This gets long and rambly, so.. most of it is behind a cut.

The girls and I got into a rather large fight last week.

Care caught her dog doing something she shouldn’t have been, startled her when she went to scold her, and Sugar jumped. She either jumped wrong, or landed wrong – either way, she ended up aggravating her back or hip, again.

I got mad right quickly, and even though I knew Care was upset, I yelled at her. In the nearly three years we’ve had Sugar, she’s become far more a part of the family than just being one of the dogs. My immediate thought when I heard her crying was “oh my god, we’re going to have to put her down.” We’ve been through this before, and we don’t have the kind of money it would take to fix it, if Sugar was really badly hurt. We’d have to put her down. Sugar is far more than just a dog. She’s Care’s best friend, and Care needs to have that something that she can trust and love, because her life has taught her trusting and loving end in pain and rejection. Sad, but true.

Anyway, I overreacted and said things I wish I hadn’t. No amount of apologies can take that back, I know from personal experience …not that mother ever apologized for the things she’d say. I heard my mother come out of my mouth. And I just left.

The rest of this is after the cut.

I left the house to calm down, because I was ready and (at that moment) willing to pack them and their pets into the truck and take them elsewhere. Anywhere, elsewhere. Just not here. For twenty miles, I cried over my behaviour, my frustration with the house and the kids and work and everything.

For twenty miles, I fumed over two dogs, nine cats (yes, 9) and Strokey the Guinea Pig (his name is Mochi, but since he’s been having the mini-strokes, he’s been nicknamed rather morbidly). Care’s fish went to it’s happy swimming grounds two weeks ago. Now Rhia’s been begging me to have her dad’s friend’s gerbils. I’m thinking of making a trade. They take two kittens (her dad, and his friend can split ‘em) Rhia can have the gerbils. Because I’m stupid and crazy, both.

Actually, I’m being mildly pragmatic. The gerbils can eat the leftover piggy food, and use up the massive bale of shavings I bought. Mochi is ready to visit the vet and cross that bridge himself. He’s 7 years old, has outlived his companion by two years, and honestly it’s kind of cruel, even if he seems happy enough, to let him keep stroking like this.

I was going somewhere with this… Oh, yeah. Mother.

She was a single mom, and I know she did what she and her friends/family think was her best. She had a good job, she had a monumental support system around her. She also has a serious “ME” complex (if it doesn’t directly effect her or involve her, it doesn’t exist) and has a monumental temper.

I had health problems as a child, a lot of kidney and bladder infections. Sometimes, accidents happened. I was spanked, either with her hand or with something else. Those stopped the weekend she left me at my grandparents (this was before we moved next door) and gran put me in the bath. I remember that night, clearer than I ever wanted to. And the thing was, mother had spanked me two days before that, and I was still bright red with faint bruising where her hand made contact. I started seeing the doctors shortly after, and it wasn’t long before a diagnosis was made and I had surgery.

Mom was pretty good about making sure I had no self-esteem, no self-worth, no friends outside of family. The girls think I make them do a lot of chores, but if they only knew… By the time I was 12, I was the ‘wife.’ She worked shift work, so on the days she worked day shifts, I made dinner. I did the dishes, cleaned the house and ran the laundry up and down the stairs. I did not fold, because I didn’t do it ‘right.’ Yes, my girls do each of those things, too – but once a week. One night someone does dishes, or sorts laundry, or vacuums. Not every thing, every day. And I make sure to thank them and that they know it’s appreciated. I don’t make them do it over and over, screaming all the while… *shudder*

We lived in a very small town, and there were plenty of kids my age. At first, friendships were formed, and then broken when she’d throw tantrums or scream at me to clean the house while the friends were over. One incident sticks pretty tightly – I had a friend over and we were eating cheese toast for lunch. Mom was making it in a toaster-oven, and a friend of hers was there doing some electrical work. He bumped the toaster while she was getting some of the toast out, and she got melted cheese on her hand. My friend and I had been giggling away for whatever little girls giggle at, and I guess at that point, we’d outright laughed. Mom whipped around and started screaming some very horrible things… and I never played with that girl again.

