I am at work, with a racking cough, aching bones and going through piles of mail, and come across my name and my mother's handwriting.
I put it in my slot.
What now, I wonder, what now…? The added weight of the letter works on me as I continue to toss the mail.
As I am bundling the mail to take on the route, I put mine in my purse, in case I decide I need to know what she has to say somewhere along my route. I don't. I feel the weight without even reading the words.
I listen to a novel, moving along box to box, road to road, package to package….time passes, and she comes and goes along the route and I don't read it until I turn on my road.
These words are spread out on stationary sheet, blue snowflakes around the border…plain white middle.
Birthday/Christmas 2011
Dearest Beth,
You have been a great help and joy for many years. You are my daughter and I have always loved you from Day 1.
May God bless us all and give peace in 2012.
A Mother's Love,
Always and Forever,
Mom
I wonder what she is trying to accomplish by this letter. What prompts her to send out these words?
Stating a mother's love? Trying again to make me believe…
A mother's love??? A mother who blessed her husband when he raped me. Really, you loved me since day one. I would beg to differ. No matter how many times you write it, it still sounds hollow to me. I don't feel the love. Too many little girls lives were changed by how you loved me.
She says I have been a great help and joy….And I certainly had been to abuse. She mentions nothing about my actions today, the present Beth, just the Beth of old. She sees only her….refusing to acknowledge my changes, the new me.
"May God Bless us all and give peace in 2012."
What is peace to her? Would peace return to her life, If I would turn back into being a help and a joy for abuse? Would peace then return, is that the Blessing she wants from her God?
Peace in dysfunction…an oxymoron for sure.
Taken at a glance and just reading the words, it sounds like a lovely letter from a mother to her daughter; but the background experiences taint the words.
Even the little girl in me feels the absence of her understanding as to where I am at. I don't know if she can even fathom my path…our differences are so vast.
While these notes may be comforting or helpful to her, they are not to me. They come in blindly seeing only how she feels and what I brought….they fail to see how I felt or what I got back then.
I asked myself, "what did I get from her…?"
What is my response to her.
As a daughter of hers what can I possibly say?
"Mommy Dearest…"
It seems when the hurt gets toughened up and put aside, she comes back in to peck at the cut. I told her the kindest thing I have to offer her is silence. No words. Nothing. Empty of retorts.
As soon as I ponder what I would respond, it gets my blood pressure pumping. I feel all the rage and wounds and resentment, hurt and pain. Not only for me, but so many little girls, I get swallowed in the dark…I have no kind words to send back to her.
I stop mentally writing a response…
I just want her to remain silent. To let it be. To stop writing how much she loves me and how she will be my mother forever and always.
Don't I know it. Haven't I felt her brand of Love? Was I not given another dose even today? How can a mother who allowed such atrocities go on, write this letter to a Me?
All she sees is how she loved me, not HOW she loved me.
She misses all the places she wasn't aware…and I was abused.
She misses all the things she overlooked that caused me pain.
She misses all the mothering things she failed to accomplish when abuse walked through her door into her life, into her marriage and into her daughter. She misses that.
She only wants to see the joy and help. She doesn't want to see the gaping wound of dysfunction.
The wound that steered my life into flowing backwards and crooked.
Seeing my Helping her and Joy for many years IS NOT what I need her to see. She doesn't need to see me that way.
She needs to see me, a little child being hurt by her father. She needs to see that and then write letter about how she loved me so.
Without mentioning my pain, her love stays golden.
And without mentioning my pain… I would dissolve back into a land of dysfunction again.
She keeps sending me letters expounding on her love…when a letter explaining how she couldn't have loved me would be more true to the nature of my experience.
I don't want a love letter… I want a letter telling me how she abused me. Isn't that odd. We don't want our abusive parents to tell us how much they loved us for we carry scars of abuse…we want them to acknowledge what they did to us was not love.
I could puke on the words of love she writes.
Trying to give me her love…in words, when she failed in deeds.
Once again, she didn't write the letter that will break my silence…
She continues to hide behind a loving mother…when reality has shown me the opposite.
It is good for me to know what letter I am waiting for. I always felt no need to respond, and now I know what words I am seeking…my truth, I will recognize it when she writes it.
"Truth can be Unrecognized, but it can't be changed."
David Hawkins
I M Perfect lady 