This is going to be another one of those that, in the highly unlikely event that my siblings ever start reading this blog, they should most definitely skip, because I am going to talk shit about Mom, and in my family, there is no greater sin.

Mother is the name of God on the lips and hearts of all children, after all.

I’ve talked before about the radical dichotomy that forms when you have an abusive parent. The abusive active one becomes the Devil, and the kindly passive one becomes The Saint. It’s what has to happen, but it means that any issues with The Saint becomes very, very hard to see, let alone grapple with. When you are a kid hiding from The Devil every time they are around, The Saint is your only ally and the “good” parent, and so you have to blindly worship them no matter how poorly they perform as a parent.

You make do with what you get, I suppose. But let’s put it like this : it’s not like it was particularly hard to be a better parent than my Dad.

So it’s high time I tried to rationally assess my mother’s performance. I do this not out of malice towards her but out of an attempt to figure out what is really going on inside me and that means finding the truth in the events of my childhood.

First off, I have to say that when I was little, she was marvelous. I have a lot of happy memories of her showing me things in the garden, reading to me before bed, giving me lots of hugs, and playing the guitar and singing with me. What’s more, she showed a real interest in me and seemed determined to make sure I got what I needed to grow up a strong and caring little boy.

Then that all changed. She went away. It was to go back to work after unplanned little old me, but still, this was the beginning of the withdrawal. I still had her in the summer, though, and I suspect that’s why a lot of those happy memories are filled with sunshine.

That’s probably also why sunny days make me happy even when the heat makes me miserable. But that’s beside the point.

But that ended too. She was still home in the summer, of course, but that just meant more meals she had to cook and more housework to do and now she had to take care of all four of us all the time, and that’s when she started to be a zombie mom.

Because, you see, that’s how timid, passive people like me and my mother betray you. Not by stabbing you in the back or even ever making the decision to leave you. We simply fade away very slowly, too slow to be noticed in realtime, but as sure and certain as the ticking of a clock.

I still had Betty, though. My babysitter. And she paid attention to me, unlike everyone else. I am a lot like my mother but I am also a lot like Betty. I learned so much from her.

And then school came, and I went from being a kid with one person he could count on in his life, whether it was Mom or Betty, to being abandoned to a cruel world for which I was ill prepared and rapidly sank down into a world of boredom, terror, injustice, cruelty, depression, anxiety, and neglect.

That’s when the real betrayal took place, because when I tried to tell my parents (by which I mean my mother, because it’s not like I thought Dad would help, he’s The Devil after all), they just shut me down and made it clear to me that whatever it was, it was my business and my business alone because they could not spare any energy or effort at all on me, the unwanted guest who could not leave.

And I tried at least three times that I can remember, and each time it was much harder than the previous time, and after three or so, I just gave up.

I am positive that if it had been one of my siblings telling them that they were getting beat up in school all the time, it would have been treated like the emergency it was. There would have been calls to the school and outrage and reassurance that Something Would Be Done About This and that It Would Stop.

Especially if it had been one of the girls.

But I could barely get out that I was unhappy and that there was a problem before they shut me down because they just didn’t want to allocate any resources, whether physical, mental, or psychological,. at their disposal to the kid they never wanted, especially when they could go back to pretending I wasn’t there just by shutting me down like they did.

Get back in your box and disappear/

This all culminated on that fateful day when the dentist told my parents that I needed some serious dental work or, if unchecked, my life could be in danger, and my mother blinked and said “Well we can’t afford THAT!” and that was the end of it.

That was the real betrayal. That wasn’t my Dad’s doing, it was hers. Clearly, as much as I adored her, she did not feel the same way about me. If it had been one of my siblings, there would have been no question about it. They would have done whatever it took, made whatever sacrifices they had to make, to do what the dentist told them had to be done .

I know this, because they did it for both of my sisters.

Now I ask of you : what sort of parent is told their kid needs dental work or he may have serious health complications later in life, and just shrugs and walks away?

A very bad parent, that’s what.

My mother did a bad job raising me. She was in the forefront of making me feel like I wasn’t wanted, wasn’t welcome, and certainly wasn’t worth spending money on.

Ya did me wrong, Mom. I know you wouldn’t see it that way, but it’s true.

No wonder I am so fucked up.

I had nobody. 

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.