My mom is well loved.
Just like my father was.
The opinion of them is formed through their public interactions. He was a well known photographer who dominated the New Orleans public school system when it came to gigs. He was relentlessly charismatic. She is a teacher with over 40 years of back breaking service to the youth of her community. She’s listened and aided her students when no one else has.
Both of them made me feel insane.
I saw sides of them other people didn’t and wouldn’t believe when I told them.
I left New Orleans as soon as possible because nothing felt right. It took twenty years before I figured out what was wrong.
I’m still figuring it out.
A few days ago I woke up to a message on instagram. It was from someone I had grown up with. We had lost touch for 18 years and were just really beginning to exchange messages. Despite the newness of this reconnect she updated her will to give me custody of her children should anything happen to her and if her cousin was in no way able to provide for them.
This was done with the casual non-chelance I’ve known her to engage in since we were kids. Dropping huge bombshells as if she was remarking on the weather. That day she told me that her mother had died. That my mother tried to reach me on her behalf to tell me about her mother’s passing but found herself blocked. She roundly chastised me, made assumptions about me and my character before giving me advice on cutting out my bullshit and figuring it out.
I took a breath before responding that I was so sorry for her loss, that I know her heart is breaking and I am so sorry. I then asked for her address. I will be sending flowers to her tomorrow.
I didn’t try to defend myself.
I know she is grieving
I know her relationship with her mother and my mother was/is different than mine.
I didn’t think she would understand and even if I did now is definitely not the time to spell it out.
I am eventually going to go back to New Orleans to live at some point in my life. It may take two years, it may take ten but I know I have to go back. And I know that there will be people there who only know “of me” Those stories aren’t very flattering and this only adds to it.
I’m going to have to be okay with that.
There are things that you just don’t do where I come from and I’ve done a lot of them. Including cutting ties with blood.
I was taught that no matter how your parent(s) treated you it is your responsibility to honor them and care for them. They could have abandoned you or abused you but that doesn’t matter. If your heart is good, if your soul is pure you love them.
You owe them.
It is unnatural to turn against them, to turn away from them. Besides it is not about them. It is about you and how you want to be remembered. It is about how you are righteous. It is about love and love isn’t easy. Love needs to be worked on.
This thinking
This way of thinking
This concept that I owe people who treated me terribly my allegiance set me up for a kinda grooming that I am just catching the edges of.
My friend doesn’t know that she was asking me to interact with someone who told me to my face that ever since I was a baby she had me prove my love to her and she felt justified in doing so. That she smiled at me like she won something when she said you’ve always accepted my flaws and all even though I never did that for you. That she was asking me to be in connection with the woman that beat me to blow off a little steam.
My friend had no idea and I didn’t say anything because I knew my mother was a better mother to her than she had ever been to me and what she needs right now was my mother to soothe the space her own had left.
Like most survivors of toxic parents that got away I know I’m vilified. That she tells people she did her best but I was always a difficult and dramatic child. I also know that I completed my mother’s self imposed prophecy.
That I would leave her. Like her mother did. Like my grandmother did my great grandmother and so on and so forth.
Our legacy of familial pain.
The cycle stops with me.
#MammyisDead 