Instability

I believe I worked through most of my problems with my mother before she died. In order to understand her behavior, I tried to see the world from her perspective. I came to understand who she was—a well meaning person who did the best she could to evolve beyond the pain and bullshit of growing up desperately poor, with a cruel father and a mother who died young from neurofibromatosis type 2. (what I have, what mother and her brother Matt had, what her cousin Carmel and Aunt Mamie had) All things considered, she did a hell of a job aside from the whole motherhood thing.

Mother wanted, no, NEEDED help in raising her more difficult children. Since I was the oldest, emotionally stable (that’s a relative thing) kid AND, very important here, only a girl, I was expected to be her assistant mother. I was to have zero needs of my own, no problems, no actual existence outside of being her dutiful helper elf.

She, much, much later in life, realized that she’d oopsied with me. We even talked about it a tiny bit. Her reason for not being an involved, supportive parent for me? She saw me as stable and not needing anything. Also, I wasn't the much preferred boy brand of child (she didn't admit to this though it was obvs+ from the get go). I may have seemed healthy and able compared to my damaged/troubled siblings but I still needed a loving, involved parent. While I got on great with Daddy, he was usually out—teaching, taking classes or working one of his many extra jobs to support us. Mother refused to get a part time gig—she was gonna have a 1950s sitcom dream life no matter what.

She could be a real nasty piece of work (to me). At the same time though, as I got older, she leaned more and more heavily on me to help her in her parental role. She’d call me at work, (we both still had hearing) sobbing, begging me to call one sibling or another or my father. She expected me to fix everything and everyone at the drop of a dime. My own life? Irrelevant.

It would have been laughable if it weren’t so desperately sad.

Why does this all come up today? I finished the book Dirtbag, Massachusetts. While there are a more than a few differences between Fitzgerald’s and my growing up experiences, one similarity that stands out is that neither of our mothers seemed to have a shred of self awareness or any clue as to what makes up a healthy parent/child relationship.

Mother has been gone for a decade now but, every now and then, I still have the impulse to ask her, amongst other questions, what the fuck were you thinking when you called me a filthy prostitute in front of company (she’d just found out that I was modeling for art classes as a way to pay for college. Saying that she was horrified is a gross understatement).

It’s no wonder I never wanted (or had) children of my own. I was both afraid of being just like her and tired of everyone else's needs being far more important than my own.

I figured being an adult meant that it was finally time to take care of me. Cats too.