Do I Hate My Mother?

I blamed her for literally everything.

I judged her for every short fall, as though every fault of mine was an extension of her faults. It made my life much easier to manage because nothing was completely my doing, it was all somehow linked to her wrong doings.

When I silently needed her, I loathed her from afar.

She never realized when I needed her, because I never did vocalize my needs; I always felt that, ‘she should have just known.’ That’s what mother’s do, they just know and she failed me with her lack of intuition. How naive, mean and selfish I was for expecting so much from one person.

She is everything I promised I would not be to my own (future, potential) children. I guess I do not want to be educated, healthy, honest and have clear boundaries, because that is who my mother is.

She does not have time for your bullshit; if you are running around, in a terrible mood, she will not be accommodating you, regardless of your age or relationship to her.

My mother taught me a lot of valuable things.

She is one of the healthiest people I know and her ability to make nutritious, tasty desserts, her love of hot yoga and her practice of self care are all things I have wholeheartedly adopted into my own life, but I have not given her the credit she deserves.

It was not until some deep self-reflection that I realized so many things I am good at or enjoy are an extension of the things she taught me through practice.

The problem was that I did not receive verbal affirmations from her, which I was so desperately looking for.

I have a mother who has taught me by living her own life, but for some reason, I wanted her life to be about my life, not teaching me through her own. I wanted her to be like my friends’ mothers, sitting on my bed with me, for hours, and teaching through talking. My mother never had time for that, but I still did learn, through watching and shadowing her.

I resented my mother for having her own voice, identity and goals, asides, apart and above those of being a mother.

I resented it because it seemed that so many other mothers had let go of every single other identity they had, once they became a mother. I did not recognize them as anything but so-and-so’s mother, that was their whole image, nothing more, nothing less, but my mother refused to do this.

My mother is not like other mothers; having children is not her be all, end all and she is very vocal about it.

When I was a child, we struggled to make meaningful connections, something she has admitted to me and I to her.

The connection she felt to her other children was different to what she felt for me. The infinite feelings of adoration I had for my father, were not reciprocated to her either. For some reason, we just did not jive well together and it took us over twenty years together to figure out our own unique dance.

We could never explain and still cannot explain these differences we have, but our relationship is extremely special, all the same. I would say it is even more special than my blind adoration for my father because my relationship with my mother took work, a lot of work, for decades, from both of us, to reach a point of comfort.

I do not see her as a parental figure; she does not tell me what to do, she strategically and carefully doles out advice and most of our conversations, now, are about life and overcoming our day to day struggles, much like my conversations with friends of my same age.

We went from strangers to best friends, somewhere along the line.

Enemies in the household, both trying to claim more and more space to individuals who now lovingly share time over hour long phone calls regularly.

Hers is a call I rarely let go to voicemail.

I was hard on her and mean to her because we did not have a typical mother-daughter relationship, I was envious of others and saw only what my relationship was lacking, not its unique values.

What we have is different, but special, all the the same.

I do not hate her, I just expect (and expected) more from her than I do of my father…infinitely more because she is my mother.

I treat her, badly, because I know I can get away with it, because she is my mother.

It is not right; I should not expect godlike behaviour from a human being, but I do because she is my mother.

As a society, we expect and hold mother’s up to a much higher parenting standard than that which we expect of our fathers.

As a child, when my dad walked through the back door, after a long day of work, I was simply thrilled to see him. When my mother walked through the same back door, after a long day of work, I started reciting all of the things I needed from her.

I never expected anything from my father and lavishly doted on him for everything he provided, even if it was simply his presence. Everything my mother provided me was expected, so I never thought to be grateful for an ounce of it.

Society makes motherhood a job and fatherhood a heroic stance in the household.

My mother is honest; if you do not look good, she sure as hell is not going to lie and this is unorthodox. Mother’s are not suppose to be real, they are not supposed to be these fictitious characters who are flawlessly perfect.

The more I see my mother as a person, the better our relationship has become. The less I expect of her, or when I expect absolutely nothing from her, that is when our relationship is at our best.

I am now in my thirties, I should not need a parental figure, the way I did in my past, but I also acknowledge that my mother is not like other mother’s, nor should she be or will ever be.

She is a human being and her title of Mother is hers alone to define and not mine to create.