Dust Myself Off

Estrangement from both husband and mother should be the opening of a humorous farce, except it's really just a year in the life of me!

Alongside this past year of marriage separation, in synchronistic parallel, were the final battle cries of my dynamic with my mother. This week she terminated our relationship.

No husband, no mother.

It brings to mind the quote from The Importance of Being Earnest: ‘To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’ I think that might apply to me, in relative terms of course.

Except in reality they are inextricably linked. One created the other. Although I shouldn’t leave my father out of the picture, his imprint is just as present even beyond the gates of death.

We learn about love from our parents. What it looks like, how it behaves, how much we deserve it, need to earn it or whether it’s always there like a safety blanket. This codes our neural pathways to recognise love in our future mates. If there are errors in the transcription they just get passed on. There is no flippancy in the adage that you will marry one of your parents, therefore if we wish to secure our children’s future happiness, it is on us as parents to create patterns that are healthy and wholesome within their precious systems.

I talk about some of these patterns with my kids, in a slightly different context. I describe habits (good and bad) as trenches that we create in our brains. The more we work at a habit, the deeper the trench and the more easily we slip into it and stay in it. Unhealthy habits become harder to break and change the more we perpetuate them and likewise the more we practice a healthy habit the more entrenched it becomes and easier to continue. In trying to change a habit I suggest the visual image of digging a new trench and using the mud from that to fill the old unwanted pattern. Digging deeper into the good helps the discarded one to become shallower and less trapping.

The problem for me was not realising what a fathomless trench I have been walking through, semi-consciously, for nigh on forty plus years. I can’t say that I was ignorant to the limitations of love that I was raised in, but I think I simultaneously denied the depths of the impact that was having on my day to day life.

I was taught that love was sparse, that parts of me were deeply unlovable, perhaps even detestable, I was told frequently that people found me difficult and I made others uncomfortable, just by my presence or thoughts about life. I endeavoured to conform but my true self would always come busting out the sides at the wrong time and just prove them right. So I learned to give and give and give and give until there was nothing left; time, love, thought, gifts, hope, forgiveness. If they hurt me, I would forgive and do better, I would help them with their hurts and wounds, then we could all feel better. My bar for love has been set so goddamn low that as long as I hear some affectionate words, whether from a moment of good mood, inebriation, or just a flash of kindness, I squirrel them away and replay them over and over again to convince myself that they do love me after all. Any iota of love I hold onto with both fists, ignoring the contradictions or actions that don’t marry. I was taught all of that and it carved an indelible trench inside me labelled LOVE.

And then I bore my children into this world and I was instantly assailed with the raw, passionate, unconditional and protective love that I think is a neurotypical response for most mammals (those not in wounded survival). Not for a single moment has that wavered in me. There is nothing my children could do to stop me loving them this intensely. They even test me on it: ‘would you still love us if we murdered someone? what if we murdered each other?’ Always, I reply. I might also be devastated and heartbroken if you did those things but nothing could stop me loving you.

So this is how I began to learn that my trench labelled LOVE maybe wasn’t quite how love is really supposed to be. But by then I was also years into the marriage I had been trained for. What now? Dissociation is always a helpful solution! My love for my children and the love I deserve from my trench, two separate entities.

I think I could have stayed forever, feeling hurt and unseen, but believing I was the one who could change that, that one day I would crack the code. Yet again my instincts as a mother saved me because I wanted my children to see a healthy relationship, I wanted them to feel fully loved by both parents and I finally found the courage to release the fear of losing that little bit of affection that kept me hanging onto hope.

Each day since I have noticed my patterns with deeper clarity, I can see how it played out in friendships gone wrong, I witnessed it, so frustratingly, in the brief potential of a new romance. One of the elements of this type of upbringing is the difficulty in setting boundaries due to that fear of the loss of whatever paltry love there is. The next aha moment! There is powerful and difficult work ahead. I need to shoulder my pick and start breaking ground on that newly labelled real-love trench.

However, this week’s new challenge is also my ultimate liberation. My mother’s final act sent me slipping and sliding back into that oh so familiar and recognisable belief, a dash of cruelty thrown into the mix, but now I am conscious, I can see the walls around me in a different light. It may be familiar, it may be ‘safe’ but it is not where I choose to live anymore, I’m building my own path now.

So I pick myself up, dust myself off and crawl out of that trench again (and again and again if I need to), this time with greater awareness, a little more strength and a determination to model to my children the power of sheer will to create and change our own neurology. I may never meet love in the way I yearn for, I leave that in God’s hands, but I can be sure not to accept that which is not worthy of me, one boundary at a time.