I don't know how do I begin to forgive my mother?
The woman who I assumed is an all time mother that I could hang my dependencies on as a primary caregiver way back in my childhood was washing her dirty linen off living off my absorbing and observant nature, and my quiet while reliving her past and feeling that life is unfair, if things and specially her daughter doesn't live up to her expectations. And so I learnt to survive.
Survive through her crack and pop criticisms that just was oozing self pity a minute and passive anger in another and confusing me as to who am I supposed to understand more. Oh yeah, I was supposed to understand way more than any child within 10 years could understand - the grief of losing her husband, i.e. my father to a sudden cardiac arrest while she was pregnant with me, and the grief of having to turn her life around and choosing to take my father's job but from the clerical level that was offered by the Government then, and wanting me to be the receiving end of her huge favor like feeling that she superimposed over me whenever possible, and wanted me to consider how lucky I am to have her as my mother. An exaggerated sense of entitlement would be an understatement.
She lived under an acquired shell so to speak but since it had her choices written all over it, she survived quite well under the disguise of self pity, emotional bereavement whenever I went through headaches and nausea which was unfortunately similar to my father's health patterns while he was alive. She grieved how alone she was and how frustrating it was for her to take me to the doctors who she felt was the first resort to just fix me so that she can go back to her office going while I came home to her brothers and their wives and their children, my cousins, yes, and to this huge joint family that I just had to find a space to fit into.
It became harder to do so since my emotional and physical belonging was with my mother and so I thought was the safe space as long as she takes control of my volatile health (nothing terminal but was very overwhelming for my sensitive nerves and naïve mind as I lacked health managing skills and discipline as a kid) and just made me feel guilty for being a pain to her every week or so that I complained of the repetitive migraines that was just an outlet from my body for being in pain for want of unconditional love and acceptance from her. Nothing could get her attention faster than my sickness in any small shape or form and she loved getting all the attention she got from her extended family of brothers with whom she and I lived.
We two were supposed to be a family to one another as I was her only child but she refused to grow up emotionally as my physical issues too didn't seem to outgrow my age and I started to feel outside of my body, disconnected with myself while she continued with her criticisms and comparisons with my father, while making herself the center of my universe over and over and defining my world to revolve around her emotional insecurities that I took upon myself as my responsibility. And I was supposed to in a way as I had been provided with all material needs, and my way of repaying her better be with unquestionable loyalty and blind adherence to her breaking down on my boundaries which she was happily oblivious to. She was living all inclusive through me as if she could get to live longer by doing this or maybe make my longevity more when compared to my father. Either ways, it was just numbing and killing me from inside.
Self sabotaging is a very insidious pattern of flawed beliefs that seem to ring true to an open trusting child and is often an unconscious receiving of fragile, narcissistic, and self absorbed seed energy from the parent or parents if both of them are alive. But this pattern of thinking like an all inclusive person and struggling to separate oneself from the other (Your parent here) even as you age (I am 42 now), your parent's thoughts, their choices made from convenience to define you, control you, mold you is just widening of this huge gap from within you. It's like losing a sense of clarity of where one's reality starts and where another's begins. And when this applies in your day to day living, it disempowers you as you cannot get comfortable in your shoes and walk your own path, be it in relating to your life, your relationships, your decision making to move away from this familiar pattern of enmeshment which is a sticky and stuck feeling.
The gap of losing oneself to this pattern and not aware how deep and how far is it taking you away from your growing and learning about yourself as your emotions don't feel real for you owing to feeling used up to making your mother feel good about herself is rather invisible but painful when you start seeing it for what it is.
To make peace with oneself by starting all over again to discover the real joy of being alive for oneself and do so with true self love without any guilt, and relearn to take control of one's life, trust in one's physiology, one's mind and heart that it cannot work as per others expectations but has a life and rhythm of its own, and if the parent cannot let the child be for what's worth, then it's their loss. Their loss for not knowing the son or daughter for who they really are and not for who they are supposed to be.
I am not a made to adjust to convenient choices package that can be praised for being like her mother in certain situations or like her father in some other, and wanting her validation for the real me, repressions, tears, helplessness, fear, overwhelm and all was just a waste of my time because they didn't mean anything to her.
I am not supposed to be in conflict for being in my skin and yet long term dissociation and numbing one's personal identity even if career, ambitions to an extent have helped me get a fix, but what is truly broken is the daughter's trust here for trusting her mother the most and to realize that mothers are not perfect after all is both a relief and also a bitter pill to acknowledge.
Not having a kid and being childless for over 15 years of my marriage with my best friend and my better half has nothing to do with my physical health but it just has 'rejection' written all within me as if I have mothered my emotional wounds so much that there is no space for a new creation, our creation to come to being.
I have grieved for this earlier thinking it's all my fault and that I am not good enough to be a parent as much as I was not good enough to be the perfect child, perfect daughter despite all the material goodies being provided to me. To live in a survival mode is one thing but to live with shame and guilt is something that even all the ruminating, repressing is not going to make them go away.
I realize now that this emotional block is coming in my way to discovering my many life experiences ahead and that to let it go, I really need to let go being so enmeshed with my mother, in my thoughts and in my consciousness. And I got to honor myself by letting this enmeshment go before my mother's passing, and which will come when it comes, but I do wish to grieve for my being so unconscious to myself and my life and to feel love for my self which is happening through baby steps but without looking back for validation from her and thinking it's her love for me. Because love is love - it's simple, uncomplicated, and learning to forgive oneself from time to time. It's only then that I can forgive my mother.
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