I'm finding myself with still so much to say about this whole situation.
about myself.
Last night I went to dinner with 2 of my sisters, my mom and my soon to be sister-in-law.
I love them all
but I struggle in this place
I struggle with my mom and I feel terrible about it.
She had endured a lot in her young life. She was abandoned by one parent while the other shut down... thus neglected by the other.
Life is so weird
-Love and passion, the need for love drives people to do very strange things-
It didn't end there for my mom (it didn't really even start there), she was lucky to get away alive from the man before my dad. And then when she needed it most she was not accepted the way she felt she needed to be by her new in-laws. She must have broken a million times before I was ever even born; daughter #4 at barely 26.
I feel for her
and yet I feel anger towards her and even resentment at times. I struggle to be patient sometimes and I feel bad that I do.
I feel angry because she got messed up and then she messed us up.
When I was a teen I remember seeing her break apart once and realizing it was not actually my fault. She was blaming me, but it was not me. I had no control over what was going on with her and there was nothing I could do about it. I also realized that what ever it was she was in that moment was not her. It was something else. Something I pitied, but did not like.
If I am being honest, I did not care for my mom much when I was a teen. I loved her and yet I also hated her.
But even with that, she taught me so much. The flip side of the coin, the mom that I hated may have taught me most as I tried to understand and love her in spite of my anger and hurt. One of the most valuable lessons I learned was when I realized how she was turning into all the things she was so angry about.
"We get more of what we focus on," "when you point a finger there are 4 pointing back at you" (but it's actually 3 because the thumb points down), "you are what you eat" and so many cliches made sense as I observed my mom becoming more and more manipulative in her self pity. As she started to develop favorites, scape goats and pecking orders. Things she claimed to despise about her in-laws.
It was an interesting upbringing with my parents who came from such different places.
and it is hard to beat your upbringing.
It is likely part of why I am so driven to solve. To figure it out.
I too am like a pendulum and I know it.
I also have fingers that point back and I know it.
I am flawed and broken and raised to be flawed and broken, by flawed and broken people who were flawed and broken by other flawed and broken people but striving for "be ye perfect"
always discouraged, always coming up short.
Life.
... Is short!
and so do I come up.
but
but but
I am okay.
I am not perfect
I am broken
and I am short, always coming up
for more
because I am also human
not a god
not meant to be a god
just me
just okay and I am happy to know that is exactly who I am.
I am still small. Still not entirely in the clear. Still a little stuck in this alternate psychological reality of reprocessing, as an adult and as a child, but I am precisely where I need to be and ultimately I am happy.
I still hurt and my eyes still leak for my losses but that is part of the richness of life and even in that there is beauty.
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