To My Mother…
My mother died Friday before last, and services were held for her this past Friday…
I don’t know if I’ve processed it yet, or for that fact, if I ever will. We had a complicated relationship, she and I…
She was the first person I ever spent significant time around who had intense mental health issues. It seems she was traumatized a lot as a kid and young adult, and that unfortunately, she internalized predation — causing her to develop strong psychological addictions to inflicting various forms of punishment onto my brother and I.
After years of abuse and neglect in her household, my brother and I were taken from her by the state, and placed into foster care — ultimately being adopted into my (now) family.
My brother and I are very fortunate that the cycles of abuse and mental distortions (that typically steer people towards various forms of escapism) were interrupted, and that they didn’t carry forward with us in the same way predation and mental instability were circumstantially infused into her.
Personally speaking, I’m quite fortunate to have gotten a front row seat to the shit show that is ‘the ego parasite in its volatile states and stages’…
That being said, my love for my mother is deep and profound. It’s rooted in appreciation for everything she both intentionally and unintentionally did for us, in addition to being rooted in sympathy, sorrow and compassion…
Even though my mother could be grossly abusive at times, there was a disciplinary aspect underpinning her (otherwise would be) flat out aggression towards us. She saw to it that my brother and I were reading and writing well before we were enrolled in school. We were cooking and cleaning as toddlers, and situationally forced to keep our wits about us, for fear of giving a much larger and brutally unforgiving person license to torture us. As a result of her instability, we developed cognizance and situational awareness at very young ages…
My brother was physically scarred on one occasion when we were toddlers by what can only be described as flat-out laziness and gross negligence on my mother’s end. The scar he acquired from that experience still haunts me to this day, and I still relive the event whenever it crosses my mind…
… excellent recall and traumatic experiences don’t go so well together…
But we were just kids though… And I’m not just talking about my brother and I, but my mother as well.
She had me just before she turned 20, and my brother just before she turned 18. A person doesn’t magically become an adult the very second they bear offspring…
And here was this 20 something year old woman (girl really), who barely had a grip on reality herself — who was still full of dreams, hopes and wishes, just trying to make sense of life in a world that can be brutally unforgiving to people with melanin, especially those with wombs…
You know… the socialization process trains people to be self-righteous, intolerant assholes. I remember as an adolescent and young man, having this great disdain for my mother for all she did to us growing up — specifically for what she did to my brother. Beyond that though, there was this sort of embarrassment I felt due to her not being an ideal representation of a parental figure — one I could be socially proud of.
We (humans) have been taught to develop and nurture these characters — these social actors that we want to see ourselves as, and then present to others as our ‘true selves’. And inevitably, we come to see anyone or anything that doesn’t reflect our own idealized selves, in the ways of image, attitudes, actions and behaviors back to us, as somehow being contemptible and worthy of our harshest judgments and criticisms.
The socialization process trains us to believe that we are first, always the good guys, second, that we are always the victims, and third, that those we perceive as ‘other’ are somehow inherently bad or worse than us by comparison…
Socialization teaches us to think in moral and authoritative dichotomies. When thinking morally, we’re thinking in terms of ‘good and bad/righteous and evil’; and when thinking authoritatively, we’re thinking in terms of ‘right and wrong’ and/or ‘deserving of praises and rewards, or deserving of punishment and contempt’…
As a result of this, we can tend to view reality, and all people and things, including self, through this lens of idealism.
And unfortunately, the way it works is that after a while people tend to stop dealing with others in reality, and start judging them according to these arbitrary senses of “justice” they develop from moral and righteous ideological bases.
I mention all this to say…
You can waste a lot of good years of your life, wiling your time away in cocoons of idealism. And if you let them, those cocoons will rob you of everything you hold dear, including close relationships with people you love.
In the end, what matters most is not the process but the product. I look at my brother, and at all the things he’s accomplished and survived in life, and I see a competent, capable and well-turned-out human being.
My mother bore two strong and capable men, who are both brave and willing to stand in the face of danger and uncertainty. She had the intuitive insight to let go of us when it became clear she was no longer fit to see us into the future. In her moments of lucidity, she was kind and showed concern for us and our (life-long) well-being. At her memorial, friends had gathered to celebrate her transitioning; some of whom had been in her life since nearly the beginning of mine.
Mother, I speak to you directly now…
When all is said and done, you did good.
I’m so glad we were able to reconnect in life, and that we were even able to salvage a relationship after all we’ve been through. I love you dearly, and I appreciate you for all the ways you helped prepare me for life, and to embark on even greater journeys, and take on greater responsibilities and risks. Your life was not wasted — not at all; not by any stretch of the imagination.