Friends, coworkers, neighbors, spouses, partners. Exhusband, old roommate, acquaintance. One thing that these people all have in common is relationship.
I used to think that relationship was a verb, describing what we are doing with an individual. Being in a relationship used to mean a romantic or physical connection I had with a man. In my 40s it means much more.
I have lots of relationships. It doesn't limit me to being physically involved with a man.There are different levels of intimacy I experience with each person in my life. My ongoing struggle with intimacy in my relationships continues to be with women.
I attribute many of my struggles to my nonexistent relationship with my mother. For most of my growing up years my memories include a woman who was highly critical of me, who belittled and put me down for my weight/grades/behavior/choices and used different forms of abuse to rule over me. As I transitioned into adulthood and discovered that I was pregnant, unmarried and scared four and a half months after I turned 18, the level of cruelty my mother portrayed reached a new high. When I needed her the most she was anything but a support.
The first few days of my oldest son's life were some of the most painful days in my life. At the persuasion of both my parents, I made a life-changing decision to place my newborn baby for adoption. My birthing plan included specific instructions to shield me from seeing my son after he came out of the birth canal in hopes that a glance at him would change my mind. I had promised his adoptive parents that I would make their dreams of becoming parents a reality and couldn't take that back. Another birth mom had gone back on her word and they had to give back an infant who was already in their home, when she changed her mind.
So what does this have to do with my mom? A lot.
She was very much aware of all the details. I had been told by the hospital staff that I could change my mind at any time. Even the state social worker gave me a proverbial "get out of jail free" card mentioning what my rights were and my ability to change if I decided to. I can still remember staring blankly at the walls and the clock in my hospital room for hours at a time, with the thought of just wanting the pain in my heart to stop. Knowing all this, my mother had her own agenda (as she often did) & made arrangements to go and see "her grandson" without my permission or knowledge. I wouldn't learn of this until much later, when she informed me of her covert visits to the nursery to spend time with my son. She even went as far as to lie to my face the last day of my hospital stay when she arrived with bloodshot, puffy eyes claiming she had gotten bad news about her grandfather being sick. The truth? She had said her goodbyes and had just come back from the nursery after spending time with my son.
These scenarios would be just several over the course of my life that my mother caused me tremendous pain and betrayal in my life. Add other instances of gossip, secret meetings, and two faced behavior to the mix and one can see why there is no relationship between me and the woman who birthed me.
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