un-Mother's Day

This has been a long time coming, but must be done. Going through life loving and hating ones mother is a recipe for depression and self-loathing. She is the last piece of the healing puzzle. Without releasing her and all the emotions associated with her--hate, love, desperation, embarrassment, humiliation, resentment, rage, disappointment, loss, longing, broken heartedness--I will never be whole.

There are no words for some emotions, just a physical sickness and ache.

I knew this day would come eventually. It was inevitable once I began to forgive and release all the abusers from my past. My healing cannot be complete until I also forgive and release my biological mother.

Perhaps since it all began with her, she is the most difficult to forgive. Whatever the case, to move forward, I must no longer look back; not in anger, longing, or with "what ifs" haunting my every thought and memory.

I've lived my entire life knowing I was a pawn conceived solely to trap a man she was obsessed with into marrying her. Failing that, I was worthless and left to the sick, sex-addicted devices of her father, my grandfather and first abuser. From birth, a lifetime of neglect and abuse--sexual, physical, emotional and psychological--was set into motion. It shaped who I became as well as my actions and reactions to everything I experienced.

At thirteen, as my mother came out of the Alice Keith Park public pool, she met a twenty-one year old Sicilian-American man. She claims to have instantly fallen in love. Knowing all too well her severe bipolar disorder that makes her obsess to a psychotic degree over men, I can speculate love had little to do with it.

She chased after this man for four years, until she wore him down enough to trap him into having sex with her. She figured if she got pregnant, he'd have to marry her and she'd have him at last. To this day she still spins "what if" fantasies about him, casting him as the made-man Mafioso and she as the happy little housewife, a la The Godfather, making spaghetti and having a kid every year.

Showing his true colors, he ended up marrying another, younger girl whom he had also gotten pregnant, abandoning my mother to her fate. I have never met this man and have no interest whatsoever in doing so. To me, he is merely a sperm donor worth not one moment of my time.

Soon after my birth, my mother was deemed unfit and I was adopted by my maternal grandparents. My mother, cast out by my whoring, wife-beating, child molesting grandfather for being a whore, did just that. She moved in with a man who became her pimp and was quickly turned out as a hooker.

When I was two, she kidnapped me from my backyard swing. I was missing for more than six months. When the police found me, I was malnourished, diseased, covered in sores and parasites in a home with similar children being kept by a stranger who had no idea where my mother was. To this day, my mother denies this, but she is the definition of mental instability, so I'll believe the police report instead.

I was mute for a year following my rescue by the police. I was petrified of men and would often get into trouble for hiding in terror beneath the clothes racks in stores. It was during this year of my life that my grandfather began molesting me. That wasn't enough for him, however. It escalated into having his cronies over, getting me drunk and passing me around like a party favor, taping it all on a reel-to-reel player. He would later sit my grandmother and I on the sofa under pain of beatings if we moved, and force us to listen to the tapes. He would laugh, boast, yell, scream and threaten. Sometimes he would tape this part, too, playing it back to us as he laughed until he cried.

Obviously, I did not grow up with my mother. Being banished from my grandfather's home, she was a shadowy figure of scorn and fear. Especially fear after the kidnapping. I can remember as far back as having my diapers changed, the mobile over my crib, but nothing of that six-month ordeal. I agree with therapists who've said such blocked memories are too much for the mind to handle and thus must be left alone.

I met my mother again as an adult, at age 18. I'd forgotten all the hatred and fear programmed into me by my family. I opened myself up to the miracle of actually having a mother. She was young, beautiful, funny, hip, took me shopping and clubbing and was more like a sister than a mom. That's where the problems began. She didn't want to be my mother. She wanted to use me as bait to attract men. She was--and still is--married, so I was horrified by the idea that she was using me to act a whore.

The sham came to a head when I refused to whore myself to a married man she'd scouted for me. I was organizing the shoes in my closet when she came into the room, raining punches and kicks upon me, screaming what an ungrateful slut I was. How she'd never had the opportunity to catch a rich man like this one. How I was lucky to have gotten his attention. How he'd buy me a car, furs, jewelry. Over and over again, she kicked and hit me, screaming the words with every blow. My defense--as it remains today--is that I will NOT be with a married man. Period. She threatened to throw me out into the street. She did throw my things out into the courtyard.

I had to agree to meet and have drinks with him just to stop her attack and insanity. This married man owned a store in a mall and took me to his office where he attempted to rape me. When I explained this to my mother, she slapped me in the middle of a seating area in that mall and threatened to leave me there and burn all my things. I was so terrified, but back then I still loved her desperately. She was also at the peak of a manic phase so I knew to ride that out until her depressive phase came and she'd love and need me again.

So much of my history with my mother is colored by scenes exactly like these. Over time my skin thickened to her abuse and four years ago I cut off her access to me. Even 1,900 miles from home, she was able to make my life hell.

She is what I call a phone terrorist, i.e. someone who calls and hangs up 200-300 times a day, or screams and shrieks threats and profanity with each of those calls. And if you let the answering machine get it, she leaves messages of the same type until the machine is full. This time she had my half-sister in on the terrorism. They filled both my home answering machine and cell voice mail to capacity with the most unspeakable profanity and threats. Completely insane things.

I should never have to unplug my phone in order to avoid my own family.

I had my numbers changed and did not look back. Until the past couple of months, I also threw all of her letters and cards into the garbage unopened.

This year has marked an enormous change in my life. Through my faith, The Secret and Law of Attraction, I've been able to release all the fear, hatred and memories of abuse. Last night, I knew I needed to reconcile myself to her and let go of the overwhelming hate and resentment I've felt my entire life. Like my ex-husband, my grandfather, my other rapists and abusers, she's broken, mentally ill and cannot be held fully accountable for every action.

It's my job to forgive and let it all go. I cannot change her. I cannot change what happened. She will never be a mother in the true definition of the word. She will never be a mother I can go into a Hallmark store and buy a card that fits her perfectly. She did not raise me, protect or comfort me. She was not there as a nurturing force for good. My memories of her are neither comforting or loving.

While I do open her cards and letters now, and send her cards upon occasion, I won't let her have access to me by phone or in person again. Therapists are right when they instruct you to deny access to your abusers. It can be heart breaking when that person is your own mother, but very necessary.

Last night I attended a mother-daughter event at my church. I did so as a favor to a friend whose daughter would not go with her. I was surprised at the amount of hurt and anger I still held as everyone was urged to sing along with that old standard "Mother" song. My mind was filled with alternative lyrics. Fitting or not, I'll close this recollection with those, then let her go.

M - is for the million ways you've hurt me.

O - is for obsessing over men, choosing them over me.

T - is for the thousand ways you degraded and endangered me.

H - is for the hatred you've spewed at me when all I wanted was your love.

E - is for your eyes so filled with insanity and loathing when you look at me.

R - is for the reality that you can never be a good mother.

Put them all together and they spell uncontrolled manic depressive, obsessive/compulsive who will not comply with medication, therapy, or common decency, even when it means losing your own child forever.

I love you Mom. I forgive you, and release you to the Holy Spirit.