Cold
August 19, 2007
Hi everyone! I was all set to come back with a post but I received a lovely email from a woman named Colleen who wrote her own Parentless story and I offered to let her use this space to share it with you. She accepted and I’m so glad she did. I know she isn’t alone in her feelings and I hope she finds the power and peace that often comes from sharing such a painful and raw story.Colleen’s honesty isn’t unlike my own and I’m pleased to share this space with her and all the others who are Parentless, Motherless, or Fatherless in any capacity, whether it be the result of death, abuse, estrangement or other situations.
Without further ado, here is Colleen’s story.
~ Karen
I’ve been reading all of the stories on your Parentless page. My heart breaks and breaks and breaks for you and all of those who have suffered abuse from the people who were meant to protect you. I’m sorry.
I feel like my own story is pretty tame after all of that. It’s just a different sort of loss and I wonder what others would make of it.
My mother is still alive. I see her sometimes. I see her because she’s my mom and I’m supposed to do that. She never really physically abused me (although I will remember THE STRAP for as long as I live) and I had everything I needed while I grew up. I was in therapy awhile ago and my therapist tried to find out about my childhood and my adolescence - I could hardly remember anything. She said that meant I was suppressing really bad memories or there was just nothing to remember.
Mostly there was nothing. Until I was diagnosed with clinical depression and my doctor told me that was usually hereditary, did anyone else in my family suffer from it? Knowing what I know now…yeah. My Mom. Big time. Can we say OCD? Our house was so clean you’d think no one lived in it. When I came from school there was a note on the fridge door listing what we could have for snack. There was to be no deviation from the list because my mom knew every single cheese slice that was in the fridge and had meals and snacks planned out until the end of time. There was no messing with the supplies. The only interactions with her that I can recall at all are very cold and clinical - discussions about how much rent I would pay once I got a job, fights about curfews…no early memories at all. No hugs, no sharing, no…contact.
When I was in my early 20’s my dad left her. It was as if all the emotion she’d never shown (except for anger) came out all at once. She compelled my participation by threatening suicide, she demanded that I choose her and reject my dad and rode the pity train to the end of the line.
This all stopped when she found God and her salvation through Jesus Christ. We never went to church or even talked about going when I was growing up. My dad’s parents had shoved that down his throat so hard he gagged it all up and and refused to have anything to do with it. My mom didn’t feel one way or the other about it.
These days, she tells me that I’m going to hell no matter what I do or don’t do because I wasn’t baptized. If I don’t accept Christ into my life I’m a goner. Same for my daughter, even if she’s only 11. My daughter just spent a hellish 5 days with her and her husband and has since told me that she will never go to stay with them again. I support this and I won’t make her do it. My girl is a budding pre-teen and a good kid but my mom made her feel like an alien and a loser and a bad girl.
I wanted to find a path to my mom when I found out about the depression and figured out what was wrong for all those years. I too found a path to god that is very personal and has nothing to do with organized religion. I’m still a heretic to my mom and I’d just better not mention clinical depression anywhere around her. You could use her lips for a ruler if I do. That’s the devil’s work and pills are not the answer - those are just more of satan’s tools.
After my daughter came home from her awful visit and told me ad nauseum about her experience she asked me “Do you love your Mom?”
I must have told her that of course I did but I’m honestly not sure what I said. I know the real answer though: No. I don’t. I can’t even remember missing it. I can’t remember feeling it. I can’t remember wanting or needing my mom, needing or getting comfort from her. I only remember things from the time I was able to get away from that cold house.
I’m not even very sorry about this. Because my mom is still alive and still in my life and she is the person I have to think of when I think of a mom…no, I don’t ‘miss’ her. There was a time when I had a lot of empathy for her and would have understood everything. In that time we could have built something and I would never have judged her or condemned her for being the way she was. I understood. I still understand. She chose something else and she tells me that it means more to her than her children do…it’s the greatest love you can have, that love of god. The day I finally see the light is the day we can come together. I do see a light but she doesn’t think it’s the right light and so we go along with this farce of family feeling.
I certainly don’t think god took my mom. My mom bailed out on me and my brother when we were young and then she took refuge in a book. She never sought strength from her family or her world or her own self. I think she’s actually pretty weak and that I - pitiful sinner that I am - am stronger than she is.
I don’t love my mom. I wish I felt sorrier about this.
~ Colleen
August 19th, 2007 at 9:42 am
I could have written this post, except my mom found Buddah instead of JC. Those of us that believe in anything she doesn’t are wrong, by the way. She wrinkles up her nose like she smells something bad whenever she’s around me. Hey, Mom? It’s you. YOU STINK.
August 19th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Hmm. Just switch the sex. Good ole dad found god.
I think he’s alive. I don’t know. He doesn’t deserve my love, because he didn’t earn it. He threw my gift of love away.
It’s okay not to feel sorry. It’s really okay.
August 19th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I agree with Mammaloves. Just because they created you doesn’t obligate you to love them. THEY had an obligation to you and my hell, they let you down.
August 19th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I probably could have written this too…it would be slightly different, but I feel the same pain and lack of love for my whole family. I swear I was adopted, because there is no way that I came from their gene pool.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:14 am
This sounds like my diary but I would have added much more about the negativity and even now, at 43, I can do no right, have to lose weight, blah, blah, in her eyes. Nothing is said how I am raising 2 beautiful teenagers alone and how genuinely happy they are. I just ask GOD all the time. “please don’t let me turn out like her”. It’s working. My kids love me! Thanks for sharing.
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:20 pm
My mother has the narcissism to accompany the borderline personality so I do get compliments. Hollow, overly effusive compliments only in earshot of others who ‘matter’.
Thank you for sharing. I’m not sorry and I’m glad you’re not, either. Maybe that’s the first step in healing? I have no answers but it’s good to hear my thoughts come from somewhere besides my head. Thank you all.
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I’m sorry. She sounds a lot like my mom. I don’t love her either. It was so freeing when I finally accepted that fact. A therapist once told me that the cold, loveless, no touch parenting that I got is as bad as physical abuse. We all need to be hugged and told that we are loved and worthy, especially as children. Feeling it is as important as hearing it. I’m sending a big virtual hug your way. Thanks for sharing your story.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Colleen, I don’t think your mother is “religious.” It sounds as though the teachings of her religion are weapons to be wielded against others but never applied to herself. My mother’s like that too. She prides herself on her virtue because she never drank or smoked and was (presumably) a virgin when she married. The fact that she was also violent and abusive to both husband and daughters doesn’t seem to strike her as sinful behavior.
The old bat is 88 now. My older sister who lives nearer by says she isn’t violent any more, just stupid and witless. But I haven’t seen her in several years now and am in no hurry to do so ever again.
A question for other “Motherless” posters here: what kind of relationship do you have with your siblings? Because I have next to none with my two sisters; we all live several hundred miles distant and aside from commonplaces I have no idea what to say to either of them. It would be like old Gulag survivors getting together to talk about their days in prison, and who wants to relive that?
August 25th, 2007 at 7:48 am
[...] other day commenter Red Anne Vane asked: A question for other Motherless posters here: what kind of [...]