About Grown-Up Kids and Immature Parents
Chapter 3
Every child always blames themselves for everything.
That’s just how the human psyche works, and the child’s psyche — that’s the most convenient thing in the world. Convenient for adults, of course, because you can convince a child of absolutely anything. Kids are dumb, but that dumbness is just how the brain works, at least until certain stages of physical development and growing up. Some people stay dumb their whole lives.
Of course, I got into some pretty shitty, self-destructive relationships, but I still didn’t let myself get completely crushed. I was already married, but I managed to figure out in time that having a kid in that marriage would destroy three lives: mine, my husband’s, and the kid’s. For my own kids, I wanted a little healthier atmosphere than the one I grew up in, so I wisely hit the brakes there.
What was my stupidity? It was that my whole life I had a ticking time bomb right in front of me. I suspected that, theoretically, it could go off at any moment. This bomb — it’s unpredictable, but I was sure it wouldn’t blow up. That it was safe, at least for me. That it wouldn’t hurt me.
This bomb is my mother. I naively thought that nothing bad would happen to us anymore, that everything was behind us. All her experiments with alcohol and drugs, all her parties, all her recklessness, and the revolving door of men I had to live with under one roof. The marginal life she led, and the one I somehow managed to escape from, even though it happened in the room next door.
She made a big show of being an adult — and then got into a car with a drunk driver and crashed, not just once. She made a show of being an adult — and then brought some guy home from a club. She made a show of being an adult — and then hooked up with guys my age, with whom I had to hang out and sit at the same table during family gatherings. She made a show of being an adult — and lived for 5 years with a guy who was five years older than me: when they started dating, I was 15, and he was like 20 or 21. Anticipating the guesses, I’ll just say I’m incredibly lucky, and not once did any of her many boyfriends, who lived with us, ever make a move on me, even though that’s classic for situations like this.
She made a show of being a mom — and then wouldn’t see me for months, living in the same city, and wouldn’t pick up the phone when I called. She made a show of being a mom — and when I ended up in the hospital, she came exactly once.
She made a show of being a mom — and when I first brought home my future husband, she threw a fit — for some reason, she didn’t like living with someone else’s man under the same roof, and never mind that I’d lived like that my whole life with her sketchy boyfriends. She made a show of being a mom — and always called me “baby,” even when I was an adult, because that made it easier to manipulate me. She made a show of being a mom — and put everything in her name. She made a show of being a mom — and abused, gaslit, and bullied me for years.
I made a show of being a daughter — and I always was. Here’s my stupidity: as a kid, like any child, I believed that one day she’d come back and choose me, not her endless mess. I thought I had to earn her love — and by the way, I’m still trying to get rid of that toxic belief. I sought her approval — I had to be funny and cute like the other kids she praised in front of me. My mom was literally obsessed with men and sex — probably the “right” way, and I should live the same way, ignoring my own essence and preferences until I became a fully aware adult.
My mom couldn’t hurt me, because she said so. She said that, and then she hurt me — emotionally, physically. Just as a precaution, but the scar on my forehead from her nails is still there.
