The reflection of my mother

 I knew this would be one of the hardest blog entries I have ever made.
 For me to discuss the relationship I always wished for with my mother and the one I have is another final chapter and a large part of my perimenopausal journey.

 By now you would think as my mother is aging she and I would be able to bond and become closer sharing stories of childhood and opening up about the things we did and never told each other.
The truth is we have never been more pulled apart.

 The relationship was always one that baffled me. As a child, I thought she was so pretty and I would pretend to look like her even though she had coal-black hair and I was a chubby little blonde.
 She always smelled so pretty and I thought my dad was the luckiest man that ever lived to be able to call her his wife. Her big green eyes and gorgeous high cheekbones, she was the spitting image of Natalie Wood.
 All my friends would talk about how pretty mom was and her hair was always spot on.
 She lit up a room and had a sexy stare that I am told I inherited. I have to catch myself from doing it sometimes when I am out cougaring.

 As I got to 4th grade everything at home had changed. My mom was now bored in a loveless marriage and was making a life of her own. My father who was content sitting in the house and spending time with just family was an introvert, my mom an extrovert. I always related to my mom more as a child because I loved to sing and dance and be the center of attention plus she was a girl and we did girl things.

   My mom no matter how beautiful was also close-minded and she was raised with a 1940 mentality, She would say things like. "A proper lady never cleans her plate like that" and those things would stick with me as I wanted so much to be wanted like she was by so many friends and men.

 When my parents finally did split I was out by 16 per mom's orders and my brothers left years ahead of me married by ages 18.
 She was the problem.

 As a child, I never knew mental issues. I never realized her being so fixated on food and weight was launching me into an eating disorder and her years of telling me I needed to look pretty for a man-made me put school on the back burner.
 She was an old fashioned mean woman with no love in her heart for myself or her sons. She had us and basically bought us things and pretended we lived in bliss when the truth was she hit us with belts, cussed us out and was both mentally and physically abusive. Worse of all everyone knew. It was the reason dad left but he didn't fight for us when she threatened to kill him over custody.

 I wouldn't learn all her secrets this young. It took years to see what all she was capable of but love was never one of the emotions she shared with me. I cannot even remember ever being held or hugged by my mother. Not once in my entire life. It simply wasn't how it was in my family and certainly not how she was with us.

 The first time I ever had sex I could have gone to her and told her how I was feeling, The emotions and worries I had that day but I didn't get the chance. She beat me by reading my diary and took my door off the hinge for 1 month until I learned I was a whore.
 If you never believed these kinds of relationships existed between a mother and daughter well I'm living proof that they do.   The sad part is you just keep wishing as a child that maybe it'll get better but at some point, you come to realize people just don't change no matter how much you want them to and she was never going to change.

 She never celebrated being a woman, it was a curse. We were weak dependent beings that were here to look pretty and cook. Anything else was simply not acceptable and we never talked about things that potentially could have stopped me from marrying the first man I met and prevented me from getting pregnant with him. It just would have been nice to have her around to talk to and ask her what she went through. Instead, when I would speak about my Perimenopause issues she would roll her eyes, tell me I was crazy and that I needed help.

  If I complained about pain in my abdomen monthly from three periods, I was weak and needed to take an aspirin or it was just fibroids. She's had them. No big deal!
 When I told her I couldn't have kids because I had ruined my body from years of abuse she smirked and said well there you go.
  I don't even know to this day what that means. It's just what it is.
 Words.

  On the day of my wedding, I walked into the kitchen and overheard her telling my husband that she didn't know where I got such large breasts from. They looked like balloons that had let the air out.
 I couldn't believe what I was hearing but my entire life there was only one woman that tore me down, her.

She had to make sure every insecurity I had was showing at all times even my wedding day.
 I walked up to her and told her to stop and she looked right into my eyes, stared me down, looked my ex-husband up and down and said: " even an eating disorder can't make you prettier than me."
 That was my life from age 16 to now with my mother. Constant competition, berating, non-stop nagging about how I would never become anything.

