Unresolved Issues

You'd figure that by the time I got to sixty, I'd have quit blaming my mother for my problems, right?

Well, sometimes, not so much.

Not that I didn't have a huge share in creating these problems. In the first place, I found my parents to be so oppressive that I moved as far away, and as fast, as I could. I never gave myself a chance to see them as anything other than parental units. I wasn't around to see them as parents of an adult person. Nope. I took off. For some reason, I thought they would forever do their best to stifle me, as they had done, fairly effectively, all my life. So I left.

First, I went to college, but that wasn't far enough. They still expected me to go home on weekends. Mom redecorated my room (pink...the way she always thought it should be). So, I went to Toronto and got a boyfriend. His mother didn't like me, and got me to tell her who my parents were and where they lived. She wrote them a letter, telling them things about me that were untrue, but very frightening to them. Mom showed up, and Boyfriend and I were married in short order. Also, in short order, I was pregnant, so we wound up back "home" in that pink bedroom for a while, until Husband got a job and we moved to Vancouver. We gave the baby up for adoption.

A few years later, with that marriage on the rocks, I went to Texas.

I saw my mother only once after that...six years after I left Canada, my mom and dad made a huge tour of the US and came to stay a couple of weeks with SSS and me in Austin. I was pregnant with Chandra.

Mom had some things to say. She blindsided me with a lot of hurtful things I had said to her and done to her...things I had totally forgotten. Once reminded, all those things came back, and I cringe, even now, at the thoughtless, inconsiderate and downright hateful kid I was in my teens. I am so happy that I had a chance to apologize to her for each and every one of the wounds that she had been picking at for a dozen or so years.

But I didn't have the courage to share my own wounds. Like the singing thing. And so I carry it still...thirty-three years later.

Everyone has issues with their parents, I think. So, after you're grown, take the time to reflect on them, and discuss them. But, don't take too much time. It runs out.