This was the month that would change everything, for better and worse. This was the month God put good people in my path, and the month my relationship with my mother became damaged beyond repair.
FEBRUARY 7
My husband and I joined a martial arts school so that we could get in shape. It had been a bit of a New Year's resolution for us that we hadn't been able to act on in the previous month. Not just that, but we felt terrible physically, needed an outlet for our frustrations, and seeing the condition my mother was in because of her sedentary lifestyle, we didn't want to end up like her.
I don't know why I felt like I needed to ask her permission to sign up, but I told her what we were planning to do. She tried to guilt us out of signing up, saying although she "couldn't tell us how to spend our money," we were supposed to be paying down our outstanding debts. We had already budgeted, and even with our debts, we knew we could afford classes now that we were no longer paying to rent an apartment.
I wouldn't know until much, much later that this would be one of the best decisions we ever made.
FEBRUARY 13
My husband and I paid for a new washer. The one my mother had been holding onto would make the most atrocious noises and jump around, occasionally ending up in a spot that would block the laundry room door. She refused to get it fixed and she refused to buy a new one, so we ended up having to do it. Same story with the oven, but I won't get into that.
This new washer was slightly smaller than the old one, but not by too much. It had just been delivered and set up, and I decided to put in a load of laundry. I could hear my mother talking to no one in particular downstairs, but she was making sure to speak loud enough for me to hear her. "Yeah, I think this washer is smaller than the other one." I came downstairs with my laundry and she repeated, "this washer is smaller than the other one. I guess we have to put less in it," as if I couldn't deduce that myself.
Not only has my mother had a long-lived habit of making obvious statements to me, but she has, ever since I began doing my own laundry at fourteen, always nagged me to make sure I'm not overloading the washer. More than a decade later, she still spoke to me as though I was stupid or ignorant of how something as simple as loading a washer worked.
She hovered over me as I began putting clothes in the washer, something that bothers me in every situation, regardless of who's doing it. Whether I'm answering a phone, drawing, writing--I do not like being watched. I turned to look at my mother to see what she wanted, and she just said, "what? I'm just looking at it!" No, she wasn't. She had just nagged me about minding how much I put in the washer and was watching to make sure I didn't overload it because she thinks I'm an idiot.
She walked away, pulled a U-turn, and asked "do y'all not like living here?"
Blindsided by such a weird question, I said, "what?"
She repeated, "do y'all not like living here? It's a simple yes or no."
Still confused, I asked, "How did that come up?"
She refused to answer and became combative. "Don't answer my question with a question! Answer me!"
In my mind, I started thinking about how unreasonable she'd been for the past month or so, how unnecessarily combative she'd been, how she seemed to be trying to create drama in the house, and I thought, "yes! Yes! I hate it here! I hate living with you! I don't know who you are anymore!" But I just shrugged and kept loading the washer, giving her an answer that was far more gentle than she deserved. "There are things we miss about being alone."
My mother started pacing up and down the hall, only saying something when she passed by me. "You basically are alone... We don't have any contact... Even when you're here." I just finished loading the clothes in the washer and went back upstairs.
FEBRUARY 17
My husband and I went out for a belated Valentine's Day. He gave me a beautiful bouquet, we played mini-golf (something of a tradition for us), and had a delicious, romantic dinner at a restaurant that we'd never been to. At this point, we'd been together for nine Valentine's Days! It was such a good night, and it took my mind away from all the trouble at home. My mother had even taken our picture before we left because she thought we looked so nice. At the time, I hadn't realized that she was just putting on an act.FEBRUARY 23
My husband took me to see a movie that I'd wanted to see for our Valentine's Day date, but it hadn't released at the time. We hadn't been to the movies in a really long time because of our finances, and he said that he just wanted to do something nice for me. I wish I had known then that sharing the details of those last two outings to social media my mother had access to would be a means for her to talk badly about me to the family.
FEBRUARY 24
My mother wanted the siding on the house cleaned of the mold/moss/whatever was growing on it. She couldn't do it herself, so I had to do it. I got up on the roof and cleaned the second story siding. She had told me not to spray at the base where the wood was rotting, which I knew already not to, so I did my best to be careful.
