Bad Dream

I dreamed of my mother last night. We were back in the old smelly apartment we lived in when I was in middle school. It looked the same except it was sparse and didn't smell of animal excrement. I had to ask her for some money for something. When I did, she exploded, but not like she did in real life. Her eyes were wide and vacant as she said horrible, cruel things to me, instead of squinted with rage. She would say these things to me and shove me repeatedly, a little more violently than in reality, and then psych me out, acting as if she were going to hit me in the face. The first few times, I dodged away from her and she would laugh. In real life, I would speak up about her abuse, and she would smile and scoff, as if what I had just said was the dumbest, most unfounded thing that had ever come out of my mouth and I was so stupid for thinking it that it was somehow funny. Later in the dream, I had had enough of her shit and started making ground rules. (My friend and I watched Mystery Men last night and I suspect this part was influenced by the Blue Raja's treatment of his mother.) 1. Don't come into my room without my explicit permission. (In the dream and real life, my mom would come into my room whenever she felt like it, whether the door was locked or not.) 2. Don't touch me. 3--she cut me off and began to badger me again. She once again threw her fist toward my face, but I didn't dodge. I stared into her eyes and continued with my list. When I was finished, I went off to my room and blocked the door with a bookshelf. I crawled out the window and went to see dream friends and complain about her. When I came back through the window, she was there waiting for me, the bookshelf nowhere to be seen. I yelled at her about it and once again began to recite my rules when I woke up.
I would love to yell at my mother for hours on end and tell her just how shitty and worthless she made me feel until my early twenties, but I'm not sure this will ever happen. Her reaction to me saying these things when I was younger was to go completely on the offense, tell me I was being disrespectful and dumping on her, or bust up crying and shout at me for a while. I wish I had had the knowledge to look at her and say, "No, you're being disrespectful, you're dumping on me every damn day that I live with you." But of course, she had me so well-trained that even the thought of saying such things made me sick with guilt. If I tried, I'd quickly lose my footing and fall completely silent, my head swimming to the point that pulling out individual thoughts would be impossible. I think that now I have the skills to deal with her reactions, but a part of me is still terrified by her. I would never even attempt it while that fear still resides in me.
We both loved the movie American Beauty and saw it many times. One time, we were watching it in the living room. It was the scene where Ricky Fitts's horrible military father comes in to be an asshole. "You know I don't like locked doors in my house, boy." he says. Ricky opens the door for him and without missing a beat, replies, "I'm sorry, I must have locked it by accident." "That's what I used to say to my parents." my mom said to me, a strange smile on her face. I thought of the locks on my doors, and how they didn't work. The metal and wood were always broken off from being kicked in too many times. It would happen that my mom would be screaming at me, trying to drown me in guilt, and I would stand and go into my room without saying a word. I would lock the door behind me and always hear her footsteps approaching. She would try the knob, sometimes knock, sometimes not, but she would always burst her way in and scream at me some more, her anger risen from me walking away from her and trying to lock her out. I was never safe from her, not even in my own room.
There was one time where this happned again, but the lock on my door was already broken off. I leaned my entire weight against the door. In some weird way, I thought she knew I would be blocking it with my body. I heard her approach and try the knob. She knocked and when there was no answer, she threw her entire weight against the door. It knocked me painfully against the wall, smacking the back of my head and neck. My mind raced with adrenaline and pain endorphins, my eyes closed and my hands reached awkwardly for the back of my head. Through the haze, I heard her stiffly ask me if I was okay. My survival skills were so keen that I ignored the pain and shoved the haze away. "Yes." I said, and went and sat on my bed. The screaming continued like nothing had happened at all.
There's no part of me that loves my mother anymore, and why should there be? In my twenty-three years of life, she has never once shown me that she really loves me. Instead, she has made me feel like the lowest being on earth, guilty of everything even if I wasn't around for it. She shoved me and molested me and screamed at me and then laughed cruelly when I spoke up about it. She is the most pathetic individual I have ever come to know. I tried to keep my standards low for her sake, I tried so damn hard to keep loving her, but her mind is so broken that she couldn't recognize it. I tried to help her out of her misery, but she blew me off. I tried. And now I'm finished with it.

