Mom stuff pt. 2

As I last posted, my mother died in April. Exactly six months ago.

The fact that it’s been half a year since she died feels unreal. Since that time, I’ve single-handedly emptied and sold her house, moved across the country, and experienced multiple professional and personal shifts—in addition to all of the grief, etc.

It’s been… what it is.

In wanting to be a good descriptive writer, I thought about using words like invigorating, harrowing, dissociative, sharp, dull, stressful, and many others—but it was all of them and none of them. I thought the right word might ping some truth, but typing it out silenced it.

This is annoyingly typical: sharing a part of my inner experience often causes it to vanish. It goes somewhere deep, and I often can’t find it again.

So what I can say is that April feels like a year ago and also like two Saturdays ago.

But that also feels fitting.

Like many relationships—especially parental ones—we were the same person but diametrically opposed. We were aligned and also adversaries. The center of each other’s worlds but also an afterthought.

She put her dreams, desires, and aspirations upon me, and I would have done anything for her to live them for herself. It was everything, all of its potential and opposites, and nothing all at once.

Well, not nothing—but ultimately pointless. Fruitless. Neither of us achieved what we wanted for the other.

Her official date of death, when her body stopped breathing, felt like a notification to the rest of the world—a moment where everyone else was catching up to what I already knew.

Like I finally had permission to embody what I’d felt for the better part of a decade.

I think her definition of death would have been the point where she couldn’t be the person she felt she had to be in order to deserve to exist.

After the first series of seizures and strokes—when she kept trying to work but was less and less able to do the tasks.

When she was forced into early retirement.

When she had to go on disability.

These were all deaths, and they stacked on top of each other over a few years.

When she was unable to ambulate on her own and needed help with bodily functions, I know that was death for her, even though she lived for several years after that.

This is not a judgment about disability. I know there are many ways to live a life.

But my mother's primary emotional experience on this plane was shame.

I know because she handed it down to me—both consciously and unconsciously.

She always felt like she was at a deficit, like she had to earn her way into mattering. Working—being a provider—was how she did that.

Even as hard as she worked, she never felt like she deserved to be here. She always had something to apologize for.

She was my original match girl.

I watched her watch her own flame go out.

I know she watched her mother do the same. Probably her father, too.

A lineage of freezing to death while praying.

So how do I not meet the same fate?

I’m 35, going on 36. She was 36, going on 37, when she had me.

We both traveled to the UK in our mid-20s, and settled down and got married soon after.

We both picked the “safe” route.

She wanted to be a history teacher but was told (by her favorite history teacher) that it wasn’t a financially sound career path. She was advised to become a nurse because “you can always feed your kids.” Even though we didn’t exist yet.

I wanted to be a writer, but it wasn’t a financially sound career path. So I became a therapist. It felt like “learning a trade,” and I got to remain attached to my university psychology department for two more years.

It was the first place that ever made me feel like I mattered. I couldn’t bear to leave.

To be clear, I don’t regret becoming a therapist.

But I’m noticing and naming the patterns.

The concessions. The crossroad decisions that don’t feel like choices when you’re making them. You just end up somewhere and don’t know where to go next—unless you follow the road map laid out before you.

In my case, you make practical concessions until there’s nothing left to concede.

I’d like to take a different road.
I’d like to knock on a door before I freeze.

Would you like to come with me?