When I finished, I went inside, took a shower, and started to head downstairs to help my husband make dinner. Before I could even make it to the stairs, my mother started yelling, demanding I come speak to her. She began interrogating me about my cleaning of the siding, and was very nearly accusing me of deliberately trying to damage it. She even said that she'd gone outside with binoculars to look at it. She never thanked me, just criticized me and cast suspicion, as though I was deliberately trying to destroy the house, or I was too stupid to follow instructions.
I brought some dishes downstairs and my mother immediately came into the kitchen, nagging us about how we should bring our dishes down every night. I didn't say anything, just kept washing the dishes. I guess that wasn't the reaction she wanted, so she decided to dig her claws in a little more. She started going through a mess of papers on the kitchen counter and came across an old business card of mine that was for a cleaning business that never took off. She held it up and said, "oh, I wonder what this girl is doing now," and laughed in my face. I didn't think it was very funny. My failing to launch my business and being unemployed with no prospects or opportunities for ever having a respectable career wasn't funny to me. She laughed as though I hadn't given all of that up to make sure she had someone to take care of her.
It upset me so much that I had to leave the kitchen, hide in my room, and cry. This was when I made a conscious decision not to speak to her anymore unless I absolutely had to. I didn't even want to look at her anymore. I was so hurt and disgusted that my own mother could revel in my failure. It kept me up late into the night, and I finally decided to make my feelings public.
I made a post on Facebook that dripped with sarcasm but still accurately expressed how I was feeling, because I deal with my feelings by employing sarcasm. I'm always saying that if I don't laugh about my misfortunes, I'll cry instead. The post said: "Mid-2000's angsty teenager post of the day. Sometimes I wish I could disappear. Most times, it feels like everyone wishes I would."
My mistake for ever adding my mother on Facebook.
FEBRUARY 25
My mother sent me a message on Facebook that said, "so, what was that midnight Facebook post about?" I could just hear her snark and smugness through the screen of my phone, so I ignored her and stayed upstairs. When my husband informed me that he received the same message from her, I told him to ignore it. He did, but that made it worse.
She came upstairs in the afternoon and stood at the end of the hall with one hand against the wall and the other on her hip. She said with an attitude, "so, what's your problem?"
I was astonished, and immediately reminded of how angry she was with me when she had to pick me up from high school after I'd told my friend that I was suicidal. Just seeing her body language, I knew she was itching for a fight. I was determined to remain calm and collected, and I answered her with, "with that attitude, we have nothing to discuss."
In the same tone, she feigned concern for my well-being, saying that my husband and I had been ignoring her all day, so she didn't know whether I was dead or alive upstairs. I wondered to myself why, if she was so concerned, she waited until two in the afternoon to walk fourteen steps and find out? And from her mouth came the answer I'd been looking for, the truth being dragged kicking and screaming into the light for me to finally see. She said: "Is that how you treat your mother?"
It hit me like a train. Everything had always been about her. In my mind, I was suddenly transported back to the office of the only therapist I'd ever seen, the one session we ever had. He had asked me to draw my family in their normal routines. I drew myself, alone and listening to music. I drew my brother angrily playing video games as he always did. I had to imagine my father's routine since I didn't know it, and drew him at a tow yard where he worked. I drew my mother driving, digging through her purse, and talking on the phone simultaneously.
My therapist told me I was lonely. He told me that I viewed my brother as an aggressor. He told me that my father, whose finger I'd incidentally drawn pointing at me, was a tremendous source of contention and grief for me, that his accusing finger was me believing that something was wrong with me, which was perhaps why I felt like he left us. And my mother. He said that my mother was "self-involved." In remembering his words, things began making sense and falling apart all at once.
And the words just fell out of my mouth: "It's always about you."
That only made her angrier. She tried to turn it back around on me, saying, "I came up here to ask about you!" I knew better. She had come upstairs to ask me about a Facebook post that her terrible treatment of me prompted, one that never specifically mentioned her, but she knew was about her and made her look bad in front of other people in her own mind. She'd come upstairs to salvage her image. It was nothing more than a PR campaign.
I don't know how I suddenly had the courage or just the right words to say to her, but thank God I did. I answered, "no, you came to pick a fight. I know how you talk to people and try to shift blame on them, and I'm not gonna play your game."
