Recent Events

[bookofmirrors]

The usual disclaimers apply to all the following entries. These are my perceptions, my thoughts, my "reality", if you will. These things may or may not have any resemblance to Actual Reality. (Neither, I might point out, mightn't your perceptions, thoughts, and "reality".) Also note that this is Mercury Retrograde, probably the worst time to write something like this. I happened to be born under a Mercury Retrograde period, which means I (supposedly) communicate just-fine-thank-you-very-much during subsequent retrogrades. It does mean you might receive it as something other than it was intended. If you have a problem with this, or today's subsequent posts, I suggest you read it more than once, with at least one time being after Monday.



I was actually going to start out with a link to a previous entry, but when I finally found the entry, it wasn't that informative. Just a vague reference to my mother being "cold" to me in a phone call. (Given recent events, I think I might correct that to "distant".) So, anyway, I'm not going to bother to link to it.

So the story is, for months now (I know it was since before blckwngdorcl's birthday on May 8, 'cause she didn't send him a card), my mother has seemed distant on the phone. Sounded like she wasn't happy with me for some reason. Eventually, it seemed like she stopped talking to me altogether. If I called and she answered the phone, we'd talk, but it seemed stilted, formal... not warm or friendly. I usually ended up talking to my dad on the phone - which is fine, of course, but usually, I talked to both. Whichever one answered the phone would always pass me off to the other at some point (always after asking me if I wanted to talk to the other one, which I thought was kind of amusing... I mean, I had called, hadn't I?), so I always got to talk to both. Dad stopped offering. Sometimes he had mentioned Mom wasn't home, other times there was no explanation, just the absence of the offer, of the talk. I think I noticed it happening right away. I think it took me a little longer (but not much) to reaize it was a pattern. The couple of times over the following months until now that I talked to her, it was that same distant kind of talk. The words were the same but... there was no heart behind them. As is typical for me, I backed off. Pretended not to notice. Maybe I was imagining it. I certainly hoped I was.

At one point, I did end up talking to Mom after I talked to Dad. In the typical cowardly style I seem to reserve for my parents, I offhandedly remarked (in a hopefully-well-feigned joking tone) that I didn't think she liked talking to me anymore. She responded that, in fact, she was "not happy" with me. At that time, she said it was because blckwngdorcl didn't have a job. I didn't quite understand that. It was my fault he didn't have a job? Or my fault because I put up with it? Or my fault because I didn't leave him as a result of his unemployed state? Anyway, that answer - in my head, anyway - gave me license to write the whole thing off. The lack of interaction, etc.. Granted, I have issues that are connected to making my mates dependent in some form or another, but, for the most part, she was blaming me for something I had a limited (some would say no) amount of control over. So, I was a bit taken aback, and a bit hurt, and a bit righteously angry, but at least I had an explanation for her behavior, and it was one that I knew I couldn't really control, and it was one that would, in theory, be remedied once he got a job. Financial security, and being back in my mother's good graces. Win-win, right?

Except that, right about then (and keep in mind, we had just RECENTLY decided that blckwngdorcl should go back into the work force) we figured out we were moving, and figured out it would be foolish to apply anywhere, since any job he had would be predicated on transportation, and we had to figure out how MARTA or CCT fit into wherever we lived. So, we put off the job search. (It's only been recently started back up, in fact.) So, both financial security and the good graces of my mother would have to wait, it would seem.

I still called with the same frequency, still talked to my dad, still wasn't offered to talk to my mom. Now that I was aware of it, I was acutely aware of it. There were a few LJ posts in my head about it, but my schedule and my headspace never met in the middle for me to make any. The one or two times I did talk to her, she didn't tell me she loved me, which was a huge change, and she hung up before I got to tell her I loved her. The one time I got a chance to, she didn't answer. I'd like to think she had already moved the phone away from her ear at that point, and just didn't hear me, and that probably is the case, because in a much later phone call, when I did the same thing, she did respond that she loved me, but it sounded like saying so was making her want to cry.

I was horribly confused and hurt by this. Most of my phone calls are made in the car, and whether I got to talk to her or not, I wanted to cry when I hung up. Sad thing is, I work so hard on being honest with my feelings to everyone else, but I'm still terrified to do so with my parents. I didn't want to let them know how much this was affecting me.

I came home that night, and said that I was vascillating between feeling angry that she was (apparently) holding me responsible for blckwngdorcl, feeling hurt/unloved, and feeling like I deserved it since I had broken their hearts by moving to Atlanta to begin with. blckwngdorcl called bullshit on that last one, and yeah, logically, I know that someone else's reaction isn't my responsibility, but I was feeling guilty nonetheless.

