When my mother was here last during my medical crisis, I foolishly decided to show her the Sword Form. Why? Because I was drugged up and thought it would be a good idea. Why? Stop questioning me! I don’t know. I honestly don’t. It’s because I love my weapons so much and maybe I wanted to connect with my mother. Which is so stupid of me. There has never been a time in the history of ever when she cared and/or understood what I was trying to tell/show her.
Me being bi? That meant I wanted to fuck animals. Tattoos? Oh, she was not pleased by that at all. Of course, she didn’t approve of me relinquishing my religion (and had people pray at me to ‘bring me back into the fold’. Didn’t work, by the way). She said I was shirking my duty as a womn by not having children, and she encouraged me to get married so I’d have someone to take care of me in my old age. She relentlessly nagged at me for me being fat because she was concerned about my health, she said. But, when I was anorexic and painfully thin, she was only jealous of my tiny waist.
She tried to be encouraging about my writing, but the only thing she said when I let her read a short story I had written was how it had ‘so many’ swear words in it. I can’t remmeber a time when she complimented me or appreciated me full-stop without any qualifiers. Oh, wait. Yes, I can. She was thankful when I listened to her dump her problems on me because she ‘needed’ it.
Needless to say, when she told me how grateful she was that I was still alive, I internally rolled my eyes. She only cared because I was her unpaid therapist. Not even a therapist because she didn’t listen to anything I suggested. Or rather, very few things. She did not care about me the person, which is something that people have a hard time believing. A mother is supposed to care about her child! Rightly or wrongly, this is more embedded in our society than a father loving his child.
In this case, neither is correct. Neither of my parents love me as a person. They love the idea of their daughter as an extension of them, but me, Minna, the difficult, messy, complicated person? Nope!
Oh, I forgot to say that when I told my mother I was studying Taiji, she said that it was a way of inviting the devil to dance on my spine. How or why she came up with that, I do not know, but it’s almost poetic.
Anyway, when I showed my mother the Sword Form, it was the first three or four movements. She gave the uncomfortable laugh she does when she doesn’t like something and then said, “Oh, ah, it’s cute.”
Cute? CUTE????? Seriously. She could have said it was interesting. She could have said nothing at all. But cute? I snapped, “It’s not cute!” and immediately stopped.
I’m not a kid playing with a toy. I’m not some fluffy airhead wildly flailing a sword about. I think I was using my wooden practice sword, but still. I was angry ather, but more to the point, I was angly at myself. I knew better. I really did. My brother and I had the agreement not to say or do anything of importance to our parents unless absolutely necessary.
I was drugged out and high, and I thought maybe I could have a bonding moment with my mother. It was a moment of weakness taht will not happen again.
I bring it up because when Ian was last here, I hesitantly showed him the Double Saber Form. I knew he wouldn’t laugh at me or be dismissive about it the way my mother was, but I still felt in the back of my brain that he would somehow make me feel bad about it.
It had nothing to do with Ian and everything to do with my mother. I was used to a lifetime of being put down for what I liked/was interested in. Not just by my mother, but by the world. I’m a weirdo, which I’m fine with, and I am on the fringe of the fringe.
To have Ian say without reservation that something I was doing was beautiful made my eyes fill with tears. I don’t do it for approval, obviously, but, damn. It felt good. Something I loved and put so much work into made someone else say something in admiration. Someone I love dearly and hold in high esteem.
That’s when I realized just how bad my mother is for my self-esteem. Notice I haven’t mentioned my father because I don’t expect anything good from him. I knew from a pretty young age that he was disengaged and did not want to be a father. At all. I also knew by the time I was a teen that he had a very dim view on women. I mean, he has a dim view on people other than him in general, but an especially negative view on women in particular.
Once, when I was in my twenties, he was demanding to know if I appreciated all he’d done for me (monetarily). I said no because I was a shit, too, and I wanted to hurt him as much as he hurt me. He said in an indignant tone, “Then why should I love you?”
And my heart broke in a million pieces. Even though I knew he didn’t love me as a person, I didn’t expect him to admit it out loud! He said what was unspoken and made the subtext text. I said in a broken voice that he should love me because he was my father. That’s part of the job! I had always known he didn’t want to be a father, but I didn’t expect him to be quite so blatant about the quid-pro-quo nature of it that he espoused.
My mother, though. I expecetd more from her. I don’t know why, but probably beacuse of societal narratives that say mothers will do anything for their children. That mothers are saints who will always put their children first.
By the way, this is the one thing that truly floored me when women wanted to argue with me about why I should have children. When I said I didn’t like them, they said I’d change my mind when it was my own kid. And I thought about what goddamn fucking liars they were. There are million of children who are abused that highlight what bullshit this is.
Parenting is fucking hard. It’s sucks everything out of you. For many people, it gives you something ineffable in return. But, thats’ not true for everyone. I cannot stress how ill-suited for parenthood my parents were and still are. If you asked my father to name five things he knows about me, I highly doubt he could come up with three. He knows I love my cat. He might know I like the cold by now (but maybe not! He still commented on it when he was here). He may remember that I do Taiji. That’s about it, though. He doesn’t know that I write or what I write. He’s never read anything I’ve written (and I’m extremely prolific). I doubt he could name my favorite color (black), though it’s all I wear and it’s the color of my cat. He would not be able to tell you about my allergies or what I can and can’t eat. I doubt he’d be able to name my two best friends.
I am just the daughter-shaped person in his life. That’s it. I’m HIS daughter. THat’s all that matters. I knew that by the time I was twenty. But my mother? It took until this last visit for me to fully grasp that she’s just as bad in her own way. My parents are in their eighties. They are not going to change. That’s what I have to keep telling myself. Meanwhile, I appreciate my friends and my brother for bolstering my spirits when they are low. It means more to me than they will ever know.