I’ve been having a really hard time emotionally lately for a variety of oh-my-fucking-god hormone reasons. After the comment from my ‘friend’ I really haven’t felt safe talking to anyone about what is going on with me. I’m not real big on being judged. There have also been some points of friction with Noah that are totally exacerbated by the fact that I am seriously hormonal. I’ve been feeling more and more isolated and lonely and scared as I am shutting down any “real” conversation with people. So I did something crazy. I called my mommy.

The conversation went really well. We talked about a number of things that are going poorly for me (Oh wait–her easy pregnancys involved HUGE amounts of nausea so maybe I’m not breaking the pattern yet.) and ways I’m having a hard time emotionally. We talked about a few of the more hot buttony things from the past and nothing blew up. It was really good. I needed that. She’s nervous about some of the choices I am making (home birth, home schooling) but she is actually listening to my reasons for wanting them and has said that she has a lot of reservations but she can understand why I am making the choices I am making. That is literally the best I could hope for from her. That was supportive and friendly and everything. Especially because a lot of her reservations are from ignorance and her fear that I will get stuck at home with my children and give up my identity the way she did. That’s really not a horrible thing for her to want to spare me from. She did make the suggestion that given how tired and how sick I am that I should probably try to take days off more often. Her comment that my students are better off having subs occasionally than having me just leave work mid-pregnancy because I can’t work anymore is actually a pretty reasonable one. Even if I run out of sick days I can afford it.

Calling her was good. I’m pretty sure that it should continue to be a rare occurance but the calls have picked up in freqency (twice in a month? Holy shit) and it’s still ok.

We talked a little bit about her mother and how a week didn’t go by without her talking to her mother. We very briefly talked about how hard my grandmother’s death was on my mom but she had a hard time talking about it. Then we talked about why she has such a hard time talking about it–if she showed weakness in front of my father he would be nasty and hurtful. He would use it against her for years to come. I’m doing better at seeing how when I am reacting to my baggage she is reacting to hers. My father has been dead for nine years and twelve days (but who’s counting?) and he is still influencing so much of her life. He influenced her from the time she was 19 years old until she was 49. 30 years of hurting her. No wonder she is so fucked up. I’ve never stopped and thought about that before. I’ve always thought about it in terms of “well, she was an adult…” but now that I’ve been an adult for a few years I’m seeing how little that mitigates trauma. For all the things my mother didn’t shield me from she actually kept my father basically out of my life. That was the biggest kindness she could give me. The fact that when he did pop up he hurt me is just a sign that she did a great job of keeping me from even more and worse hurt by keeping him away most of the time.

Maybe I am ready to forgive.