 On my 40th birthday, I awoke to her ripping piles of my clothes up because she was in one of her moods.
 She was mad about the fact I had gone out the night before with a man and she was caught in the act of retaliation.
 She would have just thrown them away and I would have never been the wiser but this day she was caught in the act as I saw her frantically ripping in her room and I just stood watching in horror.

 I said absolutely nothing, It didn't even matter anymore. I had told her how I had felt about her more than once.
 There were no words needed or fights to be had. I was already a struggling mother with very little money. As I watched her rip my silk blouse I just started crying. I cried for the mother I was letting die that day. There were no more letters of long explanations or screaming at each other or threats. It was over. I had finally seen her for what she was.

 I looked in the mirror with my face swollen from tears, it was already a shit day as I started my period a third time in one month, I was months into pregnancy and fertility medications and I felt defeated daily.
  I just stood there thinking about all the things I hated about myself. My wrinkles from laughing, my scars from the boys, my scars from the world, my heart on my sleeve and I thought the world was too much. I would never be perfect enough or feel complete and I had spent so many years trying to make anyone just love me. Not even my mother was capable of loving me.
 I was a failure.
  I screamed as loud as I could "I hate everything you are!"

  I fell on the floor and just wept barely breathing thinking of the fact I was alone. After all these years caring for others, I am alone and still so young.
 My mom approached me ( I could hear her labored smoker breathing behind me) "they all leave, You just need to take care of your kids and forget about men.

  As if that was what it was about! I was angry at me. How on earth would any man ever look at me and love me when I believed the horrible lies men and my mother told me all these years.
 I wasn't good enough, I wasn't tall enough, I just wasn't as smart as that person or my teeth were a little too crooked.
  All those things I saw when I looked in the mirror every day that is what I believed.

 But that day I wasn't looking at me. All the negative thoughts were there, as usual, that day in the mirror but at that moment those words escaped my mouth my mother was passing behind me through the living room her reflection coming into my view.

 I didn't mean for the words to come out but they roared and shook my core. I heard her gasp not in horror but more of like a 'finally, I broke her' sound. She didn't even know it was her I hated so much.
 Her sneers of disapproval, the way she made me feel embarrassed to talk about being a woman, the jabs about my weight, looks and hair, the years of belts, torture, and abuse all came to a head looking in that mirror that day.

  I started to see the ugliness in her reflect back at me and I wanted to throw something. I wanted an image of her and me together gone. I never want to have frown lines from scowling at people or paranoia from being cruel to my kids.

 It is awful to see a lost soul in life and there is nothing you can do for them. My mother has always hated women including herself. I can't make anyone love me that hates themselves. It's impossible. And she was making me believe I was her.
 I was unlovable, I was invisible, my words didn't matter, my hurts were a weakness, my mind was riddled in mental disease, my scars were all I had to remind me of my past. Where was my future? Her reflection? The reflection of my angry mother huddled in her room ripping her daughters' clothes out of anger and hatred. No Never.

 That day I broke free. I knew what I was turning into and regardless of my obligations in life to still raise my boys until they didn't need me, I was going to learn to love myself and if I truly was crazy then what did it matter.
 Her opinion was tarnished in spiderwebs and covered in lies to manipulate others into believing her and staying.
 She could only keep me around by abusing me and the only way to break this cycle was to let go. I was turning into the negative shell she was and it terrified me.

 I have worked to tirelessly to change what I felt about myself for so long. From quitting smoking during this hard time in my life to losing 98 lbs in two years. This journey was made for me.
 I think if I hadn't met perimenopause I would have never become aware of what I was living within my head.
  I became so much more aware these last few years of my own body and soul.

 Maybe that was why my body was sick. They only way to change the pattern I was on was to live in the same place as her but never ever speak so...that is how we live.
 We respectfully ignore one another and we have zero love at all.
 I will be responsible for her one day regardless of how ugly she has been because she is my mother and my other siblings left long ago to never return to see her.
 She should have never had children. She hurt and ruined anything nice she ever had including hearts.

