forgiveless

oh hell yeah, i'm still mad.

i've had some candid conversations with my mother about things she did and said when i was a teenager that were hurtful and patterns of behavior that did more harm than good. and yet, i don't think much has been resolved. not that i recall. i don't perceive things clearly when i'm angry, so there may have been progress that just now slips my mind.

even though i know my mother prays for me incessantly... i know she wants the best for me... thinks most highly of me... blah blah blah. all great things. really. they're lovely. i don't much feel loved the way she's continually glossed over my deepest concerns. i have expressed these things in about the most succint way i know how and they've been met with different responses over time... disbelief, apathy, resistance, dismissiveness. in context of how she loves me oh so very much, she finds it to be a slap in the face that i feel this way. she feels she did the best job in parenting that she possibly could have. therefore. she doesn't feel the need to apologize for anything.

well, not quite anything. anytime, i talk about how i'm habitually nocturnal, or have problems showing up on time, she bemoans that as her fault.

she blames her genes.

i roll my eyes.

it really burns me up that she has so much concern for these things that i really could care less about. and the things that i feel she is responsible for (read: had some control over), she feels no shame about. she was combative, quarrelsome, oppressive, self-righteous, and domineering. to her credit, i believe when i mentioned this to her, she said something to the effect of "i'm sorry if i did anything that made you feel that way", but it just wreaked of patronizing insincerity. it's as if some conglomerate company's negligence caused you injury of some sort, and just to try an appease you and avoid any further legal action, they send some cold, dry cousin of Ben Stein's to inform you that "the company feels very badly that someone hurt you and hopes that you get well soon."

the thing that ires me is that she takes no responsibility for it whatsoever. she doesn't even feel that she's done anything wrong, and when i try to encapsulate for her how miserable of an experience being forced to live with her was, she either blocks it out or just doesn't understand at all and launches into some "i just don't understand how you feel that way"-flavored speech.

have i not hammered home how much i loathe being misunderstood? does she not know how frustrating it is to have these substantial feelings weighing down on me and then in confrontation have her convince me that it's "just the enemy" playing me against her or it's all in my mind or it doesn't really exist at all? that wasn't some flighty nightmare? that was a span of over two years that actually happened! you can't just use the jedi mind trick and make that go away.

now she's 50-something and concentrating on enjoying life and being healthy and keeping her blood pressure down and focusing on the positive things.

“In our anger or pain, we may feel that we should withhold our forgiveness, until our injurer repents. But consider this question from another angle. Making our forgiveness dependent on another's repentance is not very helpful. It sets us up to be a victim, not just once, but twice! By making our forgiveness so dependent, we hand considerable power over our lives, to the one who injured us! Hanging on to a grudge is like keeping a [dinosaur] in our living room. It's a painful creature from the dead past which we choose to keep alive in the present. The truth is, it really is within our power to choose otherwise, and particularly with God's help!” - from “Eight Forgiveness Questions To Ponder”

And then again, what if it is just me? What if I'm just seeing everything through the pubescent hindsight of an angst-heavy teenager? What if I'm just doing a shameful disservice to my loving mother? What if it's like she says? What if I'm just spoiled and selfish and that's all there is to it? What if it really doesn't exist? What it it's just something that I choose to believe in retrospect? What if I'm the piece that doesn't fit and I'm the reason why our relationship has suffered for over a decade now?

I don't know, and thinking about the whole thing is making me tired. It's draining on her to have to field the questions, and it's draining on me to keep posing them. And as bad as I feel like I need this reconciliation, this closure, I seriously wonder if it would just be a better and more peace-economical solution to just try and forget it and like Ma says "let God have it."