Without A Mother; Mother’s Day

I posted the following on my personal Facebook page yesterday:

Sarah May 8, 2018:
Sharing this memory as all the usual feels are beginning to swirl and the rising tide of “BUT YOUR MOM!!!!” messages for this made up holiday have reached a deafening level. There’s no card for this shit. SMDH.

Sarah May 8, 2016

Shout out to all the kids who had to grow up too early or sacrifice way too much of their childhoods because their parents weren’t equipped for the job, for whatever reason. We don’t get a “day” but we don’t need one because the things we had to do for others were never done for us anyway. Keep on keepin’ on!

There are things we go through in this world that cannot be put into words. Emotions, experiences, and while some words do exist, what does it truly mean and feel like to be in “awe” or “miserable”? As I reread what I had written back in 2016, I paused. I took a slow, deep breath. This isn’t unusual these days as I have been practicing this for some time in order to actually consider things before responding to them (rare in modern society, imho). I realized in this pause that I had had some tension building up inside me. That I had been getting grouchier in recent days without knowing why or really even questioning it. For transparency sake I will admit that I simply expected the constant numbness inside me which often precedes full blown depression to be the culprit followed by PMS, but now I think it’s marketing for Mother’s Day. Ugh!

First let me just say that I don’t have anything against mother’s and I fully support them in all that they do. Having said that, I have never had a mother figure in my life, save for the first 5 years of my life. My mother was physically present after this time, but rarely mentally so. I’ve written about this before, so let’s not get back into those specifics today. No, I want to talk about those of us who had to step in and up, without really understanding or knowing what we were undertaking at the time of course, because we had to. I hate that I have felt shame over this. I hate that I have felt hurt and scornful and full of wounded pride that doesn’t even belong to me over this. I hate that my biological parents will never admit to how things really were for us kids.

But I am not filled with hate. I am definitely not filled with anger (yuck). I am filled with a sense of loss and longing for something I have never had. I’ve witnessed countless families with fully or mostly functioning parental figures. Not to knock my dad, he had to work all of the time for us to just scrape by ( but my shit with him is heavier and darker and that is not what this post is about). I saw broken families with strong maternal bonds in my childhood neighborhood. My childhood best friend’s mom always kept me at a distance, but did her best to include me and my awkward ass from a poor family in things that mattered. I always felt like an outsider, no matter how long I knew a friend and their family, I never felt like I got a ticket to the having a mom in your life ride. That unconditional love shit? Where do I find this? *DigsForWallet*

I have friends who have incredible and beautiful relationships with their mothers. Single mothers and their eldest daughters being in the majority amongst my circle of friends. Even friends with parents who have married and remarried seem to actually love and like each other and that honestly just does my head in at this point. While all unique and none without issues, they are all what I have never had and there’s really no way to make peace with that. There’s no way to fill a hole you didn’t know you even had until later in adulthood. I’m not one for black tar heroin, so passe, but I also don’t seek fulfillment in that part of myself at all. (Okay, if I do I am completely unaware of it!)

The closest thing I’ve had to a true maternal figure in my life was my grandma, my dad’s mother. They had a great relationship, she was a wonderful human being in the truest sense. She was a registered nurse, met my grandpa in WWII, worked in elder care for a convalescent hospital for my entire life…but we weren’t very close until I was about 19 years old. I had escaped an abusive relationship that I’m not sure anyone in my family was even aware of (though much of it happened in our home), I’d been living twenty miles away until my roommates got us evicted (they were such sweet stoners until they brought meth into the equation). I had to move back home. My grandma had the best sense of humor and a way of seeing the world’s beauty and misery in a way I want to believe that I have carried on. There is so much I wish I could talk to her about now, but I wasn’t the person I am today, then. She passed away in 2003, just a few months before my first marriage. (I’m assuming another marriage though I have no plans, hopes, or desires. Ha-ha!)

Later I bonded with her (only slightly) younger sister who was such a spitfire! She saw the bullshit my dad’s wife was dishing and sought to gain my trust and confidence, and she succeeded. She taught my then husband and I to play her favorite dominoes game and to make a great (strong!) vodka-tonic. She saw me as an adult, something my dad just could. We lost touch due to said dad’s wife and her incessant lies that tore our family apart. At her funeral her children demanded to know who I was and I don’t know what hurt more that or losing her all together. It was the end of matriarchs in my family. It was also the end of my family, imo. It’s not about forgiveness or anything of the sort. It’s about just being human and doing the right thing, even if it’s too late.

Fleeting but strong bonds that have carried me through darker times than these, that continue to inspire and push me to keep on keepin’ on. Truly, though? I have come to distrust the motherly tone of anyone aiming their vocal chords in my direction. Years of Mom-agers in tech startups bullying or gaslighting me (for real!) have proven to be the worst of the worst in my book. I am a feminist! I don’t have anything against actual mothers, in fact I admire them. But a Mom-ager is something differently entirely. Other women I have known have really been great friends, lifelong friends even, and I hold friendships to a very high standard. It’s not the same though. Not having that person you can tell tough things to, to show you how to “be” a woman or do “womanly” things, I have never had. From my period at age 9 to my first pubic bush in all it’s lustrous glory, kissing and sex, relationships and my own identity struggles, you name it, I have relied on other weird kids I hung out with for information and tips and advice, even the library proved more fruitful than adults growing up.

The marketing and manipulation that Mother’s Day brings is so fucked up it creeps up on me every year and I always think I’m immune to it at first. I just roll my eyes and figure it simply doesn’t apply to me and try to live my damn life. But it’s EVERYWHERE!!! Just now I received an email from a company I like (Rainbeau Curves) with the subject line, “Celebrate Mom!” UGH! I still feel mostly numb inside, like I haven’t felt anything in awhile. It’s weird, but familiar. It’s better than being overly emotional in that at least my lack of emotion doesn’t offend anyone or leave me drained and wrecked. I go through spells where I long to feel something, but then those floodgates open up and I wish it would all go away again. Even all this motherly stuff hasn’t brought on any actual emotions, just tension and frustration in a physical sort of way. Meh, I’m weird.

So shout out to the weird kids who are still just weird kids in grown up bodies struggling to break free of the bullshit that distorted their world views and robbed them of their childhoods. Shout out to the weird kids who had to hide to survive, who struggled their entire lives to fit in or even be seen…by anyone at all! We don’t get a holiday or greeting card companies profiting off our collective weirdness. But I see you, I celebrate you, and I embrace you and alllllll of your amazing weirdness! We hold together the very fabric of society and no one seems to realize that. Fuck ’em! We don’t need them, we’ve figured it all out by now and can support one another from here on out! So I hope you do something absolutely wonderful for yourself this Sunday, I’ll do my best to as well.

Rad Fatty Love to ALL,

<3
S

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