Happy Mothers Day, Not for Everyone.

Mother's Day has come and gone. During the day I thought about my Mother and the relationship we had. I speak in the past tense because it is no more due to decisions I had to make which severed our tie. Society, or shall I say commercialism, puts a big emphasis on Mothers on this day. They make them all out to be heroes, devotees to their children and incapable of doing wrong since they  are our Mothers and their selfless duty to raise all children must be acknowledged with a special day. But what about the Mothers who aren't so great? It wasn't until I was in my mid thirties when I started to contemplate my upbringing that I realized that my Mom wasn't so great. She had brought me up to be a surrogate partner and due to her distrust in men she used me as a verbal punching bag. I remember one time when I was in my thirties where she commented, "When I see you, I just want to argue!". It was her action around me and toward me that eventually pushed me away. To this day she doesn't want to acknowledge what she has done even though her behaviors have persisted since my daughter was born and she is only five.

I was born seven days after my Mom turned seventeen so I will concede that she never had a chance in raising me correctly. It should be noted that back then (1972) teenage pregnancy was very much frowned upon, especially in the prairies of Canada where I was conceived. Her mother and others I am told wanted her to have an abortion but obviously that never happened. However, if she ever reads this letter she may wish she had. Her skills in mothering were lack luster to say the least since she was a kid herself. Before my Dad could do anything about their situation she took off without notice and I never saw him again until I was fourteen. Within that time my mom did what she called "the best I could do" to raise me. This included being quite the entrepreneur as I recall.

The biggest drawback that I see now is her faith in God. It's a hypocritical commitment she entered into close to thirty years ago when I was about thirteen. She found God because she needed forgiveness and a clear conscience for the things she had done previously. It was a selfish move on her part due to her own actions and remorse but it had nothing to do with me. The thing that really bothered me about it all, as I looked back on it as an adult, was that she sought forgiveness from him, but it was me she screwed over. After finding God she once told me, "I only love you because I'm your Mother and I have to, but I love God more than you!". I find her faith a hypocritical commitment to justify her actions yet she doesn't take any responsibility for them. I have heard her cry in her testimony that she wants to be more Christ like yet she still hides behaviors that are anything but.

During my formative years she had behaviors that are unacceptable in raising a child and to this day when I bring it up she ignores it. I am a realist and know the past can't be changed but I am a firm believer in taking responsibility for our actions and that is something she is incapable of doing. I have no desire to pursue a relationship with someone who has a history of being toxic. My sisters think that I should talk to her and I have tried, but she projects it all back to me like I was the problem and am the problem. That's not something I want in my life. I didn't choose my parents and I didn't choose that situation. Her behaviors may be different now, but she has still betrayed me since the birth of my daughter and still has the inability to take responsibility so again, I refrain from communication. Everything I do, I think about how this will affect my child which causes me to reflect on how she raised me. If she had genuine remorse and sincerely apologized then that would be a start but until then, Mothers Day is an empty day for me. And like we all know, many of us end up in relationships with people who resemble either our Mother or Father and that has caused me immeasurable harm in my life. The cycle needs to stop.

When I was around seven she met my sisters dad Roy. In short, he was a very abusive and intimidating person who habitually beat her and who viciously beat me occasionally. The fear that I had towards him was intense and when I was alone with him I always felt that it would only be a matter of time before something bad would happen. If my mother was out and I told her I was scared she would become upset with me and tell me to quit crying wolf. When he beat me (for setting an alarm clock wrong when I was 9) he threw me in a closet, took off my clothes, and beat the hell out of me with a leather belt with metal studs on it. My mother did not raise her voice or her body to stop him. I understand that she must have lived in great fear, but he was beating me. A little boy. After, as I lay in the basement on my stomach (because my back was too bloody and sore to sit on) she never came to console me. I was alone.

