Last night, I dreamt a gaping hole on the side of my
face. Unaware that I'd even dozed off, I went to
scratch my cheek and my fingers just sank in. Didn't
hurt either, somehow only making it infinitely more
disgusting to me, probably why it ended up sticking.
(In case it's an actual thing not to -- I have no idea
-- I do feel pain in my dreams, usually anyway.)
In times of stress, my mind gives me recurring dreams.
Each time its own little thing, reflecting what I'm
dealing with in life. Except this time the recurring
theme is that they're all nonsensical garbage that
nothing of help can be gleaned from. Which is kind of
insult to injury -- I do actually get a lot of use out
of my subconscious, and this is certainly not a time
I'd like to be without what is essentially one of my
senses.
I doze off some time in the early evening and wake up
either side of midnight. Any of the comforting ambient
sounds around here will do it, lately; immediately
comes the unease that drives me straight to my email
inbox, and there, again, sits yet another disturbed
email from my mother. This neverending, nowhere-bound
conversation has been my sole human interaction for...
weeks, then months, long enough it's almost become a
strange new normal.
I have been trying to get away from her, once again.
For a while I thought it was going well, that I could
salvage something of that relationship if I just take
all the right steps. In my idealistic hopes the choice
isn't between this thing that rarely even feels like a
life, or some great vanishing act, but those seem to be
my options.
As for her, she has made it very clear that a
relationship where she doesn't hold power over me is of
no interest to her.
So I write back, not wanting to be the heartless,
selfish person she keeps describing to me -- despite
knowing she will return to telling me as much as soon
as I step outside of her script. And as I mentioned,
it's not like I have anyone else, really. I'm not
exactly one for friendship, despite a near-bottomless
appetite for social interaction; the connection I crave
is that of family, and this is what's left of mine.
There is such endless faith placed in mothers. Acts
that would be condemnable from anyone else get
forgiven; accusations that would stick to anyone else
fall at least into doubt if not outright upon deaf
ears. Your credibility as a survivor hinges on which
parent's hands you suffered at. You have some kind of
an angle, surely. Attention seeker, ingrate, liar,
manipulative, schizo. Or in the most favorable of eyes
just a little oversensitive -- the worst moments of
your life quickly turn into nothing more than a
misunderstanding, in the mouths of those who want to
assure you how much your mother loves you.
If you already have your personal pick, keep it to
yourself.
I've cultivated a perverse kind of comfort in people's
unempathetic stances. A comment section under news of a
woman murdering her children, filling with people
lamenting how much she must have been hurting, to do
such a thing. Only afterwards, any sorrow for the
little victims robbed of anything else than being a
receptacle for that woman's own problems. Things like
these give me the closure people that say these things
would never knowingly afford me: the 'bad enough' that
you wished for, a last resort for a child when it
becomes apparent that all of your hurts and fear and
confusion isn't enough to get you the care and kindness
you desperately dream of, truly does not exist.
It's a familiar exchange. Even those who don't outright
discount the stories I tell them are always more
preoccupied with making sure I think of her needs or
her pain or her wishes before my own. Like I wouldn't
be in the perfect position to see that she suffers? Of
course she does, she is sick, far beyond what they
could imagine, or rather have had to face.
And what makes my own hurts too meaningless even for a
moment of sympathy? The irony is that I do feel for
her, even understand her, after having been left on my
own with even the aftermath. The price of being able to
live as something of a normal person then became
understanding her issues as well, the search for
justification for actions that should not deserve any.
And just to be absolutely clear, so there is no chance
for any unnecessary optimism: none of it has ever
made me feel any better. Feel numb, maybe, but mostly
I just have to do with not giving it any mind.
Walls and walls of her reimagining and rearranging
three decades of my life based on how she feels right
then. Self-pity, then berating, then saccharine charm
and conciliation; she goes at me like she is aware I'm
the last holdout in her narrative of herself as a
faultless parent.
I'm so exhausted. I'd give almost anything to not think
about any this for a while.