Guilt, I believe, is just another form of control. If I feel guilty about something, then I'm claiming it, making it my fault, my responsibility. Which, of course, implies that I can FIX it. If I don't feel guilty of something, I absolve myself not only of the emotion, but of my idea (however irrational) that I have control over the outcome of it. I give up the idea of being able to make it better. I like feeling guilty for that property. Guilt gives me hope.

It's a completely illusory (read, hopeless) hope, which, of course, I know deep down, so I end up feeling guilty, as well as deluded and even LESS hopeful, for even entertaining such a silly notion. All subconsciously, of course.

(And this, boys and girls, is why I love LJ... that little reflection on my own pysche was born right here, in this moment.)

OK, so anyway... very recent phone call with my dad (don't ask me time frames... my days blend into each other with a disturbing sameness)... I finally got up the courage to ask (with feigned indifference and cheerful so-what's-up-with-that tone and vocabulary) my dad about my mom not talking to me. He said (and not unkindly) that he would try to put it delicately, but mentioned my lifestyle and my webpage. He wasn't any more specific than that, but it was enough to make me take notice. My webpage, of course, can't be anything but this (or my old blogger, but each has links to the other, so same difference).

So. My mother had been reading my LiveJournal.

Well... these entries are public. Always have been. Something like this happening has always been a possibility. Hell, Leo reads it, Frog reads it. I think I sent a link to it way back in one of my update emails I used to send to my friends/co-workers back in Illinois, and I don't remember who was on that list. For all I know, Fig reads it, or even Jessica. (That would be some fucked up shit... I'm guessing they don't, 'cause I haven't gotten any death threats yet...) So yeah. There was always a possibility that someone who might not share my views, or agree with my life might read it. And there was a possibility that it might be someone about whose opinions I gave a fuck. (As, contrary to popular belief, I do about my parents' opinions.) So, there it was.

Except that my mother doesn't have a computer in her house. Which means that she was getting her information from someone else. The thought of that actually bothered me a lot. First of all, I'm not sure I ever mentioned my LJ to my parents. I might have. It's not like it was a secret. I just don't remember doing so, nor would I have expected them to remember if I did, since they wouldn't have been able to read it, anyway. Second of all, unless whoever was passing the information along to her was printing it off (unedited) from the website, she was getting it as secondhand information, already well on its way through the game of telephone. And the people in my family who I can think of who might have method and motive to do so, I don't necessarily consider to be unbiased, and possibly not even reliable, reporters. So Gods only know what she might have been hearing. I mean, if she's going to be upset with me, I want it to be for something that's TRUE, not something that's a poor interpretation or a mere misunderstanding of the truth. (Or, at least, the truth-as-I-see-it.)

So, I ask around that portion of the family grapevine that I trust, and what might have some insight or knowledge on the situation. Well, the obvious came up, the two husband thing. *shrug* That had come up while I was there last time. I hadn't expected it to go over well. Granted, I did it in a very offhanded casual way, and didn't really put myself in a position to answer questions about it, and was probably in a headspace to get defensive about it if I had been, or at the very least, to have answered in the cowardly fashion. I'm so afraid they won't get it (which, y'know, is a fear founded in a great deal of reality) that I prefer to try to blow things off. It IS cowardly. I hate it. I give them the most watered-down version, because I have a hard time putting how I feel about things into words, and because I don't trust them with my emotions. *sigh* I hate that. I hate that about myself. I hate the distance between us because of it. But when I've tried to breach it in the past, I've felt paralyzed by that fear. If I can come up with a great intellectual reason behind it, something I can debate, then I can talk... but to try to share my emotions... that scares the shit out of me.

As an aside, another LJ-induced revelation... I never learned to talk to my mother. We didn't talk when I was younger, not about important things, that I can remember. And really, I didn't much with my dad, either, but certainly moreso with him. I learned to speak his language. I learned that we could communicate if I tailored my speech in a certain fashion, usually an intellectual one. But, looking back, I never really learned to speak my mother's language. I'm not even sure what it is. And that makes me unbearably sad, realizing that now. And, thinking about it, now... I think her language would be similar to my own. More laced with emotion, and with her just as likely to find it difficult to express it in some fashion even close to how she feels it. How frustrating that must be. Hell, how frustrating I know that IS. All this time I've tried to speak to her in Dad's language, and there's always been some part of me that's known that it hasn't fit for her, but I hadn't listened to that instinct, looked for another way... *sigh* Well THAT probably hasn't helped much.

