So...I suppose I cannot fully claim that my mother is a raging psychopath...but perhaps we can put her under the category of "prelude to psychopath'.
My mother has always been this figurine in my life that I could never really grasp. She's insipid of mind, emotionally fragile, and projects the disposition of an eternal sixteen-year-old.
What I mean to say is...
- When I want to talk about my writing...she expresses so little interest, you'd have thought I said absolutely nothing at all.
- When you call her out on her character flaws (very evenly, and very maturely, in a conversational way)...she goes postal, and thinks you're attacking her.
- When you roll your eyes and say something snarky (as my fourteen-year-old sister does on the daily)...she will actually MIMIC her, in such a way that a five-year-old would mimic her mother or sister as if it would prove a point.
I've always known my mother this way.
But this isn't what perhaps vexes me the most about our association...
I think a new level of my annoyance with my mother began around the time my cousin (who has always been a very accomplished beauty) was crowned her high school's Homecoming Queen.
Now, before you think that this is just an everyday run-of-the-mill kind of jealousy, you're wrong.
My cousin has ALWAYS been the beauty, and I have ALWAYS been the brains--that's simply the way it was, and I have been enormously satisfied with my lot. Naturally, one day she will no longer be beautiful, and I'll still have my uppity elitist prose to wipe her runny nose with. I have looked forward to that day since I was six and she was three.
Plainly, this has nothing to do with my cousin's title.
This has to do with me, and my mother, and my mother's reaction to said title.
What perhaps hurts me the most is my mother's blatant ignorance for things that are very important to me.
I have been a writer ever since I can remember. She knows I write, and she knows that it is the epicenter of my existence.
I've already expressed that if I couldn't write; I'd rather not live.
I am perfectly serious by this.
If I wake up one morning, and I find I can no longer pen my thoughts--I'll pull a Plath.
(I find it not as obtrusive as a Hemingway.)
Anyway...
When my cousin was announced as Homecoming Queen, you could have sworn it was my mother along with her.
Plans to have a tea, and to find a dress, and a suit, and everything for my cousin began to be arranged in full-force--and my mother was "honored" to be involved in every single step of this process.
At first, I was excited for my cousin. At first, I was thinking this was a pretty fun thing. Fun, however, was the extent of it. I never held any beauty and/or popularity recognition in any higher esteem than "fun". But, nonetheless, I smiled and was happy for her and all that.
Well, the annoyance probably climaxed when I realized that my mother was perhaps more involved in this process than she was in anything I have ever done in my entire life that was important to me.
Naturally, if I called her out on this, she would say that scouring for dresses for MY homecomings and all that equaled this event--IT DID NOT.
If my mother really knew me, she'd realize:
a.) a lot of the dress shopping and general clothes shopping that i have done with her in my life has been to please HER. i, personally, hate this ritual, as it makes me feel enormously uncomfortable.
b.) she has no idea what is most important to me, which is my writing and my career. if she realized that, or even cared, perhaps she'd discuss my writing with me--or even express a desire to.
I am her daughter.
That's what pisses me off the most.
I am her daughter--and she knows nothing about me, except for what she sees on the shell.
I can't talk to her, because she will INSIST she is RIGHT and that I have NEVER TRIED to talk to her about any of this.
I was so angry that my mother would be so involved with my cousin, over dresses and frills and shit--and she has never even glanced at anything I've done.
At least...I know what I'm not going to do, when I have children.
Because it hurts, enormously, to be unnoticed by the person you wish would notice you the most.
- pleasing grades
