Mother's day

May 11, 1997 - It was mothers day and my daughter was 9 months old.  We went to my sister's house to celebrate with my parents. 

After a while my mother took me outside to the porch and said she was sorry.  I was confused, not really sure what she was talking about.

That's when she told me that she had done everything she could for me, but she knew it wasn't enough, that it would never be enough. 

I wasn't pretty, like my sister.  I didn't have many friends, wasn't popular.  I wasn't good in school or really anything.  My mother just kept saying - I'm sorry, I did everything I could think of - but it wasn't enough.  And then, she said that she was surprised that I found someone to marry me.  She thought I'd be alone forever.

When I was younger I always felt like my mother didn't like me very much.  She never said it - it was just something that I always knew.

I was not the favorite child and always took the blame when something happened.  I was very shy and introverted but was always the first one to help.  I cooked, cleaned and did whatever was asked - mainly because I thought that's the way my mother might pay attention to me and love me.

My mother was very big on saying how much she loved me, but she never acted that way.  With my mother it was always putting on a show for everyone.  When we were in public, she was the greatest mother in the world, but in private - I stayed in my room with the door closed so I wouldn't be a bother. 

one of the reasons I read as much as I do now, I believe, is that when I was a kid, it was all I could do. 

I hate holidays - this one too.  I play along when my kids would get excited, and it has nothing to do with them, it's just that every mothers day was a struggle for me. I was always trying to impress my mother, to do something that would make her proud of me - to make her love me.  It just didn't seem to work.  Nothing I did was ever good enough for her - at least that's how I had always felt.

And on May 11, 1997 - it finally all clicked.  My mother confirmed what I had always felt.  Don't get me wrong, I was devastated.   BUT - I was finally able to put all those feelings of insecurity, doubt and being unloved into some sort of focus.  I wasn't imagining it - she really just didn't like me and had always been disappointed by me.  It was almost a relief. 

I have come to the realization that there was nothing I could have done to make my mother feel any differently about me.  My mother had issues - a lot of them, and that's something that I have to deal with. 

Every mothers day, I see on Facebook or online how much everyone loves their mother, if they are alive, they spend the day with them and if they aren't, they have some sort of tribute.  I wish I felt that way - I wish I wanted to celebrate my mother.  I just don't have it in me.  Am I a horrible person for that?  I don't think so, I think after all this time, I just choose not to dwell on what I'll never have.

But, I have 2 kids that I love very much - and that know I love them with all my heart.  My one goal in raising them, was that I never wanted them to feel about me, the way I feel/felt about my mother.  So far I think I've at least succeeded in that.