Yesterday, I wrote about love in the context of family. Here is the post in which I mused about how complicated it can get and how we don’t talk about the fact that some parents don’t love their children. When I state plainly that my parents don’t love me, even my closest friends have a hard time not rushing in to assure me it’s not the case.
Here’s the thing. I don’t say it to get pity or in an emo way. I’m saying it as factual. My parents don’t love me because they don’t know me. What’s more, they never wanted to know the true me, and at this point in my life, there is no positive to trying to share anything of importance with them.
As I mentioned in the last post, my mother became a mother because it was what was expected of her. Also, she never felt loved in her family, and I think she believed this was the way to earn that love. It didn’t work. My grandmother was also a self-centered, unloving person who bought into the sexist bullshit that boy children were more important/valuable than girl children. She had no interest in me at all. The three or four times I saw her, I don’t think she said one single word to me.
My mother never felt loved by her mother, and I think part of her rabid obsession with being a mother was to create a bond with her mother. The day I turned 26, my mother commented that she had my brother at that age. Which, fine. Whatever. I tucked it away as a fun little fact, but little did I know that was going to be my mother’s mantra for the next fifteen years–trying to get me pregnant, I mean.
By this time, she had moved back to Taiwan. Almost every time we talked, she brought up me having children. When my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, my mother commented that she (my grandmother) would love to be a great-grandmother before she died. She heavily implied that I, as the oldest granddaughter, should be the one to have the child. I jokingly said that it would take too long for me to get married and have a child, but I could do it on my own if she liked.
I was only joking because my family on my mother’s side is deeply evangelical/conservative Christian. The idea of having children outside of marriage (to a person of the opposite gender) was unthinkable. Much to my shock, my mother said she thought her mother would be fine with that. I didn’t say anything, but I thought, “Wow, nice to know her morals are so easily discarded.”
In one of our arguments about having children, I told my mother that I did not want them. Without missing a beat, she said that it didn’t matter if I wanted them or not. It was my duty as a woman to have them. Yes, she actually said that. Along with ‘jokingly’ suggesting that I adopt a black baby to match my (then) cats. Oh, and when I mentioned that my boyfriend at the time was starting to think he might want children, my mother said we could compromise and have one.
That’s not a fucking compromise! There is no ‘sort of’ having children. It’s a binary proposition, and I did not want them. I never wanted them. I just thought I had to have them because my mother brainwashed that propaganda in my brain. When I was twenty or so, I had the sudden epiphany that I did not want to have children. What’s more, I did not have to have them.
I can’t tell you what a weight I didn’t even know I was carrying off my shoulders that was. I have never felt that great in my life. I was elated and felt as if I could fly. I have never made adecision that easily and confidently, and I have never, ever, EVER regretted it. EVER. The only time I had a fleeting thought about having children it was, “If I have a kid, it will shut my mother up.” Which is not a good reason to have a kid. It’s a terrible one! And it wouldn’t work, anyway, because my mother would find something else to nag me about.
Like I said, my brother did everything right. A devout Christian. Married at 25. Three kids. Making good money as a Realtor. And yet. My mother was upset he married a white woman, waited so long to have kids, and then had too many. She didn’t actually like the grandchildren any more than she liked her children, by the way. After nagging my brother for years to have children, she moved back to Taiwan pretty soon after he had his first. I think before the second? Sometime around there.
She came back to visit twice a year for about ten days around Lunar New Year and a month in the summer. She visited my brother’s family once or maybe twice a visit. And her comments to my brother’s children were usually restricted to how tall they were and what were their favorite school subjects?
That’s better than any interest my father showed in them–which was none.
I really wish people would be ok with me saying that my parents don’t love me. I don’t want sympathy or assurances that they do, indeed, love me. I know they don’t, and I have made my peace with it. Do you know why my mother is glad I did not die for good during my medical crisis? Or at least the reason she’s mentioned more than once? Because she needs someone to talk to and someone to help her deal with my father.
It was during that visit that I truly realized that my parents did not love me as a person. My mother loves the concept of having a daughter and what she thinks a daughter should be, but that’s not the same as loving me as a person. And, as I’ve said before, my fdather doesn’t see people as actual entities outside of him, so at least I never wast confused about that.
That’s why my relationship with my mother has been more of a struggle. I never had the illusion that there was anything there. With my mother, I had to come to grips that she was just as fucked up in her own way–and just as self-centered. That took way longer and therapy and me just facing the cold hard truth. It wasn’t easy because the message that mothers are angels and would do anything for their children is so consistent and presistent.
I have more to say, but I need to sleep. That is all for now.