JellyFish

TRIGGER WARNING: THE WORDS BELOW WILL OFFEND SOME SINGLE MOTHERS…MARRIED SINGLE MOTHERS TOO. THAT IS NOT MY INTENTION.

These thoughts were triggered by the realization that some mothers purposely sabotage the lives of daughters that they envy…

I‘ve had a long time to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never have the kind of relationship with my ‘mother’ that ‘normal’ people have. Prior to a few years ago, the reason would’ve been because I felt she didn’t have the tools to see how her style of parenting negatively affected me. Which is why I pushed so hard for therapy…three of the last four years. If you were to ask me the reason today…I’d tell you it’s because she purposely refuses to give me what she can’t have. When she does acknowledge our past, there’s a reason and an excuse for everything. But all I want(ed) is for her to put action, i.e. therapy, into changing our present. That action signifies changed behavior, which would show me that she sees the wrong from her inaction when I was younger. Unfortunately, these last few years cemented my belief that my BM can’t give me what I need because…she simply doesn’t want to. I still haven’t fully accepted that concept though. When I look for possible motives that may make acceptance a reality, I’m stuck with the same conclusion every time…jealousy.

I often refer to the members of the group chat as ‘jellyfish’, among other names. It’s my way of speaking to how hard it is to get close to them, how easy it is for me to see their absent backbones and how obvious their jealousy is for me escaping our familial matrix. Becoming a single mother was a part of that matrix…and I narrowly dodged those intentional bullets. The way I avoided them doesn’t win me any morality points but…I can’t change that. While in the matrix, I was able to see that my ‘mother’ compares her life to mine. When I got the heart to call her out, a couple years ago, I suggested those comparisons caused her jealousy. In response, she asked what she was jealous of and stated that I have accomplished “nothing”. (Yes, this was said by a woman well into her 50s…one year after she told the group chat how mentally ill she feels I am. And no one said a word…to this day.)

The only response I needed to give was pointing out the fact that I’ve completed my degree. She’s started and stopped her studies for many years, so the target would have been hit. But because I suffer from bouts of spitefullness…I went on to detail how I was also able to avoid having children, for men that never intended to commit to me long term…outside of the child we’d share. And I did this despite having no direction from her on how to avoid those traps. That was the last time she wrote in the chat. Her words helped me realize that I’d probably have a very close relationship with her, if I didn’t remind her of who she isn’t. But my decision to learn from most of her mistakes, and God’s grace, allowed me to go in a different direction. So we can’t trauma bond over how stressful my kids are making my life…and we can’t share the resentment that comes from being the sole provider for children that it took two people to create. But we can bond over being single.

Singlehood for my ‘mother’ is shocking because she’s always been uncomfortably beautiful…and unbelievably smart. She had no real competition in her youth. But the unhealed trauma passed down from her parents, led her to seek validation from men who wanted her body…but not her babies. They settled for the baby because that kept her tied to them…at their convenience. When I started shining a light on this trauma tradition…my insight once again reminded her that we are not the same. She’s never had the courage to challenge the toxic behavior of her parents. So seeing her own child have that courage…on top of surpassing her in ‘accomplishments’…incited unwarranted jealousy. Again. If she were ‘normal’, she’d be able to view my ability to overcome what held her back as a success story. Unfortunately, I think my mother views me as the competition she never had…so to her…my rise suggests her downfall.

Love,

Choosy

**While proofreading this I realized this is the villain origin story for most black women. We’re raised by women that view us as threats…refuse to impart any wisdom that would help us be able to function with emotional balance, and then send us out into the world when we are ‘grown’. We then try to love but because we have no idea what nurturing looks like, we emotionally abuse every person that steps in our path. By the time we reach our thirties, most of us have realized what the lessons are that we were never taught. But by then…we’ve pushed away most of the opportunities sent to us in our youth. All due to the sabotage from an ‘elder’…who couldn’t get what she sees her daughters have the ability to attract…if we’re taught what/who to avoid. “Whew chile…THE GHETTO!”**