Journal Entry - Sun. October 16th. 4 am. Clay Court Apartments

  A year ago I was miserable and floating along. Now I’m stronger, I have money, I have freedom, I have time. A year ago I was struggling with a mother who couldn’t get past her hang-up's to actually be a mother to me.

  I remember going over there to talk about “the van”. She had co-signed to help me get a van from the dealership her husband worked at. When he’s at work, boy does he plaster on that fake smile. He wears it like a badge of honor. He’s proud of living a lie cause he’s a vacant shell of a man. He has no skills, no interests, nothing to show for his time on this earth except two kids who he barely knows. They call him dad but he’s kinda just that dumb guy that they have to deal with every once in a while.

  So after my episode where I had a flash back and them yelling at my niece triggered my post traumatic stress disorder and I freaked out, well she didn’t want me in her house anymore. I went up to the door feeling really uncomfortable and gave it a hearty knock. I waited but there was no answer. I rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. I see her car in the driveway, so that tells me that she’s home. I ring the doorbell again. I knock on the door again. I knock harder this time. I keep knocking. She’s in there but she likes to play her games. I know enough about her to know that repetitive sounds drive her nuts so I knock at the exact pressure, and the exact time every time for a straight two minutes before I hear her yell, “Go Away.” So I yell through the door that we have to talk about the van. She is pacing up and down the stairs at this point yelling through the door. I can hear from her voice that she is manic and in frenzy. I am trying to remain calm, I am used to this. This is typical of what its been like growing up around her and being her son. Constantly dealing with insanity like this, where your mother, who is supposed to be the adult, acts like a child.

  So I tell her that the van got hit, and I heard they sent a check to her. There’s a pause and I hear “So.” I tell her that I don’t care about the money and she says “Oh, Yea Right!” like a child. Money is everything to my mother and because of that it has never meant much to me. I have seen it consume and devour her and I never want to have an obsession like that ever.

  I know that eventually she has to come out of her house because I know that she comes home from work for her breaks, and she has to go back to work. I know that she is late for work already, but she wont come out. Eventually the garage door starts to open. She usually comes out by the garage and closes it in her car on the way out. I am leaning against her car. I try to neutralize the situation by saying, “Come on. I knew you had to go back to work soon, why didn’t you just come out.” She is frazzled and she does not want to talk. She’s like a pissed off cat backed into a corner. I have done nothing to provoke this kind of response. She does this to herself. She gets herself worked up like this. I have been pretty calm at this point. She walks towards the car and tells me to get out of the way cause she has to go back to work cause she has a job. She says it to hurt me cause at the time I did not have a job and was on unemployment. I tell her we need to talk about this, and she is still pissed and tries to go around me. She reaches for her car door handle but I am leaning against the door and she cannot lift me off. She is small and weak and her anger does nothing because she doesn’t have any physical power to back it up with. I am still perfectly calm. She digs in her purse and pulls out her phone. I grab her hand and the phone and say “I will break that goddamn phone.” She violently pulls her arm back and at this point she’s crying. I have done nothing to make her cry. I haven’t yelled at her, I haven’t hit her, I haven’t made any sort of motion to hint that I am there for trouble but she is in hyper defensive mode. She realizes that she has nowhere to go and can’t best me so she stops for a second and looks at me and screams “WHAT DO YOU WANT. LEAVE ME ALONE!”, I will remind you at this point that this is my mother. She comes around the other side of her car, again trying to avoid the situation but she still cannot get into her car cause I wont let her. I am determined to talk to her. She is frustrated so she starts screaming “Help!” like a rape victim or something. Screaming so that neighbors or anybody can hear her, so I lose my cool and I run and grab her and pull her into the garage. She puts up a fight but she has no defense. I am so much stronger than her. It’s funny that she used to hit me, and now I am stronger than her and she is in a vulnerable place and I still have never hit her, and am still very gentle with her.

  So I pull her into the garage and set her right and I let her go. She’s crying. I tell her to stop acting like a child. At this point I get emotional too because this is my fucking mother that I have to treat like this. This is my mother that I have to fight with to get any sort of response from her.

  I break down and I tell her everything I’ve ever wanted to say. How we never talked about it. We never talked about all the bullshit she did to me when I was a kid and that now I am a man with so much anger built up inside me because she hit me when I was growing up. I tell her that we have never once even talked about it and it eats me alive. I tell her that I have nightmare where she is coming at me and I wake up out of them swinging my fists. I tell her that when she denies the fact that it happen, she denies that my pain is real. I take her face in my hands gently, and she cringes and says “ow” through her tears. I have not hurt her at all. I am trying to connect with my mother. I am trying to get through to her and she says ‘ow’ to her sons touch. I tell her that I love her and I need her but she did some really shitty things to me that fucked me up and we need to address those things, and she says she knows and she takes responsibility for that. At the time I just let her talk, but later I thought about it and I can’t really recall how the hell she ever took responsibility at all for it. This is the only time I ever broke down all her walls and she was honest with me for a second. I was 27 years old standing in the garage of the house I grew up in, crying, with my mothers head in my hands, and I felt like I was going to piss my pants I was so scared. The woman I saw before me was a damaged little girl who never grew up. She never got her head out of the clouds and never stopped playing her childish games. The woman I saw in front of me was way more damaged than anyone had ever seen, and at that moment I realized that there was nothing that could ever be done. She and I would never have a relationship because she isn’t really even there. They were never there for me. This woman didn’t have what it takes in her to be a good mother to her children. She had nothing left to offer me. She never had anything to offer me in the first place. The only thing I got from her were wounds and psychological trauma. Now I am in recovery from post traumatic stress disorder. I haven’t spoken to my mother in almost 2 years. Every holiday that goes by I think about her, every birthday that goes by I think about her. She doesn’t try to contact me. I have seen her in the grocery store and she will turn her back and walk away fast. My mother wants nothing to do with me, and I did nothing to deserve this. I was beaten on and hurt by her my entire life. She abused me and molded me into this lump of sadness and anger, and in spite of it all I came out a good person. I came out a peaceful person who is surrounded by loving people who care about me and actually want me around. People who think that my presence is a privilege and smile when I enter a room.

  That woman gave birth to me, but mother is just a word. Father is just a word. I have never felt meaning behind these worlds like you might, and I have to wake up every morning and live with that. I have to move on and live my life with that in the back of my head, knowing that I have never had any sort of support from any of the people who were supposed to be there for me. So when anyone ever has a problem with how quick I am to anger, or how stubborn and strict I can be about doing the right thing and showing appreciation and giving credit where credit is due, well this is why. I never knew real love until I was near the end of my twenties and I survive that horrific, cold, lonely life with scars, but I am still here. I am rebuilding, and relearning and most importantly, unlearning that bullshit they taught me. So when someone wants to know why I may be a little sad or grumpy sometimes, or a little too intense for them, well I thought I’d write a bit of it down for you, so you can glimpse a sliver of the reason why I am the way that I am.