R&R: Dear Mom
A ranting and raving installation in the form of a letter to my mother – she’s devouring, she’s a hurricane, and she’s beloved.
Dear Mom,
Thank you for everything you have done for me. I don’t know how many times I can say that for it to sink in, for the both of us for that matter. Thank you for your gifts, for your presence, for your insights, for your resilience, and your love. I don’t know where I would be without it.
Mom, I am sorry for my repeated mistakes and follies and mess-ups and mishaps and moments of weakness. I wish I would have done better and been better – I wish I would have been what you deserved.
I wish I would have gotten to know your sister, Misty*. I wish she was still here, and I am sorry she’s not. What did she look like? Do you see her face when you look at me? Every time I leave the house, away from your watchful gaze, does her life and her death flash before her eyes? Mom, I wish I could change what happened but I cannot – I do not have as much power as you think I do. You are clutching onto all of us so tightly that you’re leaving behind reddened claw marks on our skin. Let all of us go so that those of us who are remaining can still live.
Mom, sometimes I feel as though you love me fiercely, to the depths of your soul, yet you do not like me. Is it a Chicken-or-Egg situation – did your dislike for me precede mine for you? Why did it start? Why did it ever start? Is it because you represent all I could be and I represent all you could have been, if you didn’t have me? Is it because despite our nearly identical state of being, we are fundamentally different in a way that can’t be reconciled? Despite that, we had so much…we are so much.
Mom, there is a chasm of black, empty space in my heart – for so long, there has been – and I love you dearly but neither you nor dad nor anyone can fill it, not even myself or the “God” I was taught to believe in. Every time I go to the doctor, she asks me, “Have you made plans?” Her and I both know what she means by that, but neither of us voice it. I lie to her and tell her no, and everything’s fine. But you don’t know what that means or even that my doctor felt inclined to ask me if I wanted to take myself out; I’ve never told you that I might pull a Christine Chubbuck if things keep going this way. You’re grappling with your own shadows and you don’t need to play with mine, too. I’m trying to save you, Mom.
What even is love? I fear that I will never know – one of the many reasons I fear being someone’s wife or mother one day. Is love radical honesty, or is it gently lying by omission?
Mom, my entire mind is covered wall to wall in an endless scroll listing all of the people you are proud of, and I am dead last. I will never compare to cousin Jessica* or her lovely children who have become the apple of your eye, or the bright-eyed younger folks in your office who smile confidently at the future ahead. I don’t do that – I am not that. There are so many things I am not that you wish I was and that I am confident I will never be. And for that, I am sorry. But I also feel like I shouldn’t have to apologize for those things.
If I would have said no to grad school, and if I would have said yes to spending the next three years of my life traveling and surfing couches and finding and making love, would you still love me? What if I wanted to marry a man who wasn’t exactly like Dad? What if I wanted to marry a woman? I already know the answer to the last one.
Why was nothing ever good enough? Why, when I would bring home grades that were a 97% or a 98% did you say, “Why didn’t you get a 100%?” Why the constant comparisons to my friends or family members? Why the constant policing and analyzing every single thing I ever said or did?
And now, some questions for myself? Why does my body not recognize her kindness or apologies? Why do I let myself loom in the false shadow that she may not even have projected intentionally? Why do I tense up with rage, anxiety, and frustration whenever she enters my space? Why do I want to plunge daggers into my arms and legs and eyes whenever she displays her loud, disgusting eating noises and habits around me – she’s my mom, shouldn’t I just be able to ignore it? Am I a bad person for not ignoring it?
Why isn’t she my hero? When she asked who my hero was, why did I tell the truth? And why was my answer the truth, if even just for the fact for whom I did not name while answering that question?
I wish she was my hero. I wish that we were the type of mother and daughter where things were seamless and only ever a bit rocky at their worst. I wish that I was given the freedom to be able to fly. I wish that you could give me the breathing room I need to succeed, so that I have room for my conscience in my head as well as or instead of yours. I’m sorry for everything I’ve said and done. I hate that you yell and curse at me. I hate that you threaten to physically abuse me, claiming it as your right. I hate that when you’re doing all of this I merely hang my head in shame, because it must be my fault. I hate that I anticipate a man in the future knocking me to the ground and me, turning my eyes to the floor in shame, because that’s what was modeled. I hate that I don’t know where Dad is in all of this – he is unknown to both of us and to himself. I am sorry that I want things that are silly to you; I am sorry that you want things that are silly to me. I am sorry that neither of us are seemingly good enough, to and for each other. I love you. I want you to meet my grandchildren and to help me pick out a wedding dress if someone one day is stupid enough to put up with me. I don’t even know who I’m praying to anymore, but when I do pray, it’s about us. I love you, Mom.
-Ann
*names of my family members have been changed for privacy reasons