Shortness of Breath

I feel like everywhere I look, women are being abused. Not in the obvious ways, no one's getting beaten in the street where I can see, but in conversation, on television, the media in general, really. It's fucking EVERYWHERE. A woman gets raped and everyone digs in their nails when she reports it. They try to tell her that she's lying, or that the rapist didn't mean anything by it. Doubt is instantly cast whether the full story is known or not. Shame is thrown at her in all directions, if she's not fortunate enough to have a supportive circle of friends.
What sickens me the most is that a good portion of the time, other women are perpetrating this bullshit for whatever reason. Maybe they too were raped and seeing someone actually do something about it makes their stomach twinge with jealousy. Maybe seeing someone express their pain reminds them too much that they have their own that they try day by day to hide. Maybe they're just passing on the abuse that they themselves suffered. When I really think about it, these reasons are all one and the same, one leads directly to the other. People suffer their whole lives and they can do nothing but spread it around.
I want to be angry with these people for being weak. I am, really, but sometimes my thoughts slow down and I put myself in their situation. I imagine, what would have happened to me if I weren't blessed with the support system of friends I have? Would healing even be worth it, if it meant being completely alone in a suffocating sea of idiocy and pain? The world would have crushed me far more easily if my friends hadn't have been there to help me hold it up.
I look at my mother, who was horribly abusive to me for most of my life, someone I had to realize is no longer capable of love: Her parents hit her and generally treated her like shit. She was a magnet for abuse, at least in the way she tells it. Her older brother molested her repeatedly and raped their step-sister. Having the information I do now, I wouldn't be surprised if one of her parents had done this to her also. I've yet to meet someone who's anger even comes close to matching hers. From her description of events and what I remember, she has never had a true, loving, supportive friend. No one ever told my mother that she didn't deserve the treatment she received, or tried to help her in any kind of constructive way. No one ever really loved her. Having her as a mother was nonstop terrifying; I remember tiptoeing around when I knew she was home, or pretending to be asleep, just so I could avoid the horror of her anger, at least for one night. No matter what I did, it was never good enough. I always, always managed to make her angry with me, and then the yelling and screaming and crying would never stop. I would beg her to stop, to just leave me alone or let me go to sleep or just have some RELIEF from hearing about how I was the most horrible person in the world. I would break down and cry and she would yell more because she believed I was doing it to make her feel bad. When I would start to audibly sob, she would hold me, but only for a few moments. Not that I minded; being hugged by my mother when she was angry with me felt like being molested with her energy. Being screamed into a corner by her felt like being raped. Like any shitty childhood, there were of course happy moments, but they would always end badly. It was like she would save up her anger throughout the day so that it was even more volatile and overwhelming. To this day, when I'm having a good time with my friends, I start to panic because I feel that inevitably, I'll do something or say something to ruin it all and get screamed at.
Some of the things she said a lot was "Why don't you go live with your dad if you hate me so much?" "Why don't you just run away?" or some variation thereof. When I was in preschool, she said this to me and I was heartbroken. My mom had basically said that she didn't want me around. With tears in my eyes, I got a paper bag and went into my room. She walked in as I was putting my toys in it. When she asked me what I was doing, I repeated what she had said to me, and told her that I would go live with my dad if she didn't want me around. She laughed then. Apparently, it was fucking adorable. She admitted that she had said it to get a rise out of me, but I was too young to understand what that meant. I didn't get that she didn't really mean what she had said. I don't think that's ever really gotten through my head.
Again in high school. It was my birthday, or her birthday, I don't remember. I don't remember what I had done. "If you hate me so much, why don't you just fucking run away?" she demanded. She kept saying it until I yelled "FINE." and stood to make my way to the front door. As I tried to pass her, I saw her eyes go dead and lower to my chest. I had dealt with her enough to know what that look meant, and crossed my arms protectively on my chest. She shoved me back. If I hadn't have blocked, she would have shoved me back by my breasts. I was fifteen. It felt horrible and disgusting. My mom was an ace at making feel that way.
I felt sorry for my mom for a very long time, and guilty that I was so hurt and angry at her. It wasn't until the last year and a half that I realized that my mom had never loved me, never showed me an ounce of kindness, unless she got something out of it. My mom doesn't love me; she can't, and she never really has. When I see women react to others who have reported rape as I stated above, I feel a twinge of fear that they will breed, and having not dealt with their issues, will pour the abuse onto their children that was poured onto them. It's a cycle that seems like it will never end.
But it will, I know it will, because there are people like me, like my friends, that are working through the horrible things that happened to them, and will someday raise children with real, heartfelt love instead of anger and betrayal.
I really hope there are others out them doing the same. Everywhere I look, women are being abused, and it tears me up inside.