March 29, 2008

must. get. off. chest.

the topic: my mother.
the issues: manifold.

For the past months whenever my mother has called me it was only to talk about herself, complain about my dad or ... talk about herself. When If she has asked me how I am, she has
a) disrupted my answer after a couple of words,
b) obviously not listened and/or
c) started talking about herself again.
Sometimes she has called to complain that I'm not calling her and apparently I do not care about her at all etc etc. I have not yet been able to point out to her that the reasons for me rarely calling her are that I'm not interested in all her self-centered yammering anymore and that she is constantly calling me anyways.

For the past years my mother (and father too, but he's not the topic here) has had the habit of denying me the right to be stressed. Whenever I'm stressed, she's stressed more. When I'm buried in work - god! I should see how much she has on her plate. When I have bouts of not being able to sleep much (be it work-related or just good old insomnia), oh how little sleep she has gotten herself then.
My mother has not completed a degree, she has never in her life worked a job that even remotely resembles 9-to-5, she has always been a freelancer or a musician. And while I do agree that freelancing means short periods of a very high workload, she has never learned what it's like to work hard for a longer period of time - and juggle university at the same time.

I get that she has a lot on her plate now with finally having work and attending to my grandmother in Budapest, but I stand firm on the following: I am not her frickin' rubbish bin!
If she wants to constantly complain about her life, her marriage (including TMI), etc. she should go and find herself some friends/start a journal/write it on a wall, cuz I'M NOT LISTENING ANYMORE.


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About an hour ago she called and asked me if I could come over or if Finn and I would like to come for coffee tomorrow. When I said that I couldn't, she immediately went all "Ah well, if you don't care about your old mother/If you don't want to see me/insert other self pitying thought here" on me.

And this is where I snap.

I have seriously kept my cool lately, but this is just too much. Even if I have given my thesis to my advisor there's still stuff to do until I can officially hand it in next Friday. And if she would actually listen to me she would know that by now. So I started telling her off for it (I think I was yelling, Finn stopped playing Guitar Hero and looked at me curiously). And what was her answer to this? She had forgotten about my thesis. FORGOTTEN!

WTF? Can you believe that? That my own mother is not listening to me is one thing, but that she forgets something as significant as her daughter thesis is simply maddening. The worst thing is that she didn't even get angry about my yelling? She laughed! She apparently did not take me or my anger seriously at all. She laughed out loud about my outburst, effectively putting the cherry on top of her belittlement of me.

Oh, I am done! I am so done. This is not how a mother should behave. Any person actually, not just mothers. And if she so much as mentions another self-pitying thought when I go to Hungary with her next week to see my Grannie - I swear, she's gonna get all of this blog-rant and a packet of crisps.

1 comment:

LG said...

Mothers can be frustrating as hell. I speak from personal experience!

The important thing for you is to make sure you get what you need. If she's not listening, don't keep banging your head against the wall. Take care of you, you know?