How I love her!

Whiskeytown
Originally uploaded by Sunny-bunny

It's funny, when I look at photos of myself when I was little, I imagine what it would be like to be the mother of the child in the photo. Perhaps this is because some people very close to me have children that I love so much it makes me achey and some of them I only know from photos (the fact that I've never met the "Farty Pants Twins" is a prime example). It is because of this that I do believe you can love someone deeply, that you've never met in person. Romantically.. well... let's get into that some other time.

As I pour through photos of a former self, I see the spirit it took hard work for a controlling adoptive mother to squelch. It had to have been arduous and if that task hadn't been something that has caused me so much pain in my life, I would probably be enthusiastically proud of my mom for having been so prolific and undaunted in her quest. I know, now, why she did many of the things she did and have long-ago forgiven her (as I believe wholly that much of her behavior toward me had a good deal to do with her feelings surrounding a very creative, high-spirited and eventually alcoholic / drug-addict sister). Those that cling self-righteously to the idea that I resent her for not providing me with an idyllic childhood are grossly off base. Particularly since most of the people I know and love had equally as shitty, if not worse childhoods than mine (at least I lived in a house!). No, what finally made me disconnect from my family is far deeper. Far more personal. It's about love.

When I look at this photo, my instinct is to love the hell out of that little girl. I want to put my arms around her and tell her I love what a goofball she is! I want to know what what's bubbling around in her kooky brain and delight in whatever odd little world she lives in and encourage her to make use of what she finds there. I want to take her places that promote exercise that are fun, so I can do it with her and so she doesn't feel like she's a lone freak. I want to tell her how lovely and smart and funny she is and tell her what the world is really like so she doesn't get out into it and get the bitchslap of reality that I got after years of fantastic, nearly-psychotic rhetoric. I want to cheer her up when boys make her cry and remind her that just because they don't want her, doesn't mean she isn't lovable. I want to do all the things my mother never seemed to want to do with the girl in the photo.

Most likely she didn't have the intellectual and social capacity to do a lot of those things. That she spent most of our relationship telling me what was wrong with me, calling me childish, playground-bully names like "hippo" and "retard", making me the butt of her jokes and the focus of all of her pent up rage and control issues surely was the damage a dysfunctional relationship had done to her. A lot of people never realize fully how deep the scars of those relationships go and I cannot help but feel sorry for her in that way.

When I was 24, my mother told me to my face that she would never accept me for who I am. I had not fallen into line with her expectations of my creating a 1950s "perfect-girl-next-door" life. Much of that had to do with my body. She had wanted a popular cheerleader, who dated the quarterback in high school and married after graduation. I was supposed to have gotten a simple job, had a wedding she could orchestrate to her taste, had kids she could spoil and an adulthood that she could spend her golden years bragging over. She wanted those things, because they were everything she hadn't been. She didn't like the life she had lived and stewed in anger that I hadn't become a vehicle to do all those things she was cheated out of. And even that I can forgive.

But at the end of the day, and for years after that, I still tried. The truth is (and I mean that in the most literal sense imaginable), she made a choice when we were both adults and still had time to heal our relationship. She consciously chose, at every occasion possible, to be hateful, resentful and unloving. Not the imaginary kind that overly-hormonal teens and angst ridden post-adolescents suspect of their parents. The real, "fuck you bitch" kind that we are taught our whole lives to never take... from anyone. I loved her. I wanted her love back. I never got it. In the real world, that means it's time to move on and I did. And with God and you as my witness, I plan to make this one of the last times I will ever explain that decision again. I do so now, because she is dying and taking with her all the love she saved up for the day when I made her dreams come true.

She must never have felt, looking at me when I was little, or even the amazing woman I became, what I feel when I look at these photos now; immense love, hope, pride, and perhaps a tinge of sadness that so many lost and wasted opportunities to show the girl in the photo how loved she is. It has never been more clear to me, how important it is to develop love for oneself. But if I feel for the woman I am, what I feel for the girl in this photo, then I am well and truly loved. I'm working on that... every day.