Mother Flunker

Saturday May 10^th, 2014 – Island Lake, IL

   I am in pain today. It is excruciating pain. It is a pain so intense and overwhelming that I don’t want to live anymore pain. I thought I would never have to come back to this horrible place, but here I am. It is an ugly and a terrifying place. I wish I wasn’t so damn familiar with it. But I am. 

   It’s like my soul is a teatherball attached to a giant rope on a pole, and no matter how hard I try to escape I just come back to where I started. This is the place I have been trying so diligently to escape from as long as I can remember, but here I am again and I don’t know how to deal with it.

   Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and I have been getting that stinging fact rammed down my throat every time I have turned on my radio for the last week. It’s been non-stop, and it’s getting to me just like Christmas ads. It’s unavoidable, and a constant reminder of what I have missed in life.

   I must admit, I assumed getting back in touch with my siblings would finally remove that pain, and to some degree I think it did in the Christmas department. I felt a strong need for some kind of closure, and I got it. One dinner meeting doesn’t mean everything is now “fixed”, but it was a gigantic step in the right direction. At least they showed up so we could compare notes as adults.

   I didn’t think we’d ever have the chance to do that but we did, and I know it was good for all of us. I’ve been in touch with my brother Bruce since, and it’s been all positive. He was the one that I never dreamed would be willing to come around but he’s been unbelievably great. I hope we’re all able to keep it going so we can heal. It took a long time to get it done, but it was SO worth it.

   Deep inside I always felt that if we could just sit down peacefully as adults we would be able to talk things out intelligently, and that’s pretty much what we did. I don’t anticipate any arguments with any of them ever again, only because it takes two to argue and I’m not up for it. If they had smoldering issues with me, I’m sure anything would have been brought up during our meeting.

   The issues we all had with our tyrant father are hopefully dead along with him. We don’t miss him, but we all missed out on a nurturing father/child relationship. He was a vicious bastard, and a bully to boot. He didn’t love himself and he sure didn’t love us, but his memory is now fading.

   With my mother it’s a different story. All of us are united on the fact our father was a pecker of epic proportions, but our mother situations are all different. Bruce’s mother and I never hit it off, but I will say she doted over Bruce and gave him everything she could under the circumstances.

   I say good for Bruce and good for her. She was forced into the role of step mother, and I have a whole different view of it now than I did then. Bruce was her only child, and I see why it worked like it did. It was brutal to deal with back then, but I get it now and have no hard feelings at all. 

   Whatever problems Bruce may have sure don’t originate from a lack of love and attention from his mother. In retrospect I’m very happy for him, because he doesn’t have that hideous feeling of total isolation that I have felt for a lifetime. It’s overwhelming, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

   My mother Jean left abruptly when I was five months old. Tammy was 4 ½ and Larry was 2 ½, and that can’t be good for any of us. Kids need a father figure at the very least, but the mother is the source of loving and nurturing and life itself. Fathers take off all the time, but whoever hears of mothers doing it? I can’t think of many others, and most people can’t relate to the aftershock.

   Looking back from an adult perspective, I have no doubt my mother leaving when I was at the age I was did major damage to my emotional growth. How could it not? I have to believe it was also devastating to Tammy and Larry. They were to the age where they had at least some sort of memories of her. Larry might have been a tad young, but I would think Tammy still has some.

   I never talked about this with either of them, because it just never felt right. I was never all that close with any of them growing up, and it was a delicate subject that wasn’t ever brought up. Our father never sat us down and told us what went on, so it kind of got swept under the rug forever.

   This is all very deep and personal, but I’m writing about it because I need to get it out so others that have similar struggles – and I hope they are VERY few and far between – can know they’re not alone and hopefully gain at least a little comfort in knowing others are suffering like they are. 

   I don’t enjoy knowing that others are in pain too, but it does make me feel a little less freakish. Nobody wants to be out there all alone, but that’s where I’ve been for as long as I can remember. I grew up with our grandparents, and Tammy and Larry stayed with our father who’d married the woman that became Bruce’s mother. They all grew up in the same house, while I was the freak.

   People have told me my entire life to just “shut up and get over it already” and “that was in the past” and any other kind of half baked Zig Ziglar or Hallmark Card cutesy slogan. “God is in the driver’s seat” and “Everything happens for a reason” is really easy to say when you’re doing ok.

   Well, I’m not ok and I know it. I’ve tried to “suck it up” and “hang in there” as long as anyone can, but after enough time passes one realizes the hoped for “ship” is just never going to come in. If it hasn’t by now, it isn’t coming. My mother left and never came back, and that’s what dented my can the deepest. If she was dead at least I could have closure, but she isn’t. All I have is pain.

   My self esteem and self worth is completely in the toilet. How the hell could I expect to attract the ideal quality mate when I’ve got so many things still hurting so badly inside? If I at least had some financial security I wouldn’t be under so much constant stress to survive month to month.

   The people that tell me to “lighten up your blog” can kiss the fuzziest part of my pink buttocks. This is not for you. If you want light and fluffy, go read Marmaduke in your morning newspaper. This is mainly for myself, but also those that have had to navigate their own insane life jungle. It isn’t easy even when things are ‘normal’, but for dented cans life can be absolute hell on Earth.

   That’s where I am now, and I’m not going to lie. I am REALLY hurting to the point of wanting to end my life. I’ve had enough and I can’t stand the pain anymore. I have talked to a few shrinks over the years, and I guess it maybe helped a little at the time – but I don’t see what’s so different about writing about it here. The only hope I have is that it might give someone else a little hope.

   No matter what happens, I can honestly and proudly say I have tried my best to pay back all of the bad breaks I’ve caught in life with good. I never thought I was the only one suffering, but my problems are far from what most others face. I have helped a large number of other people when I didn’t have to, and I did it because it was the right thing to do. Warts and all, I do have a heart.

   What I don’t have is someone to go to when I need a boost. Where was my mother? I never got even ONE hug, or a cake for my birthday or anything a child is supposed to get from a mother. If you haven’t experienced that deep emptiness, you have zero right to tell me what to write about.

No matter how old I get, there will always be a little boy inside looking for his mother.