The Heart(less) and Soul(ess) of My Family Tree

Just got phone call from my mother. She's been a little ill. Truthfully most of her little "illnesses" have been self inflicted. Anytime one of her children disappointed her or didn't agree with her, she took to her bed for days. After years of worrying, we children grew up and figured it out that she was just plain manipulative. Continues to this day. Will get into that more but first a short story about The Martyr Queen who if she could would nail herself to a cross.

"Martyr Queen was born in a small village in an Asian country. Her mother had died when she was young and she was left with two elder sisters who abandoned the family and a father who taught her the meaning of love. Love to him was blind devotion and taking the physical and emotional abuse he doled out frequently. When she worked, she would go and buy cigarette and alcohol and kneel before him with her gifts (and the rest of her pay). Being beaten at his whim was never questioned even if it wasn't deserved. One day she met an American soldier and fell in love. They married and had a child. When his tour of duty in her country was over, they moved to the US. Martyr Queen was very unhappy in her new country and her new in-laws did not welcome her. She missed her father. When her father learned of her longing to see him again, he blew his brains out so she would have no reason to come back to her country. That was the meaning of love. Martyr Queen had another child but still had difficulties in adapting to her new home. She once stood over an overpass with her two young children in her arms and was prepared to throw herself and her children to their deaths. But the eldest child who was the only one able to talk, looked at her mother and said she wanted to go home. The marriage ended and Martyr Queen took the children and left the state. The children never saw their father again until they were 18. "

Don't get me wrong. I do have empathy and am amazed by her accomplishments. But also the cycle of abuse she suffered, she continued and justified it as the definition of love. This is the Disney version of my childhood. If you didn't do as she said, she'd crawl into her bed, beat you physically or emotionally or cut you off from the family until YOU apologized to her. Being told year after year growing up of how she should have just killed us all because of our failure to do as she asked and how she should have just given us up has taken out the connection of mother and child. Her youngest child from first marriage hasn't spoken to her in 17 years. And I, the eldest, am trying to become a human being for the first time. As long as I can remember, I completely shut off my emotions because they were a liability to survive with her. The walls that I built to survive are being taken down brick by brick. The damage allowed me to walk away from past relationships and situations without a look back. They also allowed me to stay in a marriage and accept the disintegration of myself for too many years. I finally realized how unhealthy it was for me emotionally, mentally and physically to live this way. I've already given so many years to make others happy and neglected myself. I own up to my past mistakes but am refusing to allow her to drag them up in every conversation and use them to beat me down. Come on, what I did 20 years ago should not be used against me today.

Martyr Queen has surrounded herself with a husband who has handed his manhood on a platter to her to keep the peace and an autistic son from that marriage who was never allowed to attempt anything. She finally has one child she can control. Though recently during Spring Break, I asked her a question that I and other mothers of autistic children have asked each other. "If they had a prenatal test for autism like they do for Down's Syndrome, would you terminate the child?" Her answer was a loud "Yes, my family would be so much better if he wasn't around. Life was so much better." I realized how deep her resentment of my brother was and her denial in her part of his upbringing. She brought him up to always stay with her. She never enjoyed being a mother and refuses to accept her failure at it. *btw, this is the woman who asked me on my wedding day on the way to the church if "she was an abusive mother*. I know she will never change and all I can do is keep her at arm's length and NEVER EVER leave her alone with my children. I am successfully breaking the cycle and are on the path of raising some children with self-respect, self-confidence and the knowledge that no matter how much they can fuck up that even though I will be disappointed sometimes that I will always love them. Love being the black sheep and rebel in my family.

*** Update: Woke up this morning and said WTF?!?!?! Need less bitching and wallowing in self-pity. Letting it stay but wanting to be less gloom and doom. Need to be more piss and vinegar.