A Conversation With My Mother

I’ve actually been meaning to write about this for several days but at first I was too frazzled about getting lost for over an hour and then I was distracted by other things. Life happens that way.

I have a fairly good relationship with my mother now that we’ve got a country between us. What I mean is that when we lived in the same city, we hardly ever spoke or saw each other, I guess because it was always there that we could do so anytime we wanted so we put it off. When they moved to New Mexico, that kind of changed. we got in the habit of talking far more often on the telephone. Now that I’m in Maine, hardly a week goes by without a phone call or two. The time difference is a little troublesome, but somehow she still manages to find a way to call early enough to wake me up on a Saturday on occassion.

However, this Saturday, I thought I’d surprise her and call her at 8am my time. Hah! They were barely out of bed! Kind of odd for them as they’re early risers. By 5am their time, they’re usually up and have the coffee going and are anxiously awaiting the newspaper while catching CNN’s headlines. My father was raised on a farm and my mother was an army brat — they never outgrew that early morning schedule for some bizarre reason, though I tried to break them of it for 18 years or so.

Anyway, Saturday, I called my mom bright and early from the comfort of my bed, beneath my covers piled high with kitties. I wanted to talk to her about the incident on the bus.

O.K. That’s not true. I don’t really care about the incident on the bus. I know there’s some women’s rights women who might be angry or horrified by the thought that I don’t really care about the fact that I was victimized by two little boys on a bus fifteen years ago. By all means, include me as a statistic somewhere, but the truth is that I don’t actually feel anything toward those two boys who probably don’t even remember the incident, the bus, or me. They probably didn’t even remember it the next month, which is probably where the true crime is. Probably they never really knew what they did wrong.

What I am upset about is how I became a victim after the bus. How I did everything I was supposed to to. I told a grownup, my parent. I told an authority figure, my principal. My life was the life that changed. I lived in fear though not the shame that many victims reportedly fall into. I lived in a kind of punishment as my priviliges were the ones that were stripped and my movements were the ones restricted.

I discussed this all with my mother. She doesn’t really recall a lot of these changes though she does recall the incident. She did admit that these sorts of things do happen to victims of sexual assult and rape afterwards as a result and it’s a shame.

So then I wanted to know if she recalls if I started to withdraw more after this event. Did she notice a significant change? Really this is what the phone call was about for me. I really want to know what happened to me in my childhood. When did things go wrong? Maybe if I can figure out the when, I can figure out the why and maybe then I can start working on fixing it. I don’t know.

Well, she didn’t think that I did withdraw after the bus incident and for some reason, this lead me to comment that I thought that I had been fine until we moved to New Orleans. Suddenly, she said, “Yeah!” This lead her to tell me that when we lived in Florida before I was seven, I was a bright and sunny kid, completely different and I thought everyone loved me and I would walk up to complete strangers and talk to them. Once I scared her because I walked up to a complete stranger in a grocery parking lot and started talking to him and when she tried to tell me that it wasn’t a good thing to do, I wanted to know why and she told me that not everyone would love me; apparently I refused to accept this as fact.

Something changed between Florida and New Orleans. Where that bright and sunny kid went, I don’t know.

However, she pointed out that the other really big personality shift she noticed in me was when I came home from college. She said a friend of a high school friend of mine had called to ask me out or ask me to do something and I had said no and when asked why not, I told her that I didn’t know where he’d “been” or what he’d been doing the last three years. Now, I don’t exactly remember this incident, but it has the sting of truth to it. It kind of sounds like how paranoid I felt about people when I first got back to New Orleans, how I sometimes still am.

So, having had plenty of time to mull this over, particularly while I was lost on the backroads of Maine, I got to thinking about the really “hard times” in my life, the times when I think I was having life crises or depressive episodes or I maybe was going through some sort of personality shift as my mom described it.

• There was the move to New Orleans when I was Six/Seven. We moved away from everything I knew where everyone loved me into a neighborhood where no one else lived and the great unknown where I started a fundie private Christian school.
• Started a new private school (leaving new friends twice) after not adjusting to public school after nearly getting expelled from fundie private Christian school — mom agrees I shouldn’t have been suspended in the first place — plus I was held back a grade to catch up with my age group.
• Went away to college (once again leaving everyone behind) which was not the grand adventure I thought it was going to be.
• Returned to New Orleans (leaving friends behind) without a real job to live at home with parents and work at video store.
• Parents move 2 states away.
• Six years of abusive job stress to be fired and leave work friends.
• Move 1700 miles and leave behind all friends and everything I’ve ever known.

So it’s kind of possible that this is the pattern. I’m not saying it is. I’m saying it’s possible. Maybe each school change and move was just reliving the move from where I was loved by all into exile subconsciously. It’s something worth exploring, I guess.

I haven’t discussed the moving theory with my mother, I kind of developed it after I talked with her.

I do want to say that I think she’s been much more supportive this last year and a half of therapy than she was when I started therapy ten years ago. She’s been willing to help me analyze and review and explore and that’s been very helpful to me this time around. Though I wish she’d stop pointing out that I have a lot of quirks just like my bipolar grandmother. That’s just too helpful. She’s also been telling me a lot how much she loves me and how proud she is of me and trying to be supportive of my ideas rather than critical and I appreciate that too. Then again, maybe my negative hearing is dimming a little too. Either way, this is much easier knowing she’s with me.

Though I still don’t have the courage to bring up the subject that maybe there’s some mental illness on her side of the family too.

tags: dysfunctional family, depression, rape, Women's Rights, therapy, wellness, Me

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