Shot through the heart

A not untimely letter from my estranged mother arrived today.

In it, she apologises profusely, sincerely (for the umpteenth time) for her misguided habit of confiding in me when I was just 11 the kinds of affairs of the heart that should never be voiced to your child at any age, let alone that one.

She goes on in the letter to tell me we all have choices. And proceeds to deliver me what my choice is. How silly I was for the first page of her letter to almost have me convinced she really meant her apologies this time. See, she thinks that apologising (again) should be enough. I do understand that in her mind, I should be thankful I have a mother at all. Her mother died when she was a teenager and it was a sudden unexpected death. So I do appreciate she thinks I am shunning the gift of having a mother with my 'choice' not to have contact with her. And when she states she had no choice in her mother dying, I feel for her.

But she's again only considering herself in this latest correspondence. She writes about choices I have made (and even monopolises that by telling what my choice is...) and yet likens it directly with the fact that she didn't have a choice about her mum. Yet she writes to me as one mother to another, because "after all, you're a mum now". I wonder how she'd counter my reply (if I were to give one) that I too know a thing or two about not having a choice in things - but I'm not going to enter into the murky area of comparing one's feelings of loss and grief to another's.

I find it impossible to reason with someone who sent me a card for Christmas the year Ella died asking me why we had no children yet (she had obviously forgotten about Ellanor and in some respects I didn't expect any more of her, she is challenged with mental illness of some description that continues to go undiagnosed) and put in capitals, underlined and all, "Don't you have the guts?" They are words that, while from a rather crazy person, are really hard to read from your own goddamn mother.

Disregarding that last paragraph, though, the main point I am again stuck on now is, by my very upbringing I am delivering, in some ways, her view of things via this book I am working on. I am unnerved today. Not using it as an excuse to not continue, but the echoes of words and hurts and grievances she's had and bleated on and on about for more years than I can recall, are haunting me as I see unfolding before me a book of feelings that might appear to be sounding familiar to some others of my family. I fear admitting that I am writing a book to them. To anyone, actually. My mother has written several autobiographies just this century, it's a bit of a family joke we talk about in mock pious tones occasionally. What if I become the latest amusement?

More importantly, I look at the subject matter I've got down on paper just in the last 24 hours and because of its content, I wonder if I have judged situations I have perceived as hurtful too harshly these past few years. See? Such was my upbringing and teachings in childhood that I've somehow managed to not allow myself to trust my own feelings - they always came from Mother when I was under her roof. They were always either approved or rejected by her. She would tell me how I felt. I clearly remember disagreeing with her and her shouting me down and telling me I did feel whatever it was she'd decided I was feeling. So I would simply allow her to talk and believe whatever reality it was she was spinning in her mind. Rather, I just let it happen, because to deny or disagree was only to be told I was wrong so there seemed no point really. All I could do was wait it out and endure. Such has been the method of my survival thus far in life. It's little fricking wonder I have such trouble defending myself against the aggressors I come across from time to time in my life.

It all comes back to upbringing and temperaments (even if you try your best to remove yourself from your family, I believe you are a product of it, a bit o' nature, a bit o' nurture - well, I am anyway - if anyone knows the secret to sidestepping this one, preferably a non-alcoholic one, do whisper it in my waiting ear). Where did my acceptance of others go since 2004? Where is my tolerance level, of people and their shortcomings? I had one. I know I had one! A bloody good one, too.

I'm so confused. That freaking pendulum. Why the fuck won't it find centre gravity?