with her because she is just so hateful. I am sure that my mother drew my father to her; he preyed on the weak even as a young man. My mother married him to escape the hell of her own home. I married my ex-husband for those very same reasons but her footsteps that I follow stop there; I will not raise a child the way she raised and allowed me to be raised.
My father terrorized my mother. He fine-tuned his gaslighting skills with her and was a master by the time he got to me. I can still hear my mother's voice and it is shrill and loud. She was always screaming and ranting about something. She fell in lockstep with his abusive ways; I know betrayal from the deepest depths because of her. Looking back, I secretly wonder if she was relieved when I was born and my father began his games with me.
I was her way out. She would never leave him. But she could leave me... with him.
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Hello darkness my old friend,
4 months ago
6 comments:
I think I have said before, someone elses wise words;we get two chances at family life; one we are born into and one we create for ourselves.
I love the use of the Stafford poem extract in your masthead.
I admire your effort to understand your mother despite the fact that she did not protect you, and your refusal to allow the abuse you suffered to hurt your own daughter.
Your last phrase says a lot.
ER, you are very right; we do get two chances. It's odd, it was incredibly difficult to survive the family I was born into and at times, I find it almost as difficult to create the family I have always wanted. But I keep trying...
Deborah, thank you for the encouragement. It is hard to understand my mother but for some reason I keep trying. My daughter saved my life, a post for another time, and she continually inspires me to keep going.
Your mother probably came from a different era, like mine. When these women were abused, they didn't feel that they had anywhere else to turn. Feeling that they had no options, they put up with it. People didn't talk about such things as they do today. As a result, my mother was abused at home.....and married her rapist to escape. In that day you either married as a virgin, or you weren't fit to marry at all. We must always remember that these women came from a time completely foreign to us. But it is also because of them that so many things have changed for the better.
Sweetromance, it is sad what our mothers had to endure. I am not really at the point where I feel much forgiveness towards my mother but I hope that I do one day...
Thank you for reading.
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