I often have confused feeling about my mother. She's dark, and self-centered. My brother is an alcoholic, he's 48. Funny, I just typed 40 and realized how fast time has gone by. At any rate, he has battled with it all of his life. I'm sure some of you have friends of family members in the same boat, so I need not get into the whole 'battle' of it all. But it's sad. He is so amazingly talented, and has some remarkable jobs during his life. But he has blown it all. He'll get drunk, and just vanish for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. Doesn't answer his phone.. nothing. If you go by his place, he cusses you out for bothering him. Yet doesn't remember any of it. I know it's depression that sends him on these binges, but he won't stay on medications. So we just worry.
But not my mother. She called me today. "Heard from Adrian?" Of course, I haven't. And she hasn't either, we have both been calling him. My father asks me daily, too. However, there is a difference in their tones. As angry as my father is at him for being the way he is, he still sounds concerned. He has told me he doesn't want to attend funerals for any of his children, and that no parent should ever have to. And he worries about Adrian. But my mother, she'll go on a tirade about how we better not 'bail him out' again, and gets angry that my father has paid his rent a few different times. And don't get her started on the times he has paid for rehab, cars.. etc. Her greedy side goes into overtime. It's none of her business what my father chooses to do, they have been divorced for many years now. I get it, I do, you can't be an enabler for an alcoholic. But if he were my son, I would do anything I could to help him if it plagued me to my last living breath. Because if the words, "He's just going to kill himself" ever came from my mouth regarding Monkey the way it does from my mothers... I would be ashamed and mortified. She's cold and selfish. And I have to try very hard not to hate her, because it's just the way she is. I wasted many years hating her, and I want Monkey to know his Nana. Although a certain person that I thought I liked once told me I was selfish and insane.. or something.. I know I will never be like her. And I just want to scream sometimes when people tell me, "Oh, your mother is so nice." The stories. Making me call her by her first name growing up. Cheating on my father with the mailman.. and I'm not kidding. And many other men. And the journals I found with the details.. at 14. She's horrible, and I hate her. But I love her. And on days like today, when she has the gaul to say hateful things about my brother, I just want to cry. Maybe he would have turned out better had he been blessed with a loving mother. My father wasn't affectionate, but he was old-school, you knew you were safe with him and that he loved you. He was funny, insane, crazy and wild. But also hot-tempered and abusive. But I forgive that. My mother, she was cold and selfish. I don't remember cuddling with my mother. I remember crying once because some boy at school was teasing me and called me fat. "You're just different, you have to accept that." Never, "You're beautiful".. not until now. But not when I needed it. I remember lying in my bed for 3 days with horrid fevers. She would only check on me in the evenings, I was 13. When I finally returned to school, they required my parents to take me to a doctor due to a rash I had on my skin. Turns out I had scarlet fever, the doctor was furious. "Did you have fevers?! Did your parents know that you could become sterile from this?" Even my father was angry, she never told him. Because she couldn't be bothered. And it wasn't that we were poor, but her time was her time. I also remember being in the hospital after a car accident when I was 15. My father came daily, even though we owned a restaurant and he had to be there for the lunch and dinner, and close up late at night. He came in the afternoon and read 'Car and Driver' and 'Road and Track' magazines to me, and it was so funny. And bought me chocolate covered peanuts (his favorite) and ate them. But I loved it, because he was trying to be funny in his own way. And he would bring food and desserts for the nurses. I think they kept me an extra day because of it ;) But my mother visited only once, for like 10 minutes. And I could tell she was telling my father she was there, because he would ask if I had seen her. "No?". And I think that's why he stayed so long. But it doesn't matter.
I tease my husband sometimes. That my mother would have eaten her young if it had been legal :) Why she had 4 kids, I have no idea. What a dark time that was, women getting married to escape their own families and to start their own screwed up variety. But I worry, because she gets crazier as she gets older. And what if??
