The People Behind My Eyes

Anger As A Protection
Tuesday, December 26, 2006-4:01AM EST

I’ve read a few entries lately about letting go of hate and anger. I’ve read three different times about how someone benefited from letting go of anger but I thought I’d write about how I think anger has served as a protection for me. If I let go of anger for the mother there is the chance that I’ll begin to trust her again. If I trust her again and let my guard down I leave myself open to being hurt again.

My mother is still living and not even that far away from my home. She’s about 45 min via the highway which to me isn’t that far away. It would be easy to say, yes I’ll meet you for lunch or yes I’ll call you at noon. It would be easy to do if I let my guard down and stopped being angry. No, I don’t have to meet her or talk to her on the phone if I let go of anger but my point is, if I let go of that anger then I let go of what I feel protects me from being harmed again. If I for one second let go of the need for justice (separation of myself from her) then I make room for her to creep back in and plant doubt in my mind about all that happened. She’s a sneaky, conniving and formidable woman. Well, she’s not formidable anymore. She’s wheelchair bound and on oxygen suffering from COPD. She never smoked a cigarette in her life but her death will be suffocation. I find that quite interesting since she did her best to snuff the life out of her children every chance she could get. It’s irony at its best.

I read a poem over at Velvet Sacks place about a mother and son. I thought it was touching. I saw the mother as a caring woman, someone who wished she’d done things a bit differently, questioned her actions and took responsibility for her actions or inactions. I saw in this poem a mother that was not a horrible person but a vulnerable, breakable person with regrets and a drive to correct things but void of the know how to reach out and say so. I may have read a whole lot into this poem of hers but I have to say it got me to thinking about mothers in a different light. Maybe they’re not all monsters, maybe they’re not all unwilling to protect their children, maybe, just maybe they actually love their children and don’t see them as a burden. It let me see a different side of the coin, a mother concerned for her child and a mother who considered that maybe she didn’t do everything right. She wished things had turned out differently. The funny thing is, when I say I “saw” in the poem a mother that did this or that I actually never got a picture of a mother in my head. I read the words and they hit me to the heart but I never saw a figure, a female body waiting to get a letter from her son or to hear from him. To me, that says I have no real idea of what a mother is. I have a fairy tale idea but I have no real grasp of them as a person, as a living breathing flawed person. That is why I could feel the words but didn’t have any images at all to attach to them.

Sometimes that total separation from mothers is a cause for heart felt sorry, almost grief…but grief is snatched up by the reality that if I let my guard down with my own I’ll find myself at the end of viciousness. In this way, as long as I do not let myself forgive her then I keep myself safe from her. For example- one time in Target the mother said in front of the cashier, “Remember that time I hog tied you in bed?” I replied, “Yes, I talked about it in therapy last week.” That really did occur, she really did tie me and she really did say it in front of the cashier. Another time at the cash register she said, “You know I still have that horse whip above my bed.” She did stuff like that all the time. She is a cruel woman who can no longer physically hurt me but is more than willing to throw past abuse in my face so she can relive the sick thrill of it. Is she ever going to be safe enough to let my guard down even for a moment?

I hope that made sense. I don’t need to remember the details of the abuse. I don’t need the depression, the agony of staying up all night (it’s 4:13AM right now) I don’t need to look at the bedroom door and wonder if she’ll be standing there. Those things I can leave behind, work through and leave behind, come to peace with them. But if I allow myself to think of her as anything other than a monster then I make way for verbal assault and the tearing down of stuff I worked too hard to build.

Despite all the healing work I’ve done I still hear my mother laughing at me every time I shave my legs. Despite all the healing work I’ve done I still worry about smelling bad. She always told me I stink. I worry about looking like a “fool” because she called me that quite often. And it just seems like if I say, okay I’m not angry anymore then what reason do I have for turning down a meal with her? If I’m not angry with her then why wouldn’t I pick up the phone when she calls or go to her house for dinner or out for a day? If I’m not angry anymore then what reason on earth do I have to keep myself separate from her? Am I seeing this in black and white, a borderline personality disorder kind of all or nothing type view? If so tell me. I’m willing to listen to reason.

All I know is, while I won’t let anger eat me from the inside out, I will allow my anger towards her to protect me…keep me from trusting her ever again.

Austin