My mother has flitted in and out of my life since the time I was born. She left me with my Grandparents after a difficult relationship with my father when I was very young, my precise age I cannot recall but I think I was around 5. She took my younger sister and brother with her.
I’ve always struggled trying to comprehend the reasons why she decided to leave me behind, and through every stage of my life I’ve consistently reverted to self-blame. I cannot dispute that my Grandparents gave me a wonderful upbringing and showered me with unconditional love and affection. But the questions always remained. During childhood my thoughts were simply that she did not want me, and that she did not love me. As an adolescent my thoughts were that of self-doubt ‘what was wrong with me?’, ‘why did she not want me?’, ‘why did she take my siblings and not me?’ As a young adult I began to mature with my arguments, I stopped tormenting myself and my feelings were overtaken with curiosity and the overwhelming need to know the answers to my questions. It was time…
It took me three years to find my mother, she had made no attempt to forward an address to my family should I ever want to contact her, I went from door to door in her old neighbourhood in the hope that I would stumble across somebody who was still in touch with her. Back then there was no Internet, the world was a much bigger place. I eventually found her – she had settled in Austalia with her husband and my siblings, I wrote to her and from her return letter she appeared to be pleased that I had contacted her, and we soon established a foundation on which to build on. I was excited, I could finally piece together the jigsaw of my life and lay my ghosts to rest. After a year of corresponding through letter and telephone, I visited her in Australia. It was a roller-coaster of emotions, not only because of the reunion with my mother, but also to be reunited with my brother and sister.
My mother and I discussed our past and the reasons she left me, and despite my struggles to understand why, I accepted her reasons and forgave her.
I started to embrace life with new vigor, I finally started to feel at peace with myself. My ‘new’ family and I embarked on a relationship albeit a long distanced one. It appeared to be successful, my mother and step-father kept in touch and also came to visit us a few times. We acknowledged that the past could not be undone, and I stopped tormenting myself and further damaging what little self-worth I had left. It was never going to be perfect, but I was happy to accept things as they were and move on with my life.
Then I became a mother myself, and things started to change…
Feelings of self-doubt started to creep back. I inevitably suffered with depression, although I went to great lengths to hide it from those around me (something I’m still fairly successful at doing today). I was a new mother and I was totally besotted with my baby son, he opened up my heart to a love I had never before experienced – the love a mother has for her child. Unfortunately, with those feelings came the burning questions – ‘how could my mother have abandoned me?’ I couldn’t make sense of it, but the questions were there each time I held my baby. During my depression I feared that maybe I would suffer the same ‘flaw’, that maybe I had the ‘ability’ to abandon my child, and that one day I might just go and never look back. It was a fear that soon became deep rooted. It was also a fear I kept to myself.
The relationship with my mother seemed to start to take a downhill turn, contact became minimal, her letters and phone calls began to dwindle and so I focused my energy towards becoming ‘a good mother’. All my past hurt and pain had turned into something positive – I wanted to be everything she hadn’t been to me. After a few years I received shocking news that my step-father had died suddenly. I felt duty bound to go to my mother and offer her my support and sympathy. I took my son with me and stayed with her in Australia for three weeks, caring for her, and helping her through a difficult time. During this visit my heart was in turmoil, for I had to leave my 11 month old daughter behind, even though she was perfectly happy and safe with my husband. I quietly suffered guilt and a pain that I could never put into words – I had left her behind, I had missed her first steps. I had missed three long weeks of her beautiful life – I would never forgive myself.
Time passed, the children grew, life went on. Contact with my mother dwindled even more, our birthdays and Christmas’s were often missed, my email letters were rarely replied to. The death of my step-father appeared to cause her great bitterness, and seemed to give her reason to take stock of her life. She started to realise that she had neglected her responsibilities as a mother. So a three week stay with us in our home resulted in a blazing row, during which my mother accused me of not forgiving her for the past, and then further resulted in her confession of neglected responsibilities and feelings of jealousy towards me because of my ‘family life’ – I was hurt, and distraught, and stunned that my own mother could begrudge me the family stability I missed when I was a child. Her stay inevitably ended in apologies and with promises that she would ‘try harder’ to keep in touch, the words cut into me each time she said them – why should a mother have to ‘try’? Self-doubt filled my mind once again.
I began to find the gap in our relationship increasingly difficult to bridge. My mother damaged things further after I received a text message ‘out of the blue’ informing me that she was in town for four days for a friend’s wedding – she could spare me an hour of her time. It cut me to my core. It was almost as if she was tormenting me, with her blatant display that I lack any kind of importance in her life. What was wrong with me? I persecuted myself with so many questions of self-doubt. She was repeating history, she was dragging up all my childhood feelings of abandonment, all those feelings of not being loved or important or wanted, and she appeared to be completely unaware. I held it together during her visit, my husband picked up the pieces after she had left me with her empty promises of ‘trying harder’.
A year or so later she informed me that she had met somebody and was bringing him over for a visit. My husband warned me not to become hopeful, and not to get excited, because each and every time she visited she left me destroyed. But she was my mother, and I had too much hope in my heart. However yet again it seemed my mother’s priorities were elsewhere, she had been in town for three days before coming to visit us. She simply turned up on the doorstep with her new partner, spent a few hours with us and then left again. Again there were more empty promises, again I fell to pieces, again my husband had to put me back together.