Anyway, I digress... (More accurately, I procrastinate...)

But the other thing I heard... (which was later confirmed by an eyewitness) was that my mother (and apparently the rest of my family) was under the impression that I called them idiots. Or, more accurately, that I called Christians (or perhaps it was people who went to church) idiots (which, by definition, lumps them in that category). This allegedly stemmed from my last visit, when I went to church with them. (This was, by the way, what prompted my entry a while back, asking if anyone had ever heard me call anyone an idiot... thanks to those of you who answered...) That one really perplexed me. I could't decide if it was absolutely laughable or not. I was angry, because it was so blatantly untrue as to BE laughable, but still, it was an outright LIE, and try as I might (at the time, more on that later), even when I looked back on old entries, I couldn't even find anything I wrote which could possibly even be misconstrued as me calling anyone an idiot. So I was reluctantly considering malice on the part of whoever told her that. At the same time, I was hurt. I had gone to church with them when I was there. They know I'm pagan. They asked me. I told them that, if I woke up on time, I'd go. My dad had teasingly threatened to wake me up, but this TRULY distressed me, because I get so little sleep in general, and I just wanted to be able to sleep until I got up. It wasn't church I was protesting, just sleep deprivation. As it turned out, I did get up, and we did go. I had actually planned to write an entry about it, but never got around to it. (Which is what made the comment even more perplexing...) Hell, I had planned on sending an email to the church, letting them know my impression of their church, and the services (none of it bad, I might add, with the exception of their soprano trying to sing WAY out of her range). I never got around to either. I had commented to whoever I was in the car with after the service (I think it was my parents and my aunt) about my thoughts on it, but none of those thoughts were disparaging. Hell, several visits ago, I'd gone to a Christian bookstore with my mother, and thumbed through a HORRIBLE book about the evils of Halloween. Even then, I didn't call the author an idiot. I said it was poorly written, poorly researched, predicated on "facts" that the author said at the beginning he wasn't sure about, but then went on to cite them as *ahem* God's truth. I also said it was one thing to say "We believe such-and-such and they believe so-and-so, and we don't believe what they believe" as opposed to "We believe this, and they believe something else, and therefore they are evil". (Obviously, I was in favor of the former... the book was written in terms of the latter.) Hell, we had a good conversation about it. Anyone who followed the threads of the debate with Michelle ( here and here) could see that I don't respond that way, even if I *don't* agree with what's being said. (For the record, other than the external vs. internal God thing, I was pretty much in agreement with the message of the church service that day.) (And also for the record, yeah, I *did* toy with Michelle a little. I wasn't malicious about it, though.) So, anyway, my mother, and some other members of my family who may have been present when I've gone on religious diatribes, should have known better. I think that's what hurt the most about that. Not that someone lied (or was mistaken) about what I said, but that she believed them, especially based on her past experiences with me in relation to that issue.

I pored over this for a good week or so. I finally found the entry that I think started that misconception by mere chance. I'd skimmed over it each other time (I looked for the alleged entry like 3 or more times), because I hadn't even written it. It was a fucking Free Will Astrology horoscope that I liked, and copied to my LJ. I could see how, if someone had been reading it quickly, and not paying attention (to the glaring capital letters that said "JUST KIDDING"), and had been predisposed to thinking that I would write something like that... I could see how MAYBE someone might get the impression that I had said Christians/church-goers are idiots. (The previous sentence, if quoted in part, could, of course, be used to allegedly PROVE I had said just that thing. Go figure.) The post in question can be found here.

So, anyway... this sets the stage for the most recent event, circa a few days ago to last week... Before which I'm going to take a break and get something to drink/nibble on/other procrastinate with. You won't notice, 'cause I'm posting it in the same entry.

(Mmmmmmmm.... ice cream... thank you, lunenoire!)

OK, so here's the hard part of this entry... the details of which I'm sharing for the first time here, 'cause I can't even bring myself to talk about them...

So, after much internal and external prompting, I call my mother. Not 'specially, mind you. Just my usual calls home, with a bit of energy put toward her being the one to answer the phone (they don't have caller ID). And she did. I was relieved and terrified. And, as usual, I tried to make an offhand joke about it. (GodDAMNit, why do I do that shit? Well, I know why, but FUCK...) I casually asked her, "So... why ARE you mad at me, anyway?"

She said she wasn't mad at me. WTF?

