Needing My Mom More Now Than Ever

I attempted to go through and get rid of things to make my second bedroom a livable space. This is my catch-all room. I have a lot of clothes that are for winter or clothes that I don’t wear often but I’m not ready to get rid of. It is also where my photos and sentimental type things are.

I looked briefly at some of the photos. I did another round of grabbing some I wanted. I decided to read one of my mom’s journals. This is by far the one she consistently wrote in. She wrote over quite a few months in 1994, which was a little over four years after she lost her husband and daughter in a house fire. Then about two years before I was born. She wanted to start this journal to document how she was feeling. She was going to meetings and therapy and the works for getting off drugs and alcohol.

I read this journal for the first time quite a few years ago. I learned a lot of things about her that I had never heard before. It didn’t resonate with me at that stage of life. I didn’t expect too much this time. I had forgotten a lot but remembered how I responded to it the last time. Let’s just say this time I cried a lot.

I am journaling pretty consistently these days. A lot of it is also about how I am feeling and what I am going through. A lot of thoughts that I don’t want or need to put on here but still need to go somewhere.

As I was reading her words it was in ways like reading my journal. It made me sad because for one I am not currently writing too many happy things. I had just written in my journal that I sometimes miss my mom more now than I did when she died when I was younger. It was because I felt like she would understand a lot of what I was going through right now. Then hours later I read words about her feeling similar things.

I respond to relationships similarly to her. I justify people’s actions like she did. She talked about a couple of men. One being her husband who died and another one that I grew up around. Hearing her talk about these men. Men who didn’t treat her that well or were good to her when it benefited them. I was now able to relate to it. I think I love people a lot like she did. I think a lot of it comes from not being loved properly as a child and an adult. She talked about losing her grandfather and how it was the start of not being loved. For me, it was losing her that was the start of me not being loved for so many years.

My mom talked about how she wouldn’t be with another man aside from her husband (before and after they were married). There wouldn’t be someone that she could love the way she loved him. This was after she wrote about all the terrible things he did. He would cheat on his girlfriends at the time. He would do things with other girls in front of my mom knowing how she felt about him. He did things knowing it would make her go crazy. She did do some crazy things. I remember thinking how crazy I thought she was for a man. Then not that long ago I found myself thinking crazy things because of a man.

The second man was occupied a lot of the time you could say. If you personally know my life or mom you could probably guess who this was. He did a lot of things for her. He was I think the first person she had developed feelings for since her husband. He had a lot going on with his personal and work life. There were a few times she would bring up how he was supposed to see her but didn’t. I found that she justified his actions a lot in the way I do when it comes to people but especially men. There was one time he was having a hard time and that was the reason he wasn’t seeing her that week. She had brought up that it was because he didn’t want her to worry. It was one of the times she was justifying his lack of presence as being stressed or something of the sort. At one point she even admitted that she was guessing that reasoning. She was justifying this because he was so good when he was around. She felt loved by him more than just about anyone. I was reading this and I was like “Oh this is kinda what my journal is sounding like these days.” When reading someone else’s words you think, “How are you accepting this? This isn’t the love you should be letting someone give you.”

Throughout the therapy and all that she was doing, she brought up her inner child and how it was buried with her grandfather when he died. There was a point in therapy when she was able to unbury that inner child. That inner child that had been unloved for so long. She had written, “I feel a lot stronger now sort of reborn so I’m able to take care of little Melodye. She is a very pretty little girl who needs a lot of love that she never got before when she needed it. It is awful that it has taken so long for me to know how to take care and love her. She was not a bad girl. She smiled and tried to be happy and whenever she tried everyone told her that she was a pest and to go away.” I cried at this part. For one to read about your mom feeling this way. Two, to know that I have felt this much of my life. I still struggle with it and I am sure my mom did until she died.

To think there are these little girls inside us who think they are the biggest burden to people and are so unlovable. A lot of it was because we had people around us who made us feel that way. She had brought up my aunt (her sister) a lot. A lot of it checked out. She brought up how so many people would say that my aunt was not the greatest person for her to have in her life. That she was taking advantage of my mom because she knew how to manipulate her. She knew that in ways life would be easier without my aunt but she was also extremely codependent on her. They were each other’s best friend despite having a competitive and toxic relationship. I was also able to relate to some of that because I also became codependent with my aunt after my mom died. The only way I was able to separate myself without her influence was by her passing away. Something my mom had brought up that I think about too is that my aunt still had an addict mentality. When you have that a lot of the time it is also a victim mentality.

I have spent a lot of time trying to rewire my brain and learn what is healthy. That was one thing that made my mom different from my aunt as well. My mom worked really hard to get out of that mentality and world. There are for sure things I read that still gave off that world. I know there are things I still do or think because of how I grew up that I need to work on. One thing that has always motivated me was knowing how hard my mom tried to change her life for the better for herself and then for me.

Sometimes she loved others too much. So much that it would affect her life in a negative way. There were times she wrote about how she was bad at saying no to people and most of the time they were able to persuade her. In one of her last entries, she wrote about a different guy and how he was doing stupid stuff and using the money he asked her for drugs. She wrote how he was now on his own. Over the months she had written about how she would take him to breakfast and take him to their group. This time she had written about how she dropped him off at the train instead and he had to figure things out himself. Well, that man was my father so I’m gonna go ahead and guess that she didn’t keep him cut off. I guess it also shows that maybe the guy you are cutting out of your life right now might come back and you might even have a child with him.

People are complicated. Relationships are complicated. It is hard to fight for yourself especially when you haven’t had anyone fight for you. If you get to a place where you do have people who love you and fight for you (which I am very grateful that I do) it is still the hardest thing. I know these people love me and that I am not a burden. I still struggle with thinking the opposite. These struggles and thoughts don’t magically go away. You continue to gain proper techniques and learn how and when to use them in response to these issues. Some of those issues might go away but realistically you’ll have to deal with them for the rest of your life. It is up to you how you decide to handle it all.