My Mother's Daughter

"I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become." -- Oprah


Being my mother's daughter is a lot of work.  It forces me to grow up faster than I would like and make sense of things that feel entirely beyond my years.  It forces me to play the role of "detective" in search for the truth and it forces me to be the "bigger person" more often than I would like.  I take on these responsibilities and I strive to be a good person, but as a 21-year-old with a personality as big and stubborn as my own, sometimes I just want to fight.  I crave the occasional opportunity to yell or have an outburst of immaturity...but being my mother's daughter becomes only a series of fights and blackmail if I surrender to these temptations.  And the irony is that, while I strive for a calm and simple life, my mother continues to see me simply as a rebellious teenager with an "attitude" she never learned how to control.

Being my mother's daughter means that family issues are guaranteed to go unresolved.  The rooms of my mother's house remain occupied by several giant elephants that portray my mother in a negative light.  I will unconditionally love my mom until the day that I die, but that doesn't come without the knowledge that she is excellent at making awful decisions.  My mom has made a series of bad decisions at the expense of our family, yet these things go unresolved because my mother has learned how to deceive herself better than anyone else I have yet to meet.  She has the ability to block out conversations, fights or even entire life tragedies simply by telling herself that they didn't happen or that they were someone else's "fault."  I have only a theory about what could cause a person to be so afraid of the truth, and that's guilt.

With the understanding that I may be wrong, I have come to believe that my mother is afraid to face her mistakes.  Doing so simply causes her more pain than she knows what to do with.  The way I've learned to love my mom is by feeling sympathy for the heavy weight that she carries, even if the weight is rightfully hers, and even if she doesn't realize she's carrying it.  I love my mother because I try to accept the things about her that makes things for me more difficult.  Accepting my mother's denial and guilt is difficult because they so closely affect me and so often piss me off, but I guess the silver lining is that I've become determined to live my life without the company of such giant elephants.

I've learned that everybody has a different way of dealing with the things they can't control.  Life has thrown my mother a lot of curveballs that she never learned how to deal with.  Learning that life has essentially defeated her is a tough pill to swallow.  It's like I said...I love my mother unconditionally, but being my mother's daughter isn't easy.

"La calma è la virtù dei forti." -- "Tranquility is a virtue of the strong."