Kangatopia

I figure that my current spate of troubles start with my mother. It all started before her death, of course, but things were very different before she died. I was in a hopeless situation. I couldn’t afford to move out of my parent’s house either financially or emotionally, and I was in a relationship that had long since decayed. After she died, I no longer had a reason (emotionally) to stay in that house and (emotionally) it was far better to leave. A month after she passed, I finalized my divorce and then a whole new world of possibilities opened before me. I moved out into my own place, went through the faltering on again/ off again steps of my relationship with Monikerless and began the process that I am in now.

Living with my mother was very, very hard. She was depressed, sad, angry and sick. I tried to make her happy, but I never could and things were rarely harmonious. She wanted me to treat her a certain way, I would let my frustratations take over, there would be a fight. I have a lot to feel guilty about, but I tried. We all tried. We just always fell short for some reason or another. For months after her death, I was angry - am still, probably - but I was angry that she didn’t take better care of herself, that she had emotional problems that went unresolved, that her brother and sister were the way they were, that I was the way I was, that her life in the end seemed to be a mediocre tragedy. I have been grieving her as she was as a person, and not understanding that she was indeed a person - and also my mother.

My ability to articulate this is falling short, but if I am going to start the journey I see myself undertaking then I have to try. My mother was the one person in the world from whom I felt I had unconditional love. My father, I think, gives me this too but he wasn’t around very much when I was a child and I never have been able to love him the way I did my mother. If I needed comfort or love or support, I could go to her. So, as I grieve her, I am also grieving that comfort and closeness that I have only found in her.

It scares me that my children might also have this same kind of love for me. I will never be able to meet the expectations that I expect someone in this position to have. It’s very overwhelming. So, it occurs to me that maybe my actions lately might have something to do with both wanting to relieve the overwhelming responsibility of nurturing my children, and trying to find some substitution of what I lost when my mother died.

Huh.