Why my mom left me.
Life started out as any other. Mom was my moon and stars and she remained that for the rest of our time together. Everything she did was good and everything she said was true. As I got older, being the youngest child, our codependency became apparent, just not to me and maybe not to her. We were like Christmas lights that have been in storage for twenty years, like neglected fishing line. We were the same pea in a pod.
Until we weren't. I could feel her pulling, I felt rejected, but I was twenty-one at the time and thought that's what it felt like to finally grow up (even after being out of the house to pursue a starter marriage at 18.)
Things felt increasingly tight at home and shortly after the bomb dropped. My parents were divorcing. I felt like I had failed because I felt like I was the one holding it together, becoming the glue so I didn't see my mom uncomfortable and sad.
These lyrics always spoke to me "I studied my mother, I digested her pain."
What do you get when your parents separate later in life? It's not two Christmases! It's a lot of questions and was my childhood even real?
Wading through the loss of "Family" was dark and difficult, but we would get through it and define it in a new way, right?
Things got worse and the rift between us got bigger. I felt her energy turn spiteful towards me and this was confirmed when she came over one day and was on a mission to call me a liar for something that was completely true. She told my family I was mentally unstable and that hurt me and all the progress I had made from being a mentally unstable teen, but was also a total believable lie to anyone who had known me in that time. During that encounter, I knew I had lost my mom. She no longer cared for my well being. That's the place I was in at that time. I cried for weeks.
After that, life went on and I didn't hear from her. A year later I found out that I was pregnant with her first Grandchild. I decided to reach out. The phone call was good, she was excited, I thought this might be the thing that brings her back, but it wasn't. Going through pregnancy without your mother is lonely. All these questions you have and all these ideas you shared growing up of her helping you along and passing on knowledge didn't happen for me.
I called her when I arrived at the hospital, expecting that she would want to come to meet him. She didn't.
She chose not to hold my babies or hear them giggle. She doesn't watch them grow or hold their sweet bodies
In my first year of being a mom, I grew and had a lot of healing, I was able to see that it was a blessing to start from scratch, no input or opinions to uphold, I was able to be the exact kind of mother I wanted to be, I saw how freeing that was.
In her absence, I have learned a lot about my mom.
For a long time I judged her for leaving, I was angry and confused, But she felt the same way. She needed a new life and that didn't include us.
From suffocation to freedom.
From pain to prosperity. From feeling weak to feeling joy.
That is my hope for my mom.
In this Seven year journey, I have become a different person. Exactly who I was meant to be, I can only hope she's out there doing the same.