Blaming Mom --the Good Old Days

Ah, the good old days. Having someone to blame. I had a wise counselor who, about eight months into therapy said, "Okay, your mother screwed up and you suffered for it. Your whole family made a mess of it. So now what are you going to do?"

I looked at her and blinked twice, mouth hanging open. "Well, blame Mom for the rest of my life, okay?"

For some reason or other this was not acceptable, and at last the healing began. I like to call it that because it sounds so nice. Growing Up is probably more accurate. I had to learn to simply be myself. Why can't simple things be easy, too? Feh. I had to be myself, accept myself, and--most importantly--take full responsibility for whatever mess I was making or had made and set about doing a better job.

I hate that. Having no one to blame. I liked blaming my alcoholic mother, philandering father, abusive brother. I liked giving full credit to my sister and other brother for "saving me." That's the thing. When you blame others and even when you are too grateful to others, well, you lose a sense of having been anything other than a passenger in your own life. At least that was what I did. Until I was in my thirties and well into my forties, I struggled with the novel notion that perhaps I was the one running my own life--for better, not just worse. The joy of that particular misery wound up being that, after the struggle of remembering, the pain of reliving some things, the difficulties with letting go of other things, came a time of remembering the good of my mom.

When I blamed her I couldn't handle her gifts. Now that she, along with all the others of my birth family, are gone, I have the luxury of remembering what I choose. It is no longer a matter of denial or blocking what is hard. It truly is a matter of choice. I choose to remember, to focus on her gifts: her proof of the existence of elves (for another entry), our credo "There's always something more important to do than housework," her kick in the butt after I had been assaulted, "You can get up and live or lie down and die, but I sure as hell am not going to stand around and watch you lie down and die. So come in the house." Her insatiable curiosity and her faith in the kindness of other people.

There are so many more gifts to remember than horrors. An alcoholic was the least of who she was, even though it's the part that killed her. She was the keeper of all magic, the font of most wisdom, with a smile that could take in Milwaukee, and a brain the size of a planet.

Until I stopped blaming her, I shoved all that in a drawer in the back of my mind, where it could not find my heart. Until I stopped blaming her. Yes, but now, now when my world dangles precariously near a precipice, when I cannot get out of my own way, when I mess up my own deadlines, I have to look at myself, without having Mom to blame. Bummer.

Man, I miss my mother...