An Errant Sputnik

content warnings: abusive family dynamics, mention of suicide attempt

Today I fucked up by having dinner with my mom a second time in one week.

Let me give some context: my mom is a mess. I was not a planned pregnancy and my mom struggled to raise me by herself through severe mental illness, physical disability, poverty, and domestic violence. She had a severely traumatized childhood, a terrible relationship with her own parents, PTSD, OCD, and effectively stopped maturing in her late teens. Even with that context, she is still largely an antagonist in my life story. My relationship with her has been fraught with physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and some of the absolute worst shit you can imagine a person saying to their child. I’ll spare you the full story, but let me put it this way; tonight, for the second time in my life, she made a joke at my expense about my suicide attempt, loudly, in a public place, in earshot of others. Fortunately, that attempt was about 15 years ago, so it didn’t unsettle me as much as when she first joked about it two months after I had recovered. That, my friends, is the TIP of the iceberg. 

After reading that, I’m sure there’s a significant amount of people whose first reaction will be: “Why the FUCK would you want a relationship with her?” I truly wish I could give you an answer that would satisfy either of us. At the core of it, I feel a morale injury about being effectively an orphan even though my parents are alive, and frequently get a sense of responsibility for my mother’s well-being, as I am her only child and she has no close relationships outside of her marriage. There have even been moments in my adult life where I have been surprised by her growth; sometimes she demonstrates a tenderness that feels like what I deserved to have in my developmental years, and I think that’s what keeps me hooked. I’ve learned not to get too vulnerable, and tonight really demonstrated why.

We met for dinner Wednesday night after nearly a year of no-contact from our last fallout (where she accused me of gaslighting her – I genuinely have no idea why – so I just hung up and moved on with my life) and it went decently. She seemed pretty distressed, hadn’t been taking care of herself, and was quite heavy on the wine (not uncommon). But the overall tone of dinner ended well, with her telling me how proud she was of me for taking care of myself and pursuing my goals, and she even encouraged me to write an autobiographical novel about my life without shying away from the harm she did. She explicitly encouraged me to embrace my story and not worry about how it made her look, because it was my truth. I left feeling so elated that I made plans with her again for Friday. That was a mistake.

Today (Friday) I met with her again at the same place. This time, she looked much more put together, she seemed a bit calmer and happier, and engaged in conversation as usual. After her second glass of wine, things started to get weird – I noticed her face became harder to read, and her eyes became dilated, and I knew where it was going from there. I did everything I could to keep the conversation casual and civil, but somehow she steered into a lecture about how unfair it was that she had to love me unconditionally when I “hate her”.

I tried reassuring her, and asked her if she thought I treated her like I hate her, and she immediately said “Yes!” and tried to antagonize me. Eventually she stepped away to have a cigarette (and embarrass herself with the strangers outside) and on her way out, she reached her hand towards my face as if she was going to caress me, and instead pushed against my forehead. Not enough to be painful, but certainly not friendly contact. 

The waiter came with another glass of wine for her. I asked him to take it back, and said she really didn’t need another. She came back in, looking for her glass of wine, and I told her that I sent it back and asked her to wait to keep drinking until after I left. Instead, she started yelling about how disrespectful and dramatic I am, how she would NEVER humiliate me like that (I know, dude, I know.) and waved the waiter down for him to bring another glass. To his credit, he tried to give me the out and pretend I hadn’t sent away the last glass, but I owned it, because I really have no need to lie about the boundaries I set for my comfort.

She was determined not to let me “win”, in her perspective, so she got the glass and said “There, now I won’t drink it, happy?” I tried ignoring her until the box for my leftovers came, but that became impossible quickly, and she announced that if I was going to “make a big deal about nothing” then she would drink the wine anyway. I got up and left, she chased me outside yelling that I forgot my leftovers, wouldn’t stop yelling, and when I came back in and grabbed them, she yelled me out the door about how much she loves me even though I hate her so much and treat her so badly.

Deep breath time. 

On the drive back, I couldn’t help but smile. None of this behavior from her is new to me, and it’s not even the most embarrassing or egregious examples of how she reacts towards me for just existing. But the takeaway for me was two things:

1. I am absolutely, 100% not the problem. There is nothing I could ever do or have ever done to justify being treated the way she treats me, and I see that very clearly now. Even beyond that, I have to now understand that I am also in no way responsible for her behavior or well-being, because even at my most regulated, calm, and reassuring, she could not be satisfied with anything less than trying to get me to hurt with her.
2. I am incredibly proud of the growth I’ve made. I wasn’t convinced I would survive to adulthood, and here I am, 33, and maybe not successful by everyone’s measurement, but there’s no diminishing how good it feels to see how far I’ve come without any support and with unreasonably many obstacles. 

I have a lot of feelings, of course, but I’m so used to feeling the hard ones by myself that it’s not alarming to have their company. It’s these novel feelings of pride and accomplishment out of an objectively terrible situation that I need extra time to process. It feels like finding beauty in a scar with a terrible origin. No one can really make the same meaning of my connection to my experience but me; where other people see a flaw, and I see a sign of survival. 

I love my mom on Wednesdays and on Fridays. But I have to love me every day of the week. Even as much as I understand her story, I can’t give her my happiness, and she can’t help but try to take it. I think I will write that book, and when I do, it’ll be as much about her as it is about me.