It’s your mother- Part 3

The last thing I can say about my mother is that she still influences me, and it doesn’t look like that is going to change much in the near future.

That influence, plus this new interest in the details of her life, means I am watching her. What I see worries me.

I don’t know because no one will ever admit to it or see someone about this, but I think the women on my mother’s side of the family struggle with depression (I should say, they all agree, they just think everyone else has it, and not them). I am pretty sure I went through it myself.

When I look at my mother, I see an incredibly unhappy person, but worse, I see someone who has become afraid of everything (like rolling a suitcase onto an escalator- standing at the bottom in a panic yelling for one of us to get it for her- so you can imagine the fear of things that are actually somewhat scary). I know part of it is physical, related to menopause. But if it was hard to relate to her before, imagine trying to fix a relationship with an unpredictable, scared, angry person who is used to being the authority figure. Honestly, I think my attempts are doing more harm than good right now.

The hardest part is that I know she would vehemently disagree with these statements. But she harbors, rather than discusses. The thing is, I don’t care about being wrong. I just want to know what the hell is going on. In fact, I hope I’m wrong! Maybe I have been trying to guess her thoughts and feelings for so long that I assume my guesses are reality.

As far as her influence, I still aim to please, but it seems like criticism is the only thing she is forthcoming about nowadays. In See Jane Win, a recurring statement by the women in the study was that as children, they viewed being a “good little girl” as a favorable trait. I identify with that completely when it comes to my mother- I was mortified beyond belief to do something wrong that would get her attention.

I fear turning into the person she is right now, and I fear not having control over it. She used to laugh so hard that I would come out of my room to see if she was crying or laughing hysterically. I haven’t heard that in literally over a decade.

And so not only are we growing further from a resolution to the tense relationship we have had, but despite all of her amazing strengths, I monitor myself to make sure that I am not exhibiting the same early signs. Actively trying not to be your  mother can’t be good for the relationship. In Trusting Ourselves, the author describes the whipping-boy position a mother often occupies in the family, even where she has close relationships with her daughters. Suddenly, the mother’s decisions with respect to finances, relationships, and everything else come under scrutiny, and more often than not, in varying degrees, the children realize that their mother is the example of what they don’t want to be. They see her hard work as thankless, or her unhappy marriage as a lack of self respect, etc. In my case, it pisses me off that this person, who was so independent and always thought for herself, suddenly believes, and changes her behavior, according to the warnings in forwarded emails, for example. She is afraid of people, places, and things, and it makes me so incredibly angry. But I know it isn’t fair to judge just one stage, especially where more is at work than she can control.

She has read a ton of books about menopause, and her harping about one thing is definitely true: there is simply not enough awareness of the issues surrounding what women go through. The most shocking part is that women start going through pre-menopausal hormonal shifts as early as 35. I have read some stuff too, and when I hear my dad’s friends or anyone else discussing how their wives have become so stern, so serious, losing their senses of humor, starting to hate themselves and their bodies all over again when they had just settled into themselves, feeling old.. I think in the back of my head that this person who has lost her zest for life is going through something that basically rivals puberty, but everyone just thinks she is crazy.

Admittedly, I thought that about my mother for the last 15 or 16 years… or since she was 39. Surprise, surprise.

The fact is, I don’t want a different mother. I want the old Vicki back, even if we weren’t close then. At least she wouldn’t be miserable, and that would make me feel at least 100% less guilty about… just anything.

And so, to sum it all up, she filled my childhood with worthwhile, person-building activities, set the example that I could do anything I wanted, and then fell apart. And I’ve sort of turned on her, first because I didn’t understand, and second because my efforts to reach out have been mostly ignored.

It makes me wonder.. Is there something she is afraid I will ask if we get close? A secret she doesn’t want to tell? Or maybe she thinks I’m nuts, and has no desire to know more. I have definitely noticed that when I try to open up, she doesn’t believe me, especially about how I feel about things, or my explanations for why I do them. She only likes to talk about the things I have done, the things I will do.. not the behind the scenes details. I think those are what life is, and the things are just check boxes. I don’t know.

And so I carry on, because there really isn’t much else to do. So complicated, the relationships between women.