Family can be difficult, they say
no shit, I say
tw: emotional abuse, neglect
Hi! 𓃘
Today I was on the phone with my mother for 93 Minutes.
I’m not happy to admit that I did not enjoy even one of them. If you want to read something happy instead, please try my last piece.
I feel so drawn to and so compelled by writing about my mother. I think it’s incredible that every single one of us has one, in some way. Out there is or was someone for everyone, and so everyone has a story. I love stories. Never could you bore me with the story of your upbringing, of your relationship with family.
Today I was on the phone with my mother for 93 minutes.
It was the first time I talked to her after two years. There were only emails. Most short, most not very kind.
My first memory of my mother is of her lying down next to me on the carpet in her bathrobe. While she smiles at me, she still looks incredible tired, and sad. This might be a projection from my older self after knowing my mother mostly depressed, sad or angry.
The other memory is of her sitting in the kitchen, with the lights out, only the red tip of her cigarette glowing in the dark.
I know that writing about my mother and our interactions is unsettling and upsetting, for me & for the reader.
(Wait ‘til you meet her!😱)
I’ve always felt that with my mother, having this problematic relationship has no real space in the world, so for very long I would simply not mention her.
People would start thinking I was living alone with my father. My mother was almost like a hidden secret cohabitant in our house. While she would participate at mealtimes -not always- she would mostly sit at the table so lost in her thoughts, that my father and I could talk and laugh without her taking notice. My father would direct the word at her, sometimes just to tease her, half amused, half annoyed, and after multiple times almost yelling her name, she would like wake up from some sad daydream, looking a bit ashamed, irritated. She would then fake smile, or say something, something abstruse with her special pinch of humor, even surprisingly self reflected, while falling back to her sad daydreaming within a matter of seconds.
A very disgraceful way of my (otherwise very lovable) father was to call my mother the factotum. I know it was his attempt to turn something actually disturbing into a joke. (If ever someone guessed from whom I’ve got that part of my personality…)
My mother did not work a regular job, but did things around the household, depending on her mood. She was almost never part of anything that had to do with me in the sense of tending to my needs as a child, as her child.
There was one thing though. My mother used to sew. As a memory it is completely outstanding for me, as it was the only thing I can remember where we connected. We both love clothing. I wish I could tell this part of the story as the rosy times with soft happy piano tones playing in the background. But I have to disappoint you.
I don’t think I ever tried on any of her half finished creations without her cigarette’s ash collecting on the floor around my feet and the smoke stinging my eyes. Once in her absent-mindedness she burned my armpit. She stung me accidentally every freaking time almost like as a ritual with the sewing needles she used to hold the garments together on my body. I myself was not patient in my position as mannequin and frequently yelled at her when I got stung, or when she disagreed with my plan for the project. When we fought about how I wanted something to look or feel, she would sometimes give in, and sometimes even finish the piece reluctantly, but eventually she would hand the piece over without so much as looking at me, throwing the piece on the ground, a few times in my face. This happened often combined with the threat, that this was the last time she ever sew or changed anything for me. Now and then she put off or didn’t finish projects to punish me. For what I didn’t know.
And I still think or our time of sewing projects as a memory of being together and sharing something important to us.
Today I was on the phone with my mother for 93 minutes. In the call she said to me that I was just like Hitler.
My father was all too frequently called Hitler’s Son. No joke. Which he then repeated laughing, cheeking about the absurd world of insults my mother was able to create.
My mother was born in Poland and came to Germany in the late 80ies, following her father who had worked there for many years like many people from the poor countries in East Europe did, still do.
My mother lost her mother at age 11.
She grew up with 2 sisters and a cousin. For years when I was little she was not talking to any of them.
My grandfather was a violent person, something she had admitted to my father only one or two times very drunk, but she talks about him like a god.
My father did not love my mother like he had needed to. But maybe even everything would never have been enough.
My father was 60 years old when my mother told him after meeting him once, that she was pregnant.
She wanted to keep the child, while my father after 3 unsuccessful marriages -the last ended by his wife dying of cancer at 38- was not very interested.
He still finally married her in the summer of ‘89 before I was born on October 3rd, which only one year later became the national holiday celebrating the reunion of the West and East part of Germany. My birthday was meant to be always on a holiday and it was thanks to my mother's stubbornness that I actually came into the world.
My mother had studied mathematics and mechanical engineering as one of the only a few women in Kraków of the 70ies and completed summa cum laude. In Germany she was unable to find a job. She was dyslexic, and her language skills insufficient. And she was a tiny, socially insecure Polish Woman who was told to be overqualified.
My mother’s inability to love me and care for me the way I needed and wanted, was something I felt most my life secretly defined by.
I was haunted by the notion that there must be a way to act and to be that would make her happy. And that would make me feel loved and seen.
After years of different healing modalities, reflection, body work, therapy, laughing, creating, crying, learning trust and opening up to the grounding of relationships and community I feel safe in my body most times. It was incredibly, at times impossible hard to give up the hope and need for her to change into a different person that would treat me differently.
My mother is not a bad person. She is not evil really. Although she can be mean and manipulative to keep up the destructive world her psyche has build for her. She is a very sad, mentally ill, and -although I don’t like the finitude of the expression- a broken person.
Today I was on the phone with my mother for 93 minutes. And I cried during the call, something I hadn’t done in front of my mother for years. And I cried afterwards and I cried writing this piece and I cried editing and I will cry reading it to my partner, I cry thinking about anyone reading my words and seeing me so naked, and I will keep writing from the wound, although I’m supposed to write from the scar.
Today I was on the phone with my mother for 93 minutes and I love her and I know somewhere in her, deep in the dark and the chaos, is a part that loves me, even if she can’t show it. It sucks.
Today I was on the phone with my mother and it sucked, and I freed myself to feel all the things I’m feeling, and while I’m not ok
I’m ok now.
♥
Your donkey
🤍 a gift to read this and know you better x emotive and raw, I loved it even though it was heartbreaking 💎
Thank you for sharing this raw and touching piece! 🤍 the writing was so good and captivating! Sending lots of loveee 🫂🌾💗