She said, "I'm not playing games! You're the one who's got all these people on Facebook like, 'aww, poor you.'" She said this in a mocking, condescending tone. When I told her it would be better for her to leave it alone, she said, "oh, I guess I should send you a message and see if you wanna talk about it over coffee sometime, huh?" This was her making fun of a response I'd received on the Facebook post from a high school teacher I'd kept in touch with, who was offering encouragement and a shoulder to lean on.
I was tired of her running her mouth, so I turned up the volume on my headset to drown her out, and she yelled, "oh, that's really mature!" I thought so, too! Knowing the difference between a discussion and an argument requires some wisdom, in my own experience. Eventually, she gave up and stomped away.
Her coldness shocked me. She'd shown me a side of her that day I hadn't imagined was possible for a mother. I realized then that how I felt meant nothing to her if it reflected badly on her.
FEBRUARY 26
A feral cat spooked one of my cats so badly that he attacked my husband. My husband put my cat in the shower (he did NOT turn the water on!), closing the door to give him a low-stimuli environment to calm down. He's a very easily stimulated cat, and gets aggressive when too much is going on. It took us a very long time to understand how fragile his boundaries are and how to respect them so that he would feel safe with us. My mother came upstairs, yelling at my husband, "what room is he in?!" She tried to barge into the bathroom while my husband was still naked.
When I got out of bed a few hours later, my mother heard me walking over a creaky floorboard and came back upstairs. She never came upstairs since we moved back in with her in December, and hadn't had a reason to, so I felt like this was her inserting herself unnecessarily. My cat was with me in my room at the time, and my mother walked in to start talking to him. She asked my cat repeatedly, "aww, are you okay?" She said, "I feel so bad for you. Are you finally dry? Did [husband] kick your ass this morning? Oh, yes, I heard it!"
I think she was trying to use my love of my cats to make me angry with my husband, but I was awake when the incident happened. My husband didn't hurt my cat or turn the shower on him. She was lying and trying to provoke me into responding to her. When I wouldn't even look at her, she stomped back downstairs.
She cooed and fawned over imaginary abuse of my cat, but her response to my feeling unloved and unwanted got me a "so, what's your problem?" What kind of mother acts like that?
FEBRUARY 28
I felt like I was starting to cool off, and then, while scrolling through Facebook, I saw that my mother posted something that said, "people pretend like you're a bad person so they don't feel guilty about the things they've done to you." It pissed me off and confused me because I hadn't done anything to her. I didn't want to let her posts on a stupid social media site be a reason for me to be upset. That would've made me no better than her. I unfollowed her so that I wouldn't see her posts anymore.
But I had to take it a step further. She was clearly using Facebook as a vehicle for perpetuating and creating drama, so I put her and everyone who was a mutual friend with her on my "restricted" list, meaning we were still friends, but they could no longer see any of my posts. I wanted to remove Facebook from the equation for my mother so that it couldn't be a talking point for her anymore. I thought it was the right thing to do, but even that became drama to her.
My half-sister immediately "unfriended" me on Facebook. At the exact same time, my mother's phone was blowing up with messages. She got a call and started speaking in a low voice. She was trying to figure out why she couldn't see my posts anymore, probably with my half-sister.
Facebook won't tell people if you "restrict" them. The only way my mother would've found out is if she went to my profile and noticed no posts. Same goes for my half-sister. And the only reason my half-sister, who rarely speaks to me, would have to visit my profile was if our mother told her to go look at it for her.
I went downstairs to get a drink and my mother was whispering on the phone, and once I entered the room, she would only say "uh-huh" or "yes." I went back upstairs and stood on the balcony to listen, because I figured she was talking to my half-sister about me. I was right. I heard her say, "I didn't do anything wrong, look what they're doing to my house, every time I ask for something, they get nasty, it's so stupid that they just sit up there." She was turning my half-sister against me by lying to her.
OVERVIEW
In February, I learned what my mother was truly capable of. I'd always known that she could be vicious, but that she could turn that fury on one of her own children had taken me completely by surprise. And not only that, but that she decided to isolate me from the rest of my family and play up her pity party. No one would believe me then if I'd tried to tell them what kind of person she was.
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