My mother last came to visit in July, she was in town with my brother and his future wife (after spending a week with her family), and was staying with a friend. During her time here she spent an evening meal out with us, and after some persuasion spent the following afternoon with us at our home before leaving. The visit was a pleasant one, I immediately ‘hit it off’ with my future sister-in-law, and as always it was a great pleasure to see my brother. My mother showered me and my children with affection, her departure was a tearful one and was filled with the hope that her promises would be kept.
It wasn’t long after their visit that I had news that my brother and his future wife were expecting a baby, we were all overjoyed. As was my mother who spent most of her time on Facebook, announcing to the world how excited she was at discovering she was to have a Grandson, she was elated. I did hurt me a little as of course she already had a Grandson. Following my brother’s news I received a text message from my mother, apologising for forgetting my daughter’s birthday, and that there was something ‘in the post’ for her – nothing ever arrived for my daughter.
Then during December I received a letter from Customs, informing me that I had to pay a considerable sum of money in order to release a parcel from overseas that had been incorrectly packaged. I immediately sent a message to my brother (he resides with my mother), enquiring as to whether this parcel was from Australia. My mother replied very humorously, with a message that ‘yes’ the parcel contained Christmas presents from her for my children and that I was to pay for it and she would reimburse me. She also added that she was looking forward to speaking to us on Christmas Day.
Unfortunately, I had encountered considerable expense whilst arranging a surprise birthday party for my husband, along with several other December family birthdays and of course the dreaded Christmas expenses. I was completely broke, I simply couldn’t afford this ‘un-budgeted’ expense and so decided to wait until my salary came through in January. I have to note here that my mother has never been ‘consistent’ when it came to sending gifts to the children.
Christmas came and went, I didn’t hear from my mother, she never called on Christmas Day (as she had promised). My brother and I exchanged Christmas greetings via text messages, as did my future sister-in-law.
January has been quite a busy month, my 90 year old Grandmother was taken ill and I’ve spent the best part of the month caring for her – visiting twice a day, getting her meals, settling her to bed, washing and bathing her. Along with the normal routine of full time work, the children, husband and housework, to say I’m exhausted is an understatement.
I was awoken at 7am on Sunday morning by the phone ringing – startled and panicked I immediately thought there was something wrong with my Grandmother. On the other end of the phone was my mother, again I panicked – for a second I thought something bad had happened – I was wrong. My mother had phoned to ask me why her parcel had been returned. My immediate response was a sigh of relief as there was nothing ‘seriously’ wrong. I began to apologise and explain to her my financial situation during December and my every intention to pick up the parcel at the end of January, it had simply escaped my mind due to my Grandmother’s need for my time.
Unfortunately it wasn’t good enough. My mother ranted at me that the parcel contained gifts from not only her but from my brother also, along with birthday presents for my husband and my son. All I could do was apologise, it was never my intention to have the parcel returned to her, nor did Customs inform me that they were going to do so. I questioned her as to why she didn’t inform me that the parcel contained these ‘extra gifts’ I could have ensured that I made it a priority to collect it? Gifts from Australia have always been a ‘token gesture’ so it didn’t occur to me that it held such importance.
It didn’t matter – my mother then accused me of ignoring her text messages over Christmas. I know the odd text message can ‘go astray’, however it’s baffled me how every message from my mother during December appears to have never been received? The last message I received from my mother was October, and I tried to correct my mother by telling her this. She continued to rant at me and indirectly accused me of lying to her, at this point I was afraid I might say something I later regretted so I told her I was no longer going to continue with the conversation until she had calmed down and could listen to reason, I hung up, feeling shaken and upset.
I don’t like allowing arguments to fester, I sat down and sent her a message explaining to her that I didn’t want an argument. I had tried to apologise and offered her an explanation yet she didn’t seem to want to listen to me. I was offended that she had indirectly accused me of ignoring her messages, and that I couldn’t believe she had taken the time to pick up the phone and rant at me yet she failed to keep her promise of ringing me on Christmas Day.
I received the most sickening patronising text message back that it stunned me. She accused me of ‘getting everything wrong’ and that it was ‘such a shame’. That we should have spent more time getting to know each other, grow together and forget about the past which is painful for both of us. She further patronised me by reminding me that we all have struggles and problems in our lives which should make us stronger and wiser. Then she hit me with the ‘you would obviously prefer not to have a relationship with me but please allow me to keep in touch with the children’. Her message completely floored me. She further went on to say that ‘we’ll never solve this’ and accused me of ‘still being angry about past events’. My response to this was that I couldn’t understand why she had reverted back to what happened in the past. I told her that I was simply upset that she refused to listen to my explanation, or accept my apology, and also for trying to accuse me of ignoring her messages. I’ve since heard nothing back.
I sent a message apologising to my brother, I’ve heard nothing back from him either. However at no point during the Christmas period did my brother mention that he had sent the children gifts, nor did he ask if they had received or liked them? Did my mother construct a lie in order to make me feel bad? Is she attacking me as a result of her own guilt? I am through with what happened in the past, what hurts and upsets me is the here and now – the lack of consistency, the frequent disappointment of empty promises, the feeling that I’m some kind of burden to her, and with each of her visits the blatant reminder that I appear to hold no importance in her life – can’t she see that?
I don’t think I will ever find the answers, the most unfortunate thing for me is that this one single person – even though she has not been with me for the majority of my life – has indirectly moulded me into a person who will constantly doubt others, who will constantly have issues with trust, who will constantly feel insecure, who will constantly question the intentions of those around me, and who will constantly doubt my self-worth.
But, I will constantly strive to be everything that she is not – a good mother to my children.
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