My Problems:
-I need to build a relationship with trust for myself and my mother.
-I need to overcome both my own shortcomings and hers.
-I need to somehow get her to understand I do not consider (nor have I ever) my father part of the picture.
-How do I accept someone when they hurt me (emotionally) so much? How can you come to terms with a person like that?
My "Story" of a Sort:
I grew up in the typical American home I suppose. We (my parents, brother and I) started out in a small house, in an OK neighborhood. My father was a drunk and was often not there for us. Yet even while not being there (even if he was physically there) he demanded the respect of someone who had suffered the most for the sake of his family.
You see my parents are rather old (66yrs, and 59yrs) and grew up in a time where you honestly didn't have to do that much as a parent to have all the respect of a saint. My mother hated this. She cooked, cleaned, and worked her butt off making sure that my brother and I were not greatly affected by my father's attitudes and characteristics. Basically until age eight my brother and I grew up more or less unaware of our family troubles. Oh we knew, but it didn't directly affect our day to day life. We heard screaming, and dishes smashing, but we were never involved in the fights directly. Yet for all mum's hard work she feels shes never recieved the respect and love she desereves from being so self-sacrificing.
Let's jump ahead to present day. Currently my views on my life are very different from my views when I was nine. When I was nine I craved my father's attention as unlike my mother he never gave it to me. And there was also my grandmother the one sercure stable person in our family. I adored her, but my mother hated her. My grandmother had a way of working the world which most would call sneaky and manipulating. At times I agree, but because of how attached to her I was as a child I can never fully resent her for anything she has done.
My mother hates this. Just like she hates my grandmother, though she'd deny both if you took the time to ask.
Mum believes, I think, that as the sole full parental figure in my life she should have full reign in the status scale of people that I have. Yet it is her want for this that drives me away from ever putting her on the top. She wants, I think, to work her way into my high place of mind where I would consider her the only living being which when it comes down to it, truly matters. I don't want this.
Don't get me wrong I
do love my mother. And all she has done, and continues to do will make her one of the most important people in my heart. But she wants, as far as my impression is, to be the only there. I can't do that. For even though my grandmother is dead, I still love her. And even though my father is no more then a sperm donor, I still have a place for him in my heart. I cannot just delete them from my life as she wants me too. She wants their influence on me (negative or good) to be gone so she can have full influence on me, so that I will become "a good person" in her eyes. She says so long as I am her daughter, and I am a minor (though I suspect this will continue on well past adulthood) she has the right to do as such. I don't support that idea.
Granted I am still young, and I do not know everything, but should I not be allowed to take those first few mental steps on my own? When a baby first learns to walk a parent will hold them up until the baby is ready to to take a few steps on his own. Now if the baby falls or does in fact walk should not matter. That baby is still given the chance to walk? Even if while at the same time it is risking the fall? Should I not finally be allowed those first few mental steps? I want to think for myself, and how can I do that while she won't let me?
"You don't think, I tell you," is what she said to me. Now as a child (1yr-14yrs) yes that sounds somewhat reasonable I suppose, though I myself would never have such thoughts as to not allow my child think, but I am 17yrs old. Soon I will be off in college where they support original thinking, and branching your thoughts to see all points of view. How am I going to do that without practice? How am I going to do that when ever since childhood she has struggled in a battle to control my thoughts? I understand as my mother she should have some molding affect on how my thought process works. So that when I'm older my thoughts will run on the correct path. But I always thought that was a general thing, no specifics, not direct telling of what a person should think.
It's hard to explain the way that my mother is, though I guess the best person to do it would be myself. Here's a few quotations from my journal so you can see my instant reactions to my mother on a few occasions:
"Perhaps I've imagined up a mother that is so full of hate, that I forget in real life it's not so. I don't know. She tells me I'm crazy, so I'm starting to think that maybe I am. She tells me I have memory problems. That I'm messing up the facts because my brain is messed up. This happens so often that even after so much denial I'm starting to wonder, do I?
Everything mum does is humiliating. I'm curious if she enjoys it, or is unaware of it. My humiliation that is. For she's the only person I've met that I cannot leave without suffering from at least pang of humiliation. If it be bringing me to tears, using large words to make me seem stupid, or if it's reminding me of my inability to cope with the human life. (ie: Not meeting the standard for a human in terms of emotional stability, ability to keep friends, and my intelligence.) I don't know why she does these things, maybe it's just to keep me on my toes. Or maybe it's all inside my head.
She's screaming again now, but then I'm starting to wonder again. Is it my mum screaming? Or is it the hateful mother my crazy-self has created?"
---
"Mum thinks that everyone is against her. It is sort of like my brother's conspiracy joke. Just mum honestly seems to believe it. She thinks that my father and I are against her. It is because of this paranoia, that my father and I haven't spoken to each other in a full conversation for years. I cannot remember if we ever had one in the first place though, so I cannot rightly blame my mother. But I do know that if I'm too nice too dad, or he to me, mum gets suspicious and gets 'annoyed' which leads to bad things. So dad and I have come to and understanding that though we don't hate each other it's best if we don't talk or react to each other."
Now Here's the Ending Thought:
I just don't know what to do. Like I've said, I love my mother. And it is because I love her that I cannot leave her. But sometimes it hurts so much to stay. If I had the choice I could leave, I've got a place I could go, but I don't think I can. Despite all she's done I don't think I could live without her. I've come to depend on her so much, I'm so attached to her, I don't know how it happened, but I'm just so reliant on her. I cannot leave her. I wouldn't be able to live on my own.
But I have to stop this. I cannot stand this lack of trust. I cannot stand the lack of love. My mother has said outright that she does not want to have a mother/daughter love relationship. But I am hopeful we can somehow work this out and at least manage some sort of stable homelife together. It's just everything I do somehow becomes wrong. I am trying as hard as I can and it's just not working, she still doesn't approve. Is there anyone here who has possibily dealt with something similar, how do you go about building a relationship with someone who doesn't want it.
And if you couldn't ever manage such a thing, how did you come to accept it. How do you deal with the ridicule everyday without getting upset which only proves to worsen the already unstable relationship?
<---And There's a Bunny Because it's Cute
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