Other stuff happened, including the time she was screaming at me about doing the vacuuming wrong, and how no one would ever love me, and how the dishes weren’t loaded into the dishwasher correctly and do it again or else…and she raised her hand. I grabbed the knife from the rack… There are witnesses to this, btw. This was during summer break, and my paternal cousin was there for a week or two. We hadn’t even had time to go for a bike ride or anything, because we were taking care of the house and my younger brother (the oldest younger brother, born when I was 14). Even after she was home, she would go ‘nap’ and we’d still be taking care of the boy. Anyway, my cousin knows what happened that weekend. She went home early, and that was the last time she came out to stay..at least at mom’s. I went in to her place, after that, or she’d come to stay wherever else I was living.

My grandparents and aunts/uncles could only make up for so much emotionally and financially. Eventually I broke, and I admit – I was drinking and doing drugs every weekend. That’s when mother decided I needed to be institutionalized, because obviously I was manic-depressive. She couldn’t find anyone to do that – so she shipped me off to live with my cousin.

She told my cousin – in front of me, in front of my year and a half old brother – that it was either I go, or she pack us all into a car and run us into a semi on the highway. When I didn’t react, my cousin freaked out. Jan asked me later, why I didn’t react. And I told her, it was because I heard that, almost weekly, my entire life. Or things like ‘no one would miss you if you were dead,’ ‘too bad I didn’t have an abortion,’ ‘I should have given you up,’ ‘it’s your fault I can’t find a man.’

I was always jealous of my ex. His mother put him in foster care. I actually went to a social worker once, and begged her to put me somewhere else. Anywhere else. I didn’t have bruises, so I wasn’t being abused.

I went from bad to bad, when I moved in with/married my ex. He could probably never see it, and probably wouldn’t admit it if he did… he was very much like my mother. Always nitpicking, always keeping me from friends… but then, I wasn’t any better. I was always nagging at him, and I didn’t want him hanging around with some of his friends either. I wanted to grow up, he wasn’t ready. Whatever – we never should have stayed together as long as we did, and we only ended up doing and saying things I’m sure we both regret. Which brings me to last week, again.

I said some things I wish I could take back, but I can’t. I need to stop and remember what it was like, being in their place, and hopefully I won’t repeat it. I don’t want to repeat it, I don’t want them to repeat the cycle in their relationships and with their children. I won’t let what my mother did to me screw their lives up, too.

For those interested, my mother now rules her queendom from her dining room table. She barks orders at whoever happens to be there, and if no one is living there at the time, she phones to bark orders and cry that no one loves her. She tells people how horrible we kids are. How we don’t and never did do, anything for her. There are family members that bring her food – and she complains because it’s not good enough (frankly, they shouldn’t bother bringing her anything, but they do…)

The woman is dying. I know it. I think my brothers know it. She asks me why my youngest brother is angry with her, why my kids don’t want to be around her.

Well for my brother, it could be the stunts she pulled this fall with his ex, which were very similar to the stunts she pulled with mine (albeit for less time this fall than previous) or it could be the fact she complains non-stop about having no money, but still lends our brother money over and over, and bails him out of financial jams constantly.

Or perhaps we’re all mad because despite her health, she buys two cartons of cigarettes a week, refuses to quit. She can’t breathe, and has a blood oxygen level of 85% at rest on a hospital bed. Even with the 100% oxygen they gave her, she saturated at 95%. She’s at least 200 pounds overweight, refuses to do the therapy she was given for the fibro and arthritis.

Maybe, just maybe, Care was terrified that she was dying last year during her HUGE asthma attack that required going to the hospital – twice. And that was after sitting in a car all day with mother chain-smoking. Maybe it’s because we had to rush to the ER again after last Christmas, because again, mother wouldn’t set aside her precious smokes long enough to have her granddaughter around. Maybe, just maybe, we’re mad because we can’t tell her exactly what we think of her because we think we’d regret it if she drops dead the next day.

Yes, I’m fat, too, and yes I do know I eat to cover emotional issues, some of which stem from my being derided for trying to be fit when I was a kid. Ever have someone tell a 120lb 12 yr old kid they’ll never be loved because they’re fat, and not to embarrass the family by jogging because their butt jiggles? That was just one of many…trust me.

I have arthritis in my hips and left knee, and a form of arthritis in my back, and some sort of weird other issue that they still can’t figure out and yet – wtf? – I still manage to walk occasionally, and I do my exercises at home like the doctor told me. I quit smoking a year and a half ago, prior to that I smoked maybe two or three a day, outside. I haven’t really all-out partied since 2003, except for my divorce party…hehehe. Other than that, I’ve hardly even had any alcohol and no drugs except those prescribed.

I’m trying, desperately, not to become my mother. I hope I’m starting to win that battle, even with a step backward now and then.