During our time with him my mother owned an escort company and was also one of the escorts. I remember nice smelling women coming over and I also remember all of the advertising material and the ad in the phone book. The company was called "Lynn's Angels" as she was a big fan of the show Charlie's Angels". My mom was an attractive woman and was the cover model for the company. A few years passed and she finally decided to leave him which started the chain reaction of habitual moving. During my 6th grade year I went to six different schools and was never able to establish friendships with people. As soon as I would start making friends he would show up and then we would have to move again. I remember one time coming home and there was a moving truck, our stuff already packed and without being able to say goodbye to other kids I was getting to know, I was gone. In one of those places I befriended a kid and he would come over and play. One day we found this VHS tape and threw it in to see what it was. The label had something about my sisters on it if I remember correctly and in no way relayed the correct information. VHS was new back then so it was a novelty to have a player. When I played the video, in front of my friend, it was a homemade porno that my mom and her boyfriend had made. Needless to say I was really embarrassed but my friend thought it was great! I put the tape back where we found it. Later, my mother, having a guilty conscience started to yell at me like I did something wrong. Instead of apologizing to me (she could have hid the tape) for being embarrassed in front of my friend and for me witnessing her sex acts, she treated me like I was a criminal. That was how it always worked with her.

There was always pornography in the house. In her room under the bed, in the bathroom in the magazine rack or as I just mentioned, videos of her and her boyfriend. For me porno was not a big deal but I liked looking at it. She would wear her Penthouse "Perfect 10" t-shirt while we went out which accentuated some one of the earliest augmentation procedures in Canada. My sisters Dad and her would wear revealing clothing when we were in public. There was this place in B.C. called "Old McDonald's Farm" and while we were sitting down on the grass having a picnic there was no hiding that my mom was not wearing panties. Let's just say she was very hirsute. While walking down the street with Roy, his testicles would be exposed from his short shorts. It was very embarrassing to say the least. But, when I was caught reading a Forum magazine (I really liked the stories) my mother told me that people who look at that type of material become rapists! She was telling me that I was going to be a rapist. I am not sure how she could come up with such phrases when in fact she was the one responsible for exposing me to porn, but I have grown tired of trying to make sense of a lot of things. It did remind me of the marijuana PSA where the Dad asks his teen son where he learned about using pot and the son replied, "I learned it from you!".

Another example of my Mothers sick mind was when my sisters had an unfortunate incident with an inappropriate babysitter (They were around 5 and 3) my mother came to me on my arrival home from school and told me, "If you ever touch the girls I will kill you!". Yet I had been babysitting about 99% of the time since they were born. I even would get up in the middle of the night to feed them their bottles, change their diapers and in fact be a mother/father to them and this is what she had to say to me! I would say that I only recall getting paid once in all that time but I am sure in my Mothers mind, room and board was a fair trade. When I was 25 I had just moved to the US from Canada. While I got situated and before I joined the Marines, I lived with my mom and sisters for a little while. During that time my youngest sister and I spent a lot of time together. My other sister was 16 and doing her teenage thing which created a fair amount of conflict in the house. Not to mention my mother was very controlling. It was no big deal but my youngest sister and I really were great friends. That is until my mother told me that I couldn't spend so much time with her as it was inappropriate. My mother grew up in an incestuous household and projected that on me since my sisters were young and up until they were in their teens. That projection affected me when my daughter was born as those thoughts that my mother put into my mind would always creep in. It took about two years before I was 100% comfortable being close to my daughter without those words of my mother crawling into my mind. Without her even being present she infected my relationship with my daughter because of her sick mind. Now she believes that we all just make choices and that people who use the past as an excuse are weak. I say, people who say that have done shitty things to others and need to make themselves feel exempt from responsibility which I don't grant. Her sickness infected me and I worked hard to rid myself of that, but I don't forgive someone who doesn't think that impacted my life in so many ways.

