Nine years ago on Mother’s Day, my mother kicked me out. I ruined Mother’s Day (didn’t you hear?), and we didn’t speak for 2.5 years.
I look back to the Facebook messages I had with her in May 2010, and it’s some major heartbreaking shit, y’all. I begged her to give me a chance, I was pleading with her to love me again. I was trying to negotiate the parent/child relationship and bring us close together again, and she read them without acknowledgment.
So, there’s the layer of my mother and I have never had a great relationship, and not really any relationship at all since I was 17, so I don’t really feel too pumped about Mother’s Day™. A nice reminder too, it’s the anniversary of when it finally ripped apart. It’s marked on every calendar in America.
Over the coming months, my step-dad brought all my belongings to my dad’s house. The last to arrive were my writing things. They had read everything I’d ever written and confessed. And delivered the bins of full notebooks all trampled. They set them at the end of the driveway and took off. I tried to run out and see them but the Jeep was turning the corner as I opened the front door. I carried the bins in by myself. One last violation before years of silence.. until the next time I could serve a purpose.
But yeah, I had a place to go to. When Mom kicked me out, I wasn’t homeless. I lived full time with my dad and step-mom instead of just half time. My sister continued to go back and forth (she was, and is, still in Good Standing™). Dad and step-mom are great people. They got the unconditional love thing happening. They’d never kick me out in the way my mom did.
It’s weird because I *DID* have good parents, so when it comes up in therapy or whatever that I had harmful parents, it feels wrong to not mention the non-harmful parents.. like I’m leaving them out. I didn’t know unconditional love as a kid. But I also did! Remember? I just said they were good to me. But also, I was neglected 50% of the time! But also un-neglected. I could do this all day.
Things that seem to only be true alone are sometimes just parallel to another solo truth. Nine years later, I still hate Mother’s Day, even though I have plenty of moms in my life to celebrate. I take the whole day personally. I punish myself, I delay taking my meds, don’t shower. I don’t even know why I care. I don’t want to.
time 4 bed.
*poet snaps* 
You care because she gave gave birth to you, and why that makes a difference I’ll never understand, but it does. Speaking as someone who also had a toxic mother, it’s hard to let that go, But the older I get (and I am old, Ya know) Holding onto to toxicity validates them, not us. And I’ll be damned if I’ll give her any more credit than I have to. It took me years to let her influence go, and I’ll admit for me it didn’t happen until after her death. On mother’s day, after a fight with me the night before. You don’t have to celebrate THAT day, but don’t let it pull you down. It helped make you who you are. And I think you are a pretty cool guy…with a very big heart, and I for one am glad you are a part of our lives.
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