(I'm going to have to add an additional disclaimer... I pride myself on reporting things exactly as they happen, taking great care to weed out what I perceived vs. what really was happening or what was said, and making sure I clarify if I'm not quoting something exactly, and whatnot. I don't play telephone by the rules. If someone else reports my stated-as-conjectures as fact, that's on them. For the record, much of this phone call is jumbled in emotion, so I remember very little of what was precisely said, the order it went in, or any number of other details. I remember a few parts very clearly... but the rest... well, I'll do my best to report it accurately, but take all of it with a grain of salt.)

She did say she was disappointed in me. (If I get around to it, I'll find a post I made a LONG time ago about how I react to someone being disappointed in me, and replace this sentence with a link to it, but for now I wanna follow this thread.) She talked about me having two husbands, and how I hadn't been raised that way, and how could I not know that it was wrong? (The word "wrong", I dont' think, was ever used, but that was the gist of it.) She did say that yes, someone had been telling her what was in my LJ. I'm pretty sure she said that she'd asked them to. (Again, not sure where she learned about it to begin with...) I told her that the only way to get an accurate picture of what I was saying in my LJ was if someone was printing out the entries for her; otherwise it was secondhand information. She assured me she was getting accurate information. (This was, by the way, the only time in the entire conversation that her tone seemed accusatory... sort of an, "Oh, it's accurate all right" kinda thing, but those weren't at all the words she used... not sure what to make of that.) She didn't clarify for sure if it was printouts, but I decided not to press the issue. I'm not even sure I'd like the idea of someone else reading it aloud to her. They could edit out anything they wanted to, and even if they reported my words accurately, they'd interject their own inflection on it (intentionally or not... I mean, I'd do it if I read someone else's stuff out loud... people can't help but do so). I told her that I wasn't trying to keep secrets from her, that she could ask me anything, and when she had asked in the past, I had always answered truthfully (well, y'know, after my teenage years), and that there were things I knew she didn't want to know, and had chosen not to ask about, so I hadn't talked about them. She said that was true. She talked about blckwngdorcl, about him not having a job, about our lack of money. She said or implied something about him using me. I assured her that he was eager to find a job now, and reminded her (or perhaps told her for the first time) that I had my own issues, because having someone dependant on me made me feel important, and that contributed to that situation as well. She mentioned having to lend me money periodically. She said it wasn't about the money, it was just my lack of responsibility. I told her that I knew, and that I felt bad about that, and that I was trying to get better about it. (Ha... if she only knew how many times I've NOT called them, when I've desperately desperately wanted to. Hell, when I asked my dad for money for that ticket, it was less because I couldn't handle spending a night or two jail for nonpayment, but more because I knew he'd have FREAKED about it... and would have much preferred I call him and ask him for the money rather than get thrown in jail for an unpaid speeding ticket.)

Then we came to what appeared to be the main issue. Or at least the issue around which I felt the most energy. - lunenoire

Not because he was the "other man", so to speak.

But because he's black. Because I was "having sexual relations with a black man".

Gods, I hate writing that, hate seeing it in print. It just makes my skin crawl.

We raised you differently, she told me. Raised me to be racist??? I almost asked when she said that. But I didn't. I couldn't have kept the anger out of my voice, the sheer dismay. And things were already not on a good note. And all I could say was I was sorry. Sorry I hurt her, although I don't think I specified that. Just said I was sorry. That I never meant to hurt her, or anyone else. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, I told her, softly, that I wasn't ashamed of my life.

"You should be," she told me.

And never, in the whole conversation (except where I noted above) was her tone anything other than sad, disappointed, hurt. There was no anger, no accusation, no anything but sadness. And never once did she say, "What did we do wrong?", but I heard it in every word, every syllable. And I wanted so much to take that pain away from her. Wanted there to be one of those movie moments, where the parents disagree with a child's choices, and feel that they didn't raise them that way, but the child turns it around and points out all the ways they did raise them that way. Y'know, the stuff like, "You taught me to make up my own mind", or "You taught me to love everyone based on their own merit", or "You taught me that I should follow my own happiness", or something like that, and everyone ends up finally understanding the other, and hugging and reconciling at the end. But in that moment, I couldn't recall if I had been raised to make up my own mind, to love everyone based on merit, or to follow my own happiness. Or if I had been raised to be racist, for that matter. I was pretty sure, in that moment, that I'd turned out the way I'd turned out in spite of the way I was raised. (This is a topic for another entry, which I'll make after this one.) My mother said that the reason she hadn't talked to me was because she didn't know what to say to me anymore, and that she was afraid this would come up, and it would hurt me, and she didn't want to hurt me, so she'd just not said anything, or spoken to me at all. (Jesus... she was ignoring me to be kind. How many times have I done that in my own life??? How ironic is it that I'm reacting exactly the same way right now???) She said that when I visited lately, that it didn't seem like I was enjoying myself, or enjoying being there, or with them. She said the things I did made it seem like I didn't even want to be a part of the family, like I was doing everything possible to pull away from them, to be something different from them. (This is *partially* true, for both functional and dysfunctional reasons.) I'm not sure how she got that impression, and I told her so. I miss my family. Hell, I'll be the first to admit that I never thought I would. This entry cites the first time I really noticed that I did, and how profound that was for me. I truly did believe when I moved down here that I'd still be able to visit them once a month, once every two months at the very LEAST. I hate the how rarely I see them, or they see me. The longer I'm away, the more obvious it becomes to me. I have no idea how she got the idea that it was otherwise. The only thing I can think of is that I'm so tired from work and such that I'm not my usual self when I go there, so she (and perhaps others) interprets it as my not wanting to be there.

