It is incredibly frustrating to feel like you are never good enough.
To feel like you are always letting someone down, no matter what you do.
To feel like nothing that you ever do is right.
It is incredibly frustrating to have a mother who constantly compares you to other people, specifically your oldest best friend.
"I don't know why you are trying to hard to be on the dance team, lord knows that Caralee is a better dancer than you are...."
"Caralee is so smart. Look, she was in the top ten in your high school class!"
"Caralee sure looked beautiful at your wedding. Whoever did her makeup should have done yours...."
These are all things that my mother has said to my face and later denied. Just because you don't want to believe that you said these things to me....doesn't mean they didn't happen. Caralee and I stopped talking for two months in High School during my senior year because she felt like I was competing with her and didn't want to play those games. Gee, I wonder what in the world would have possessed me to do such a thing.
My mother starts a fight with me right before Mother's Day every freaking year. It's like clockwork. Suddenly, I become defective. I'm not the daughter that she wanted. That girl has been gone for a long time. I'm not thoughtful enough, I don't call her enough. I don't spend every waking moment of my life trying to please her. Therefore, I get emotionally abused. But my mother is crafty. Apparently all I ever do is hurt her feelings. Apparently my feelings are the only ones that ever matter even though that is certainly not the case. Just her feelings never get appeased. (Granted, mine don't either).
She wants us to have this perfect mother-daughter relationship that I don't think exists. We wear matching outfits and go hang out like, all the time, together and I tell her every aspect of my to the point that it's slightly creepy. No. Too much has happened for that, Mom. Too many tears have been shed. Too many night have been spent wondering why it is that you don't love me. What did I do to make you ignore me completely for an entire week? What did I do to make you all of a sudden decide to send me to go live with "my father" because you thought that living in an un-airconditioned trailer would be a severe punishment for me, when really it was a great two days and I was kinda sad to have to move back home.
That's right...Have to move back home. Part of me didn't want to. Part of me wanted to stay in the delipated old trailer and make due with my dad. My mother things that I am a diva. That I love to want things. That I have to have things and heaven help the person who is not willing to give up everything for me to have them. This is not true. I can make due on a surprisingly small amount of money. I don't need a lot of things to make me happy. Do I want them? Sure, of course I do. But if it comes down to it, I can do without. Something that she cannot understand.
She says that I don't know the first thing about her. And I probably don't. Truth is, I really stopped caring about her a long time ago. I love her, yes, because she's my mother. But if she was some random person that I met, I would not care for her. I would think she was awful. So there's this obligation to love her. This obligation to tell her that I love her when she's crying about how I don't care about her anymore and she doesn't understand why I don't talk to her. I don't talk to her because everytime I do, she tries to one up me.
Have a bad day? Hers was worse. Feel sick? She's been in bed for two days with a migraine. Have financial woes? You haven't heard anything yet. She's the perpetual martyr. Always something to complain about. Never anything to be thankful for.
But yet, I'm the emotional attention whore. I'm the one who needs everyone to placate my delicate emotions.
It couldn't be that you are a bitch and that I don't like the way that you speak to me....no. Surely that's not it at all.