 My first bully was my mother. I wish that statement weren't true but she was the first to allow negative thoughts and harmful self-images to be a pivotal part of my development. The day she told me when I was ten that she was prettier at my age was when I began allowing negative body images and thoughts to get into my head. I was on my own in discovering how to navigate the perimenopause ship.

  I put 100% into being what I thought I was supposed to be and I hated me.
 I bet others did also.
 What was I doing for society or anything except creating a cycle of negative relationships with women?

 So I changed. I took the word crazy and I decided I liked it. It describes me perfectly. I am such an eclectic mess of stress, beauty and love for others that I say whatever I  want and I live each day at the moment. I know how important it is to talk about feelings because the light fills a room much faster than the darkness and I really prefer the light.

 My mom is easy to feel sorry for. I could easily blame her mother for the mental issues she has but what is the point. She had her life and doesn't have all that much left.
 She is ugly inside because she is full of regret and self-loathing. She gave up on sex and men in her forties and never tried to form relationships after 2000. She just lives and complains and laughs at women and how stupid we are.
  Yes, I could feel sorry for her....but I don't.

 It was her job to tell me to love myself. She could have grown as a person from her hard times but she allowed the hard times to define her future. I knew that was the big difference in us, I saw the problem and still had the chance to reclaim my life and change but she was stuck in a world of hatred for women because of the disappointing decisions she made that chased people away.

  I haven't worn much makeup since that day in the mirror. I thought it would be nice to just be me and stop hiding all the time. I started going out more and becoming active in the community I live in which has furthered her hatred towards me and I will hear her under her breath make remarks about how I need to be at home with my kids instead of doing charity work.

  But down deep inside I mourn the death of my mom all the time. Her body will die one day and her soul will go but she will have never spent one day in the last 20 years smiling. Not one time did she support her daughter and if anything would encourage me to suck it up if I complained about my period.

 I have been locked in my room for days on my hardest times with depression for her to not once check-in me and for me to finally emerge days later only to be met with nasty words and looks of pure hatred.
 It is so extremely hard to understand the relationship between a mother and daughter when there is mental illness especially not diagnosed involved.

 I do wish she had a different life and she and I could sit on the porch drinking long island Ice tea laughing about our sexual stories and joys of being a mother but that will never be. I have never been good enough for her so I had to learn to be good enough for me.

 I think I laugh a little harder now and I take more chances and ask people more questions. I listen more than I used to. I don't burden others with my issues because I know its wasteful and doesn't help.
 I smile at strangers and I forgive...even her. Because I am not ugly. I no longer believe her words.

 I never thought the woman I admired so much as a young girl and wished so hard to be would ever be responsible for the largest scars I own.
 They are never going to be visible to anyone.
 The emotional scars that I own set me free,  I am reminded it is just a scar.

 I don't know where I got my heart. I am like no one else in my family. It is amazing I survived how I have without more issues really. Maybe I should be grateful that my father left because it made me realize it was him that was the glue in the family and without him there we lived in a made of walls and stones with empty rooms and gutted insides.

 Maybe if I hadn't looked in the mirror that day on my birthday and saw her reflection behind me reminding me I am next in line as the oldest generation I wouldn't have realized time was so important and words really mattered. I mattered

 My punishment for my mother is to let her live in silence with her own thoughts. I no longer care to know her or want to hear about her life stories. This is about me now. She had her chances to be someone else and find her reflection.
 I have let others in to take her place and I have embraced that I may be crazy and even more insane going through all the stress my body is feeling daily from perimenopause but I am breathing.
 I am here and I have overcome some huge battles that nearly destroyed me as a human.

This growing up stuff is hard, seeing my parents weak and who they really are in a different light when you're old enough to understand it, is frightening.

 Today,
 I love myself and my reflection.

 I especially love that little girl I sometimes see smiling back at me that desperately needed to be held and told she was beautiful no matter how bare her plate was after a meal.