ughhhh my mother is just as pissed at me as I am with her, and now we're going to have to have terse, polite conversations every day over the phone until she's back home at the end of the month. by which time the whole thing will have gotten spun out way too far, and it'll be yet more complicated to stabilize again. she says she "has some feelings to share," which is code for "you have wronged me unforgivably and you're spoiled and just as bad as your father," which is particularly loathsome, but I'm going to have to engage with it anyway if it's to get resolved. I'm not looking forward to this.
anyhow, besides putting my foot down six months ago to insist that it be shorter, there is not a damn thing I could have done for that trip to go better. I should have known it was a terrible idea. several people tried to remind me, but things have been going way better between her and me since she got a boyfriend and began to seek me out for dating 101 advice, and I was eager to pursue the idea that there's a "before" and "after" version of my mother. And with all the Politics I felt like I had to go check out the old motherland again for a sek in case my loves and I need to flee, so I took the bait. But I forgot that time and place are very difficult for me to mentally keep separate, and the same is true for her, at least when I'm around. Neither of us can stay rooted in the present and in who we currently are, so there can be no "before and "after" mother, nor indeed a "before" and "after" me. if one of us switches, so does the other. And around and around we go, reactive and aggrieved, forever.
I hate this. I hate that this is all either of us can hope for. But she won't do therapy, so we don't have a common scaffold to work within. I'm trying to teach her, but I can't be her child and her therapist simultaneously. I wish desperately that I were not her child, that I were not anyone's child, that I were entirely exempt from blood ties, but here I am, 35 and still getting upset that my mom can't see me. bleh.
