I often wonder whether my way of thinking is born out of the fact that I have little to no family these days or whether I have always felt this way. At present my anxiety levels and the stress of where to find the money to afford life’s expense, not to mention the cash flow to kick off my business has been getting me into a tailspin. I have the opportunity to make a little cash but I am opting to choose other things in life, such as the little boys who kind of need cuddles in the afternoons after school or someone who has lost quite a few people in their life of late and suddenly find themselves faced with a potential battle themselves and maybe in need of someone to simply sit in the waiting room with them.
This blog began as a form of ‘online diary’ and has actually been one of the best decisions I have made. Ok there is another reason it started, let’s say that one day mother you will be famous, I promise you this!
People may find the title, Diaries From Domestic Violence off-putting but very rarely is this a space where I describe or relive the violence I used to see as just a part of life. It is I guess my journey to work out and discover, now that I am free of this initial learned ‘normal’, how relationships work. This is more than romantic ones, this I guess in a way is how I now interact with people at work, my family, friends, men, the general public. In a way I know what I want, it’s just not clear how I get there yet but with each day comes more understanding into how things work. Somedays I throw my hands in the air and rather than the feeling of ‘with age comes wisdom’ I am more left with a sense of confusion and almost ‘dumber’ feeling due to the fact that in not getting it right and running out of ideas or options. Something I need to keep in mind is that even on those days, that in itself is another piece of understanding things a little more.
As the silly season approaches things get a bit harder. I realised that my son probably doesn’t believe in Santa anymore and I missed it. Not by choice, more due to the fact that a woman who traditionally or stereotypically loves, cares and protects her offsprings. That her job in life upon creating life is to foster them and give them the space and freedom to become their own person. Instead this person for me has spent my lifetime making sure she intentionally destroys any happiness felt by her children and setting them up to fail. I have always felt the coldness and distance which was our relationship but since becoming a mother myself, becoming perplexed by the idea that this person could do the things they have done. I remember looking at my son and just wanting him to one day find happiness in this life. I don’t have expectations of him when it comes to career or even sexual preference within relationships because his roll in life is not to make up for anything I feel I may have missed out on. As a mother, if my son can wake up each day and be happy with who he has become then i’ve done my job right and I can breathe a sigh of relief.
I have never been able to work out why in my own life my mother enjoys inflicting pain upon myself and my sister. How she can get pleasure at us feeling immense pain. That doing so fuels her desire to go one better next time. Is it a case of her hating me and my existence? Am I the reason she had to have my father in her life and due to him causing severe damage blames me? I have researched this a little in the past few years and the idea that jealousy can play a part in strained relationships between mothers and their daughters. Is this a case of me being a ‘better version’ of what she thinks she was supposed to be in this life rather than something she created to pass on the skills she has acquired along the way and potentially do this life better than she did as with each generation maybe a little more knowledge has been acquired? I am proud of my son so it is confusing to me why someone would create in a way offsprings whom they are publicly and quite vocally run down and used as a ‘poor me, look what I deal with’ scenario. Does she possibly think that people feel sorry for her, therefore she is worth more to them in her own eyes? The way I see it is when there is a problem then with 100% of your children, maybe the focus should be on the people who raised them. It is pretty hard to fuck up ‘all’ of your children, most families get one bad egg but at a rate of 100% accuracy one would need to be dedicated to making this the reality as opposed to them being the victims of their children. The only other potentially reason for this is due to the above, the birth of the next generation would mean that a ‘do over’ fell into her lap and rather than seeing that her time has passed for her she sort to take from what she created instead. Like I was some form of possession put here for her to use as she sees fit?
I know when I consider this within my own life it quickly seems like a bizarre theory to me. It is a privilege to be the only person in the world my son can call Mum. My job is to protect him from life’s damage as best I can and share my experience so that he can go out and hopefully not make life altering mistakes within his own. In life or at least within my own life I know the best lessons were born out of the mistakes I made. All I can hope for is that one day he can look back and see that although his mother was not perfect she got back up each time and gave it another go. Something I am most proud of writing and one of the first early pieces I wrote was this;
To My Son
When my son remembers his childhood I want him to remember that his mother gave it her all.
She worried at time, she failed at others and she didn’t always get it right.
She tried her hardest to show him how to fight for her right to be her own person. Although she battled her own demons as a result of her own dysfunctional childhood she always tried to show him the importance of kindness, love, compassion & honesty. Even if she had to learn from her own mistakes she loved him enough to keep going, even when things seemed hopeless & even when life knocked her down.
I want him to remember I am a mother that always got back up!
The answer to this question will be one that comes from the horses mouth unfortunately as we are two completely different people. I usually have the ability to work everyone out and see the motives behind their actions but on this occasion entering the mind of someone so severely damaged it has caused them to look into the face of children and feel pleasure from their pain is impossible. This is due to the fact my mind is the polar opposite when it comes to my own child. I almost feel guilt over having brought him into a world full of such pain and struggles. I could never wish even a fraction of what I have endured upon him ever. There is nothing he could ever do for me not to want to protect him everyday simply because that is how I felt the first moment I looked into his little face. It had nothing to do with any thoughts or experience or damaged i’ve faced along the way, instead it was an instinct that kicked in. This feeling, this person is also the reason for my almost total break as a human over these past few years. This being the case I would’t change it for the world because in the end I found the one thing I have searched for this whole time. This is true love. Unconditional, without a thought or reason why, simply because he is me and I am him. There is only one mother for him and no matter how hard anyone tries we have something that can’t be bought or taken. It can only be given to you. It makes me sad that some people take this privilege for granted rather than enjoy it for the brief moment we are here on this earth. When you consider that for some this time is cut short, simply wasting it or not even bothering to embrace it for what it is seems more like a waste of their existence in the first place.
As humans we are not meant to exist I think in the first place. Why? I think that if we were then we wouldn’t get sick, we would’t die, we wouldn’t damage others, we would simply just exist harmoniously because we were meant to be. Does the fact that we are nothing more than an evolutionary mistake mean that until we ‘die out’ in a sense we will continue to damage each other? I refer to them as ‘aberrations’ and possibly the theory is not too far off being spot on.
Aberration. noun. a departure from what is normal, usual or expected. Typically an unwelcome one.
So as we consume the resources of a place which has seemingly existed for a time and space which will far out weight the time we have existed, are we the beginning of the end? Rather than things improving as a result of the lessons learn’t from our mistakes we in fact are supposed to become more damaged so we can finally self destruct and things can be the way they were supposed to be in the first place.
Overthink much?
I hope it’s quiet when we get where we are supposed to be. Where is that?
I figure we are exactly where we are supposed to be at any given time.
I recently realised that it isn’t written anywhere that life was supposed to be fair. I would say ‘that’s unfair’ but that theory doesn’t work here for some reason.
DIARIES FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 