Generational Reflections

I think constantly, agonize over my morals, debate if they’re moral enough, and if I’m smart enough to be great. I am most myself when my skin buzzes with anxious thoughtfulness, in both meanings of the word. I probably spent an entire year, in the grand scheme of my limited lifetime, analyzing my mother—her upbringing, what she’d do differently if anything, if she knows how to love, if I’m lucky enough to be just like her, if she’s wise enough to know that being just like her is not what’s best for me.

Most of the time I know that my mother loves me, that there is evidence of warmth and care, that she wasn’t just nineteen and obligated to the life she created—but do I know that because she says the words or because her only hobby is reminding me at every turn that all of her life’s adversity was faced because of me? Do I know that she loves me, that she keeps fighting self-inflicted conflicts because she wants to be around for me, because I am worth so much to her that all we ever talk about is whatever she has to complain about? Maybe I should just be grateful that she wants to be around at all, maybe I am just an entitled snob complaining about imaginary projections and pressures. I really do think that she loves me, at least she tries.

Often, I face her coldness, and an ounce of that immediately consumes me; I become nauseous about the potential I have to be thoroughly unlovable, that I came out wrong and there was never anything I could’ve done about it, and that she was too young to know better. I hope that I am not just a tool in her inventory, that she is glad to know me, not just to have me.

Her inconsistent emotional availability makes my mother feel like a delicate heirloom, a porcelain figure on my shelf, hand-painted to someone’s sick idea of perfection—only to see, never to touch. I reflect on my mother and her choices like she lives on some distant planet, as if she’s a fantastical creature just slightly out of the line of vision of those older and smarter in any given room I inhabit. I see this idea of her in my mind where she is gilded, poised—statuesque, even—rising above and in front of some old cathedral’s stained glass. In these idolizations, she is surrounded by doves and hummingbirds, olive and orange trees, and, of course, both imminent doom and a cosmic glow. I don’t really want to idolize her, don’t want to be parasocial toward the woman that gave me life—she isn’t some Old Hollywood movie star; she just feels distant like one. Every day I fear disappointing her, I fear losing her, and I fear becoming her.

What if I am pure evil for thinking that sometimes she deserved the moments where I chose to mock her and the sunshine that she beams as a bonding opportunity with my father? Isn’t that just as sinister as good ol’ boy misogyny? I should be more grounded about this, less emotional and frenzied, but a confident girl is not who she raised. I can only be so frustrated though—she watered the garden that grew me until I didn’t need it, and then she planted a new one outside my childhood windows. How could I ever ridicule someone so pure, so selfless? How could she ever forgive me?

The world is becoming more cruel, and I fear sometimes I am, too. Whether she’d admit it or not, my mother is the same—potentially worse, more bitter. This is especially apparent on the days where she only calls to ask a billion why why why questions about long forgotten agonies, the days where she only interacts with me to pick me apart like I am just one of many pluckable flowers in a field. It’s those days where I also think with a meaner spirit, about things she wouldn’t want to talk about, places she left behind. My mother doesn’t live there anymore, but I see my childhood home so clearly in my mind, deep beneath all the concrete I had to bury it under. I envision my younger self standing, waiting in my mother’s old, cluttered bathroom. She never finished repainting it and one of the sinks was always broken, some part of the countertop perpetually cluttered and inaccessible—but it was hers. I can smell her collection of perfumes, all clean and warm—never too floral, for fear of smelling elderly. I can feel the cheap laminate countertops, layered with dried hairspray. Once in that bathroom, we stood side by side as she did her hair and she asked me what I liked about my face; I was thirteen, so I didn’t like anything and I can still feel every open wound I left on her that day with my laundry list of perceived facial flaws. I didn’t realize my face was hers until a year later when she shared a high school yearbook with me. Sometimes I wish I never had such a realization. I suppose I have the same plucking problem.

I still have days where I can only glance at mirrors. I also have days where I savor sadism—stand in front of the mirror, gawk at and criticize that thing that stares back. Together, we make my gums bleed and dig craters into my cheeks. I would like to wonder where I got all that hatred, but I remember I never had to look too hard to find it when I was little. I never knew if my mother’s own indifference was because of me—knowing probably would’ve helped.

There are other times I worry that I am only cruel to myself to spite my mother, so she has to face her sour creation. The reasonable part of my brain reminds me that things like that are learned, that I am not the root cause of my childish ways, that I picked up my behaviors somewhere. The kind, possibly maternal part of my brain reminds me that I am trying to be better than those before me, and that’s enough most of the time.

When it’s easy and I don’t think too hard, I admire that my mother’s mind is a library archived full of all the cats she ever loved, all the betrayal she endured, and all the ambition she never cashed in. I’ll either be just like her or I’ll make her proud. I wonder if I’ll think like this forever. I wonder if I am just a narcissist.