At any rate, that was the gist of the phone call. I don't think I've left anything out. It ended with both of us crying, and nothing really getting accomplished or resolved. Neither of us knew what else to say, I don't think, and Reese (my great-nephew, who's 2 or 3) was upset, wondering why she was crying. (No one else was home at the time; I was in my car.)

She never once mentioned the alleged comment about me calling people idiots.

I haven't talked to anyone in my family since then. Thinking back more clearly, this happened this past Monday, so it hasn't yet been a week. I honestly don't know what to say. In situations like this, I tend to get masochistic and martyr-y. Ironically, doing the same thing my mother did to me, which upset me so much. I get this idea that I hurt them (or will hurt them), so I should just go away. Logically, I know, of course, that going away would likely be the cruelest kind of hurt I could inflict. (Naia would likely say I should just go ahead and finish the job, since I've already moved to Atlanta.) My lifestyle, lovers and husbands and new-age weirdness and an over-abundance of cats... all those things are the things that feel the MOST right to me. These are the things I'm LEAST ashamed of. I would be less, and less myself, if I didn't follow my soul's call in those areas. I don't want to hurt anyone, least of all my parents. But only I have to look at myself in the mirror. And I don't always like what I see. But not when it comes to that.

And I have no idea where to go from here.


(EDIT: I did forget one very important aspect of our conversation. My mother told me she loved me, and always had. I told her I loved her, too. And on another note, I went looking for that entry that describes how I take people being disappointed in me, but I couldn't find it. Not even sure I actually wrote it, or if it was one of those entries in my head that I meant to write... Just suffice it to say that very little crushes me more than thinking I've disappointed someone.)

Comments

[spy-isis.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that you have to experience this very tough thing. Just remember there is no one on the planet, not your parents, not your husbands, nor anyone else, who experiences the world as you do. You have to make the decisions that are best for you even when the people you love the most don't necessarily agree with them. Those that love you will find acceptance of what you do eventually, they just need time to adjust their view of the world to coincide with yours. Lots of hugs and kisses for you.

[bookofmirrors.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't want them to adjust their worldview, per se. I mean, I want them to be able to believe what they believe, too; to follow their own hearts. I just hate that it seems that doing so seems to mean we can't relate in the way I'd like to.

[blckwngdorcl.livejournal.com]

I love you.

I wish I knew something more to say. Something that might help you to insure that she understood what you were saying to her.

I love you.

[bookofmirrors.livejournal.com]

Thanks

[ydnic.livejournal.com]

That is very tough, and especially the part where you feel like you're at a crossroads and all the signs have been painted over. In the end you just have to keep going and reassure yourself that you *are* making the right life choices, the ones that make you happy and feed your soul. If your mom sees that you are happy, perhaps she'll come around and at least give some grudging acceptance. If not, time may help.

I wish I could tell you exactly what to do that would make you magically not hurt and fix everything, but I don't have that answer.

[bookofmirrors.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I figure that's the only way it'll work. It just sucks in the meantime.

Thanks

[savage-rose.livejournal.com]

::big hugs::

Oh God. That's so fucked up! On so many levels. Sigh.

You deserve to be happy. Remember that...being "perfect" for your Mom would not do that, nor is it a reasonable expectation. But the racism, the betrayal of you by someone your Mom obviously trusts (and I say betrayal because while these are your thoughts, feelings, impressions, I do think) they are being misrepresented to your Mom), and the disappointment...it's all just so fucked up.

There is a way through all this though, and when you come through the other side, you will feel all the better for it. Good luck! ::more hugs::

[bookofmirrors.livejournal.com]

Thanks, hon.