I finished my book today, Leisey's Story. It was a good story, a sad story, with a twist of Stephen King weirdness, a story about living with insanity and abuse, it was about violence against children and women and it was about sisterhood, it was about love and how hard it is to love someone for a lifetime and then lose them.
It's worth the read.
Next on my list is To Kill a Mockingbird. I haven't read it since high school. I'm hoping that I will actually enjoy it this time.
Mark was in the studio today. He's working on a blues CD. I love the Blues. If you like old style blues, like Taj Mahal and Eric Clapton, you'd like the new CD I bought, Mad Dogs and Okies.
I watched a concert on TV last night with a young woman blues singer - Corrine Baily Rae.
She's good.
I watched Don Juan de Marco this afternoon. What a good movie - Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando, and Faye Dunaway. I may be the only female alive who hadn't seen it... I want to watch again with Mark.
Last night we all sat around our dining room table and drank and played dice and acted silly.
Tonight we went to eat pizza, stopped to pick up a movie, Open Season, the kids are bowling on the Wii right now while Mark showers and I write.
I want to stay involved in my kids lives.
My mother played the pitiful card on me the other day... "I just want you to like me.." (she still can think well enough to manipulate - or at least try to - it's always been her strong suite)
I had to tell her that our relationship now is based on 50 years of her being my mother and she shouldn't expect things from me I can't give.
She's alone and lonely and no one really cares because she never, ever made any effort to care for anyone else. She has never had friends, she was never a mom, all she ever thought about was herself and her needs and now that it is all she has to keep her company.
I've told Mark several times that I really wish I ever loved her, really loved her and it would make this part of her life more bearable but I don't, so, all I can do is make sure her basic needs are met. She can't expect more than that from me because I can't give it.
8 comments:
A, i have never seen Don Juan. I watched The Last Kiss a couple of nights ago but i am not sure I recommend it.
i love Corinne Bailey Rae- i am listening to her Like A Star at this very moment.
There is something hard about refusing to fall for your parents games... does it feel harsh to you?? i always feel like a harsh person for refusing to be a pawn.
erica - oh, yeah.. sometimes I feel like I must be the most horrible person in the world. Who doesn't love their own Mother????
But, that's part of the game, isn't it.
Don Juan has some very sensual parts but nothing just downright nasty and it has a good story line. Depp and Brando together are great.
Parents - distant parents.... always seem to get needy when they get old.
My mother as even being her father's child until I was born. They had a kind of relationship until after his sister died 5 years ago and he revealed his true nature by cursing her name to anyone who would listen for not leaving him everything she had (even though she had been supporting him for about 15 years). He tried to call her a few times but gave up when she told him she didn't have any money.
My mother in law has the intellect of a 6th grader. She gleefully will push my husbands buttons like she is his little sister. Not in a nice way. I deal with her now, primarily because I don't have a button that she knows how to push. On the odd occasion that he does have to deal with her, I talk him down after. We don't play her shit games.
I chased the affection of my father until I was 37. I stopped out of sheer exhaustion and with the love and support of my dear husband. He kind of wondered why. Kind of. But he has Alzheimer's now.
For years I took it out on myself. Sometimes now I feel harsh. Sometimes I feel like a saint for not being in a clock tower with a rifle taking it out on the townfolk below.
There is a difference between being heartless and preserving your sanity.
hmmm. web editing...
"My mother was denied by her father as even being his child until I was born."
So maybe the key question should be .. is there anyone who does have a healthy relationship with their parents??
My Dad died when I was only 18 so I really never knew what kind of person he was but I do know that he was the cause of many of my problems. He accused me of being a slut (and pregnant)when I was just 13 and still a virgin - so that is what I became.
I think caring for some her basic needs is the most loving thing you can do at this point, A.
I thank God that He doesn't ask us to LIKE people--but LOVE them.
That said, maybe we could all benefit from some therapy for all the weird/bad/selfish things our parents did. Sigh.
It's difficult to understand how parents can screw up so badly. How can anyone have a child and not love him/her to pieces. I'll be the first to say that parenting is more than I bargained for, even though you warned me. :) It takes a level of unselfishness, I didn't know I was capable of, but Erin is my daughter, and raising her is a job I chose.
I've given up on trying to understand why any parent would do less. I believe that ultimately we will receive what we give. Your mom didn't give the love that she is asking for in return. If she never taught you how to love her like that, by loving you that way, how can she expect you to give it?
Sandy, it's not that she really wants me to love her, she just wants to use me and the fact that I should love her just because she is my Mother is her hold card.
I was born late in her life, a mere inconvenience and she only did what she felt was her "Christian" duty in raising me.. which wasn't much.
Post a Comment