Monday, June 4, 2007

My mother the selfish bitch

These past few weeks I discovered a very troubling yet awareness about my mother. She is more selfish than I could ever dream possible. She is a healthy 83 year old, and told my husband and myself that she has enough money to last her for the next 3.5 years. Now part of me thought, is she telling us this because she is coming to us for money and to give us a heads up that in about 3.5 years we will need to start taking care of her or, was she coming for help to manage her money and help her make that money last longer? I was confused and sickened by the thought.

Now here is the background so if anyone does read this they understand I am not a bad person or a selfish person.



I am an only child of a Japanese mother and German Jewish father. They had me very late in life back in the mid 60's. My father was 51 and my mother 41. Now my mother has always made it clear I was an accident, that she thought it was her "change of life" time and was surprise to find out she was pregnant. My father on the other hand always told me about how he was so happy to get the news and how much he loved me and wanted me.



During my child hood my mother decided to make a career designing high end couture clothes and my father agreed to give up his very successful graphic design business and help her start her company. He took every penny he had and invested in that business. Now, he was close to 60 years of age when he did this. Long story short, the business hit a peak and had big fashion shows and were in all the better department stores. Then the peak hit rock bottom right when I was in my senior year at my private NYC high school. At that point we had no money and luckily I started working at 16 so during my expensive teen years I was able to pay for a lot of stuff myself. Luckily I was able to get financila age when i was in college and continued to work part time.



During all those years my father suffered many heart related problems and I spent many weeks off and on over the years visiting him in the VA hospital on my way home from school.

My mother didn't like hospitals much because they freaked her out and made her uncomfortable. Never mind that her husband was in there. She didn't like it. It was always about her.

My father was a wonderful and a patient man and I think he felt very sad that my mother was not more loving to both of us. I believe he came to terms with the lack of love or affection he didn't get but he tried his best to make me feel loved and would tell me all the time that my mother had her own strange way of showing love and it was a cultural thing. I was fooled into believing this.



In short my mother was/is a narcissist. I learned this as an adult. This helped me not take it so personally and that this is her own big short coming. A lesson to be learned by all. Narcissists end their lives alone. As she will.



When I had my first child I had an epiphany, and that was what a true mother is suppose to be and feel for their child. My life was no longer my own it belonged to my child. My purpose in life was to now teach and love my child to the best of my ability. For right now I came second and they come first. I realized that my mother never felt or acted that way with me and that I was not a priority in her life unless I served her a purpose that showed a reflection of herself. For example as an accessories piece at parties that were filled w/ people who liked me. If the party had people who didn't like kids i didn't exist. One of my biggest memories was when my mother told me that she used to hang out w/ this group all the time and they didn't even know she had a child. Could you imagine????? The second I found out I was pregnant I couldn't stop talking about it, I was so happy and proud to be a mother.



During the first year with my first child I had so much anger and numerous revelations about my child hood it made it very difficult to be around my mother. I became very nasty and resentful. By the time I had my second child I realized it was unfair to my kids not to be around their grandmother. I never had a relationship with my own grandparents and my kids had both or at least a grandmother from my side. My father passed away before I married my husband.



That was the other thing. My father and I were very close and he was my confidant and my go to person about anything of real importance. when I lost him I lost a huge crutch for dealing with so much about life and my mother. He was the middle person for us. He would always calm things down. Since my mother was so self absorbed after my father died it all fell onto me to be the one to be the better person, to be the adult.



When my dad died my mother called me crying to say he was dead and died in his sleep. This was at 12;30am. I had to call the police to go to my mothers home while I had my boyfriend drive me to her house. Once I got there my aunt was with her and then I had to deal w/ the police and then call the funeral home to take the body. From that point on I was the one to deal with everything, the funeral home, the planning of the service, picking up the ashes. I remember carrying the urn w/ my arms wrapped around it like I was holding a body. The urn was made out of granite so it was very heavy and solid. It was a strange sensation to be holding something with such weight and it be your father, yet as ashes, somthing that should have very little weight. I did that alone w/ my boyfriend at the time by my side.

I lived with my mother for a week sleeping on the side of the bed where my father died. The only way I finally was able to leave was because my job needed me to return and I had to move on and get on with my life and take care of myself.
Now somewomen when they loose a spouse their lives end. But the reality this was not the case for my mom. My dad was a huige emotianl burden. His illness made her very worried and uncomfortbale all the time. When she did get over his death she shed 10 years off her life and she was reborn. She had a very active life and had a good ol' time entertaining, buying whatever she wated etc.. She did not come into any fortune by my fathers death. He had no life insurance policy and no assests so this life she was having was all on her own fruition. he was able to work and found ways to make money. Now the true story is she didn't excatly save too much or plan very well.



I never got to morn the loss with my mother. She never gave me any comfort during that time. Everyone asked and wanted to make sure she was OK and if I was taking care of her...who was taking care of me???? Only now do I realize what a scar it has left inside me.



And now we are here and my mother makes me feel like I am the bad guy because I want to help her on my terms. This means taking things away from her breaking her bad habit in order to survive. I refuse to bear the burden any longer. When I try and speak to her it's like talking to a child who did something wrong and they are making up excuses to justify why they did what they did, instead of taking ownership and becoming humble and accepting the lesson learned and getting help. Instead she hangs up on me because I speak the truth to her.

She is a true self absorbed BITCH! And poor me to have to be given this kind of mother and poor me to have to bear this burden.

2 comments:

Duchess said...

They are everywhere. Our society breeds spoiled,manipulative, self entitled immature women. I am guessing she was petite and good looking....the keys to getting something for nothing.

Duchess said...

They are everywhere. Our society breeds spoiled,manipulative, self entitled immature women. I am guessing she was petite and good looking....the keys to getting something for nothing.