[ 05-12-03 ] [ 4:15 p.m.]
[ About my mom a day after Mother's Day ]

Yesterday, since I allowed myself a very rare skip because I wasn't sure how to approach Mother's Day, I suppose now I'll try to make up for both skipping and for leaving my feelings on Mother's Day locked away from my adoring fans.

Ahem.

I wish I had a mother I could tell things to. I wish I had a mother that would come home, sit with me on my bed, and listen to my problems without totally freaking out if I told her I was into, oh, say, slash. Or any of my other fine little habits which I'm comfortable telling only to my friends, grandmother, and guidance counselor.

Instead, I have to fake a smile and say that my day was perfectly peachy because I'm afraid of how she'll react to my problems.

I'll say one thing right now - my mom was never a strong one when it came to things getting out of whack. I remember a select few things from the lost years when my parents were married, and I remember that my mom was a lot like she is now - very shy in the relationship, unwilling to voice her opinion.

My mom's confidence level could not get any lower. It's not possible to dig that deep into the ground.

Don't get me wrong, I love my mother to death, but this bad self-confidence thing makes it really hard to talk to her about my problems. She has a tendency, when things get psycho, to shut everything out. She isn't sure how to handle a problem because she thinks she won't handle it right, and she ends up letting the problem get worse.

For example, my depression.

I'm willing to bet you that I was depressed probably at least six months ago. I know I'd mentioned to her little qualms in my behaviors that wouldn't normally be there, and she basically ignored them.

Again, to defend my mother, she had no idea that those little qualms would become a full-fledged case of depression. But that doesn't mean that my grandmother had to sit in a room with her and make her call the doctor for an anti-depressant because she thought I was "faking it".

Grandma has told me before that that's sometimes the way people with low self-confidence deal with problems, by ignoring them.

By now, my mom is a master at it.

My living arrangement is yet another example. How many times have I complained that I hate it here? To her, even? Living with my grandma for a week was a temporary fix, yes, but it wasn't my mom who suggested it. I was the one who suggested it, and I didn't even suggest it to her. I just leap-frogged her and went straight to my grandma.

All because my mom has a problem with dealing.

Her low confidence effects me more than you think it would. I have to see her in a relationship with someone who rarely, if ever, shows affection to her and who also cannot stand her child. My mother is involved in a very emotionally abusive relationship that I've pointed out to her is not good for our relationship, for me, or for her. But she stays with him.

Why? I wonder.

Love, she says.

And I wonder if love is really worth emotional abuse. Then I realize that it must be, because look at me.

My mom has a tendency to pass off my problems as minor. She has a tendency to not listen to what I'm saying, and to ignore me for her husband. She does not understand her daughter, nor does she try her hardest to. She hurts me emotionally, more than she knows.

But I love her anyway.

Why?

Because she's my mom.

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