Dear Reader:

I had the image last night, of my mother, being maybe 30 something, maybe 40, and very anxious, like she often was, talking and talking and talking in that agitated way I remember too well, on and on and  on.. And I felt empathy for her and in my mind I took her in my arms, hugging her and hushing her.. quieting her, calming her.. because that’s what she needed! I later realized that this image I am telling about, is the image of a mother (me) holding an agitated baby (my mother) in my arms, gently comforting her.

We daughters of very unwell mothers do get confused when it comes to who is whom. We love her so much, from such an early age.. that even after years or decades of anger at her, we still love her, still want to comfort her, to help her.

I had a repeated dream, as an adult, I remember it clearly: there was her face looking at me angrily, silent and angry. Nothing happened in that repeated dream.

The first time I remember her angry at me was on the night when at 5 or 6 years-old, I heard her scream out loud that she was going to kill herself during a fight with my father, then she ran into the night. I was scared but walked into the night, looking for her, imagining finding her dead. When I finally saw her on the street under the moonlight, alive, I was overjoyed. I ran to her, calling her name: Mommy, Mommy, you are ALIVE!!! When I got close enough to her, I clearly saw that she was angry at me, I remember her angry face. Her voice was angry too as she told me accusingly: “And why shouldn’t I be alive?” (Looking back, I think that what angered her was that neighbors heard the commotion, went out to the street, and when I ran to her in front of the neighbors, and said what I said, she felt that what I said made her look bad to the observing neighbors.

The last time I saw her angry was the last time that I saw her, back in 2012 in her apartment, with guests present, she looked silently angry from across the room.

There were many times when she was angry at me and LOUD about it, saying lots of shaming, angry things against me, hitting me etc., during hours-long marathons of rage,  but it is her Silent Anger that I remember most, and dreamt about.

I  am guessing that she was angry at me because I was a breech baby, causing her lots of physical pain and shame, as the hospital staff gathered to watch the unusual birth. I am guessing that she was angry at me for not eating enough, for following being isolated by the hospital for weeks or longer, following a severe case of dysentery, and not allowing her to be with me (a common practice at the time), when I was finally brought to her, at a year-old or so, I turned my back to her and held on to the nurse.

In defense of the baby that I was, I didn’t turn upside down in her womb because .. well, it was not up to me. I didn’t make it happen: she was bulimic during her pregnancy with me (and for years after) and under-weight, so much so that at 9-months, her pregnancy didn’t even show. And not eating enough after birth- she has always been in the habit of over feeding people, and being a small baby, I didn’t need much food. So, again, not the baby’s fault. Neither is turning away from her after being in the hospital for so long- it is known that a baby gets attached to the nurses when the mother is not present.

But my.. sins against her, in her own mind, started before my birth and increased throughout decades of my life, culminating in her ongoing, intense anger against me, a timeless, frozen anger, never to thaw.  I loved her so much, chased her to love me for decades while not even knowing that I was chasing her. It was an instinct, a habit- wanting to thaw that angry face, and change her frozen Anger into warm Love. But all along, she kept building her already overly loaded case against me with lists of alleged wrongdoings on my part- against her.

I am tired, I don’t want to detail any more of her anger, her words, those shaming words she used that burned through my soul, and how strange it was, how creepy it was to hear her say later words of love in regard to me, how creepy it was to feel her touch when it was soft. I want to close this post in this “Why do People Lie?”, with the What, not the Why: her biggest lie, in the context of her and me, was that she loved me and I hated her in return for her love and sacrifice. The truth is that I loved her and she hated me in return, sacrificing me to feed and maintain her Anger.

As I live the rest of my life, I don’t want to feed anyone’s anger. I want to encourage people to stay away from abuse, to hold abusers responsible, but I do not want to fuel any anger that is not in the direction of a sensible, fair resolution. I want the rest of my life to be guided by.. Sensible Love, not by blind, misguided Anger.

anita