Mother, Mother, I am Through
Dateline December, 2006: http://zoje-george.livejournal.com/197265.html
Dateline January 1, 2012: La Cyn and I were lazing about NYDay... and the door buzzer went off. I got up off the couch and peered through the venetian blinds on our front door. "It's a couple of old people." in response to her "Clipoboard?" query. I didn't recoginze who was at my door at first, it had been so long. The buzzer rang again more insistently, I peered again... and as I walked away from the door saying to La Cyn, "It looks like they're angry old people." in the back of my head, the penny was in the air... and a few more seconds, the penny dropped... yep, it was my mother. She'd already sent a few volleys: the daughter of her boyfriend's (now husband) birth announcement (no return address), a birthday card to me (no return address) filled with platitudes and delusions (I read it only once and La Cyn made it disappear).
But here she was on my doorstep, on New Year's Day. And I hid behind the curtains. I knew this day was coming... I know there's another day a'coming, and still, after all these years, I won't answer the door. She's dead to me.
Ghosts and hauntings... I can enumerate all the ways, physical and emotional, in which she tried to erase me (no, tried to kill me, more than once, and no, I am not exaggerating). But I have only a very few ways with which to erase her.
Why do you still come around? Vanity? Guilt? Guilt disguised as motherly love? There are some things that can never be forgiven.
You will never be no good, and you are poison to my very soul. Go away, go away. You have been dead lo these many years. I will never see you again, until I see you ... not alive. You know I tell everyone you're dead, right? Because I do. Because you have finally, been dead to me for at least 10 years. Ever since the last time I told you that we were done, the day my grandmother died and you were trying to justify holding her wake in a church she hated. Ghost on my doorstep, you will never be no good, and I am through with you.
Here, Chicago, was my sanctuary. But obviously, she hired/paid some website to find me. As early as springtime this past year.
2013 was supposed to be good. 2013 was supposed to wash away all the awfulness of 2012... and here, on my doorstep was some bullshit. Some bullshit that even according to Gavin de Becker, I wasn't allowed to address. I can't even open the door without inviting a whirlwind of excuses and recriminations. And let there be no mistake, no mistake, all those excuses and recriminations are firmly laid upon my feet, not hers. Not HER FEET.
I can forgive a lot. But once I spent my 20s trying to be a real person, and my 30s trying to feel, and entered my 40s finally, truly, understanding what had been done to me...
She is dead to me, you are dead to me, Mother. As much as you tried to make me not real, to make me dead. I am still alive and so are you, through no fault of your own.
Obviously, La Cyn and will now have to move. And you know how much she hates moving.
Dateline January 1, 2012: La Cyn and I were lazing about NYDay... and the door buzzer went off. I got up off the couch and peered through the venetian blinds on our front door. "It's a couple of old people." in response to her "Clipoboard?" query. I didn't recoginze who was at my door at first, it had been so long. The buzzer rang again more insistently, I peered again... and as I walked away from the door saying to La Cyn, "It looks like they're angry old people." in the back of my head, the penny was in the air... and a few more seconds, the penny dropped... yep, it was my mother. She'd already sent a few volleys: the daughter of her boyfriend's (now husband) birth announcement (no return address), a birthday card to me (no return address) filled with platitudes and delusions (I read it only once and La Cyn made it disappear).
But here she was on my doorstep, on New Year's Day. And I hid behind the curtains. I knew this day was coming... I know there's another day a'coming, and still, after all these years, I won't answer the door. She's dead to me.
Ghosts and hauntings... I can enumerate all the ways, physical and emotional, in which she tried to erase me (no, tried to kill me, more than once, and no, I am not exaggerating). But I have only a very few ways with which to erase her.
Why do you still come around? Vanity? Guilt? Guilt disguised as motherly love? There are some things that can never be forgiven.
You will never be no good, and you are poison to my very soul. Go away, go away. You have been dead lo these many years. I will never see you again, until I see you ... not alive. You know I tell everyone you're dead, right? Because I do. Because you have finally, been dead to me for at least 10 years. Ever since the last time I told you that we were done, the day my grandmother died and you were trying to justify holding her wake in a church she hated. Ghost on my doorstep, you will never be no good, and I am through with you.
Here, Chicago, was my sanctuary. But obviously, she hired/paid some website to find me. As early as springtime this past year.
2013 was supposed to be good. 2013 was supposed to wash away all the awfulness of 2012... and here, on my doorstep was some bullshit. Some bullshit that even according to Gavin de Becker, I wasn't allowed to address. I can't even open the door without inviting a whirlwind of excuses and recriminations. And let there be no mistake, no mistake, all those excuses and recriminations are firmly laid upon my feet, not hers. Not HER FEET.
I can forgive a lot. But once I spent my 20s trying to be a real person, and my 30s trying to feel, and entered my 40s finally, truly, understanding what had been done to me...
She is dead to me, you are dead to me, Mother. As much as you tried to make me not real, to make me dead. I am still alive and so are you, through no fault of your own.
Obviously, La Cyn and will now have to move. And you know how much she hates moving.