My mother was a shady individual who did what she could to make money. Whether it be through prostitution, Government fraud, or other means, it was never anything steady. It was always something new and different and often times I had no idea what she was doing aside from telling me not to tell my Grandmother we were on welfare. Why would you tell a kid to not tell somebody something? I didn't even know what welfare was. What I did know is that my mom started to mention that as a family we all had to take care of each other. She didn't want to work a conforming job as she always prided herself in being a non-conformist which meant that if myself or sisters made money, we needed to chip in. Over time that seed flourished in all of us and we felt this obligation to take care of her. Even while I was in the Marines I sent money home every month while she refrained from getting employment. I recall when I got a large back payment from the Marines for having my Mother on as a dependant, I used it to pay off my car since I had already been sending money home that I really didn't have to send. She became irate demanding that was her money. I think that was when I started to question everything but it would be many years later before I freed myself from her grasp. I was 27 at that time.

One of the most disturbing events of her raising me was the covert incest that she inflicted upon me. That is to say, using me as a surrogate partner. It was a rare occasion to have a girlfriend. Due to my nomadic existence and my introverted personality, it didn't come natural for me to meet women. My mother was very superficial and instead of building up my self esteem she lowered it since she always liked to point out flaws. This is due to her own insecurities but they have affected me to this day. I wish I would not have such a fear in dealing with people but I do. I still deal with them but there is a lot of fear in me. Although I get along with pretty much everyone, especially after getting comfortable, I have this intense fear of them judging everything that I do. I know I got that from my mother. If I had a pimple, she would point it out and make me feel like I was ugly. I don't judge people based on appearance but inside I notice everything and I wonder how some people leave the house although I realize that what goes on in my mind is not how everyone is nor how everyone should be. I wish I could undue those voices.

When I become involved with a woman it was the girl who would always initiate contact. Every single time. I was a wallflower. I was shy. Girls in school would tell me I could have any girl I wanted back in the day, but that wasn't how I was wired. I didn't grow up with a Dad and in a sense I grew up with a mom who used her body to get what she wanted which didn't relay to me. One thing I did learn through all of the experiences is how I didn't want to treat women. I never would hit, cheat, abuse or degrade them. I would also not approach them. Maybe that was due to moving so much and a fear of sadness for separation. However, when I would meet a girl and told my mom about it, she was never too excited. She always had a reason I shouldn't be with a woman and now I see it as a type of jealousy. Her two faced ways were to be nice in front of them but to criticize the relationship when they weren't around. She has also done this with my sisters husbands. It is a form of control. For me it was competition as I was her partner, her confidant.

There was an instance when I was in my thirties that she was laying all of her issues on me and I had enough of it. I told her I no longer wanted to hear it to which she replied, "You're the only man in my life" and that really made me sick. That was the point when I realized that I needed to end this relationship. She had got me into going to her church to which we would always go together, if there were any social functions with my friends or something she had to do, we would go together, and if I didn't put her name on a card that I got for someone, she would get upset at me. It was sick and I just stopped it. She tried to manipulate me saying "Why do you hate me" while she was sobbing, but I told her to leave. I had just entered into another toxic relationship and both these women were fighting over me, both of them having the same controlling manipulating traits that I am still paying for to this day. The other woman being the mother of my daughter.

Mother's Day, it's not a day I will celebrate anytime soon. I did pass on a "Happy Mother's Day" to my sisters as I believe they are great loving parents who have done extremely well in raising their children. They weren't exposed to the same mother I was and their kids can be thankful for that. My nieces and nephews love their Grandma but I am not sure if my daughter will get to know her until she is old enough to do that on her own. I tried to let her in one time and within a couple of weeks I was betrayed. I waited until the day after Mothers Day to post this as I didn't want to come across too cynical on a special day for many, but yesterday as families were waiting in lines at restaurants, running around finding flowers and gifts and doting on the one who loved you right, there are many of us out there who have nothing to celebrate and that's just life. 

NOTE: Please excuse the choppiness of this draft, I wanted to post this but am working 7 days a week and gone about 12 hours each day so my time is limited. See, I am worrying about judgement!

Some other interesting reads:
http://jezebel.com/a-toast-to-all-the-brave-kids-who-broke-up-with-their-t-1702954639
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/05/the-mothers-day-taboo-when-mama-aint-so-great/
http://www.salon.com/2010/05/08/hate_mothers_day_anne_lamott/