Moms are tough.
I was just talking with my boyfriend the other day and saying that I think people who live in cities don't want to be close the their families. There's this isolation--I think its liberating--to being in a city where you can remain as anonymous as you want. Or maybe it was that if you want to live in a city and like the anonymity, then you don't like your family.
Anyway, sometimes I wish I lived further from my mother. I love her. Of course I love her, she's my mother. But I don't know how to make her happy, and I don't know if she knows how to make herself happy. And you have to take initiative to fix or improve your life. You have to DO something, instead of waiting. Or complaining.
In addition to those frustrations, there's holidays. Or holi-DAZE as I call them. It's July right now, and I went to lunch with my mom a few days ago, and she's talking to me about Christmas. I told my boyfriend, and he asked, "Did you tell her it's July?" Of course I didn't. I understand. She wants to plan so she won't be alone. She's afraid my sister will go with her boyfriend's family, and I'll do that same, and she'll be left twiddling her thumbs at home alone with her decorations. Sad.
Well, what incentive should she offer? Travel? That won't seem to work. Alcohol? Dunno. Open-mindedness. Loosening her grip on control of all aspects of all situations--that could work.
I am in a strange situation where I am frustrated by caring for my mother and trying to please her, talking with her and listening to her but keeping my mouth shut on the bigger points of my dissidence, and knowing I can't make her happy. It can't be me. Happiness is in-born, isn't it? You have to find a way to satisfy yourself first, right? And then other people are a bonus.
I wish my mom had interests. Or would follow through on the ideas she talks about. Recently she said she could feel a big change on the horizon. I asked her, "What?" She said, "I don't know, but its big. I can feel it coming." That's fine. My mom's intuition is pretty good. But what if it doesn't come? You can't sit and wait for your life to change around you, and hope it changes in a way you like. Disaster. It's like hands-off driving. No input into where you life will go? I know everyone gets lost and loses touch with their internal compass, but you have to be willing to break your habits and take some action to create change when you're dissatisfied.
I do know I'm not the only one here. I just don't know how to talk to my mom to make anything different or change.
[frustration]
1 comment:
That is hard Hailing, and I tell you this because I find myself in the same situation. I try to talk to my mom; I try to encourage her to do the things she says she wants to do, but it always ends up to be a waist of time.
I have been doing this since I was a teenager, well, I am in my late twenties, and nothing has ever changed. When we talk about things in life, our conversations almost seem as if they were recorded years ago, and our conversations are just being re-played over and over again.
I started to believe that there is nothing you or I can do. Sometimes I think our mothers will change when they are truly determined to change.
I try to keep my hopes up, and I want to believe that there is one last thing I haven't tried, but that will actually work before I end up being consumed away.
If we are to step back just enough for them to realize that we will no longer try to make them happy, but enough for them to recognize they have to find happiness on their own... that would help.
Once they see there is no one to cling on to, mothers like ours, will have to become more independent, and only then, they will believe more on themselves and will start to make things happen for them.
They will no longer have to wait for faith, coincidence, or mare luck, to do the work for them...
Post a Comment