As I walked down the driveway to get our mail, my foot slipped on the ice and I did an impromptu triangle pose, stretching further than my muscles actually stretch, it was as if the ground shifted beneath my feet and caught me way off guard.
You find your self in a position of surprise and pain, slipping out of control, trying to restore balance.
That is exactly what happened when my mother’s request came in, it caught me unaware and it took me awhile to gather myself back into control, for it felt like she had snagged my life for a few hours, upending my plans by sidetracking my emotions and me.
One minute you are walking along with a firm ground underneath you and zip its gone, replaced with rolling upsetting thoughts and emotions, going from a placid empty space to a state of turmoil.
It is amazing that she still can tromp in and trash my space with just a few uttered words and make me feel that she has tampered with my child.
The request is secondary to the position she inadvertently put my daughter in, playing monkey in the middle in a game of insanity, where it is impossible for my daughter to win.
It’s the price paid for allowing my children to define their own relationship with my family, I knew it would leave them vulnerable and open to being a conduit for information about me.
I just hoped it would never be used, or my children would be used.
Being used is exactly how I feel my daughter was treated, my mother didn’t see the girl who she was asking to perform this act, she just wanted the picture and took the route easiest traveled, she didn’t want to ask me directly.
I have tried hard to not use this access myself; I have tried to maintain a neutral stance as I witness their involvement with my family, allowing them to leave or stay as life unfolds.
A phone call wouldn’t suffice, for she has hung up on me before when the words coming at her were not what she wanted to hear, so I will write a letter.
A restraining letter.
A letter that requests her silence between her and I, letting her know that my kids are not to be an open line for her to Use.
This behavior of hers going to the second generation really boils me, asking others to do her dirty work.
She knows without a shadow of doubt that if she asked me the path would be unfruitful, she wants what she wants and it matters not how the mission is accomplished, who she steps on and mistreats along the way, what she wants most is a complete set of daughter pictures.
She wants no holes or vacant spots and she is using my children to patch the hole.
My glaring open hole in our family will remain that way.
She isn’t interested in knowing my life; she just wants my photograph to fill the hole in hers.
The simple thing would be to fill the spot.
That is what she has wanted all along, for me to get back in line, to rejoin the family, to not be standing out here alone, making her family look shattered, she wants to paint a pretty picture of all her children, to see them all unaffected and looking no worse for the wear, it will soothe her conscience, and make her feel like a whole mother.
My refusal to slide back into position leaves her with a broken family.
It is amazing that she wants a picture of the one who ran away.
The striking juxtaposition of asking for a picture, when she has yet to ask in all these years, “How are you?”
How are you feeling and dealing, how is your life going, how is it being abused my husband, how has that affected your life? How are you…?
Nothing, silence…she doesn’t want to know or hear or wonder how I am, she just wants a pretty picture to fill her spot.
The one sidedness of her world blows me sideways.
Once again, she doesn’t see me or see my daughter, she sees us both as fulfilling a request.
A request from a very selfish woman, who is so self- absorbed she is unable to see beyond the end of her nose.
She doesn’t see the lives behind the pictures, just the pretty pictures; we have no life beyond what we can give to her.
She doesn’t see the lives beyond the hands doing her dirty work, we have no purpose but what we can do for her.
My giving days are over; I was done giving to this mad charity a long time ago.
By keeping focus on the picture, you don’t see the madness orchestrating the life in denial.
The picture completes a perfect set of six.
Reality shows the hole.
