* OK, a quarter of a hundred, plus two.
Oh yes, I hear you nodding knowingly and sighing, wishing I would've chosen something unique to write about. Pregnancy hormones. How stereotypical. What's next, morning sickness? (Yes, I had that, too, for about 6 months.)
And besides, I hear you lament, that was so 27 years ago. Don't you have anything else to write about?
It's relevant, I promise. Because that's the first time I remember actually taking a good, hard, introspective and retrospective look at myself, and the other mothers in my life (namely my mom and my sister), and being scared to death. That's one of the reasons I was crying all the time.
Some of the other reasons were very valid, too. It was a tumultuous time of our lives. We weren't sure where we were going to be living (because my hubby was being promoted, which was a really good thing, but he was also being sent to other states to work and there were rumors he was going to be offered a job in another state), we were newly married, my hubby's father had died about a year prior -- and I didn't even realize at the time how that alone was another wrench in the machine! -- and just a whole bunch of other Life Things that I could write about and get totally distracted by writing about right now. My then-untreated depression and anxiety, our eventual moving to another state and therefore me quitting the job I loved and leaving our family and friends and moving to some town I've never heard of and being alone most of the time and being too depressed and anxious to go out and make friends or anything. Whatever.
But what scared me is that I suddenly saw things in the way my parents raised me that I realized I did not like at all. Mostly it was the controlling (which, let's be honest, was my Mom more than my Dad). How I could only use the phone for 10 or 15 minutes at a time for no apparent reason. Or how I couldn't have friends sleep over, for no apparent reason. Or I couldn't invite friends over at all, for no apparent reason. It always, always seemed like my Mom automatically hated everything I liked and was against everything I wanted to do. I couldn't do after school things because I had to be home right away. Why? I don't know. "Because I said so." When I got older, I told my Mom that her rules didn't make sense, which is why I didn't want to follow them and why I wanted explanations for them, and I got the ol', "Because I said so" and "As long as you're living under my roof, you'll do as I say," lines. That was it. End of "discussion". It made me frustrated. So frustrated.
And when I was pregnant with the boy and staring down the barrel of motherhood, it made me mad. So mad, all I could do was cry. Why did it have to be that way? It made no damn sense. And I needed to know why it had been like that so I didn't repeat it with the child I was about to have.
I guess that was the first time, too, that I realized that people's behavior's are affected by their pasts. I mean, that concept didn't really, REALLY hit me until just recently, but that's when that seed was planted. Because honestly, most of the reason I cried was because I thought I was doomed. Because my sister was a mother by then, and I had seen the same behaviors in her, and I thought, Crap, it's hereditary! Even tho my hubby, bless his heart, assured me that it wasn't. That we were going to be different. That we were going to parent with purpose and rationale, and when it was appropriate, we would explain to our child why we had the rules for him that we did.
Thank God for my husband. For so many reasons!!!
Anyway. I'm not sure why this particular scenario came to mind this morning. Maybe because I'm still trying to figure out why people behave the way they do? And the "people" I'm still trying to figure out are my mother and my sister? I mean, one of life's great mysteries is that my sister and I grew up in the same household but turned out so vastly different. I've always blamed it on the age difference (she's 5 years and 10 months older than me) but the older I get and the more I learn about people, I believe it's so much more than that. There's a reason she has always been my Mom's favorite up until the last 10 years or so, and there's a reason I was always my Dad's favorite. Personality-wise, I definitely take after my Dad more than my Mom, and she is a spitting image of my Mom more than my Dad. In fact, I don't see any of my Dad's personality in her.
The title of today's post was meant to tie into the fact that, while becoming more aware of other people's actions, I've also become more aware of the fact that I can be judgmental and I'm trying so very hard to give that up. Because spending time alone with my Mom, who is very judgmental, has made me see what that looks like to others, and I don't like it one single solitary bit. So, much like when I was pregnant with the boy and suddenly seeing behaviors in others that I recognized in myself that scared me so much, all I could do was weep, I have been making a conscious effort to just be a better all-around person.
And oh, it does pain me to say this ("this" meaning the implication that I don't want to be like my Mom), because I do love my Mom. She's my Mom! She gave me life. She supported me the best she could. But she has been through some shit in her life as well that has made her the way she is, and that's the kind of thing that also fascinates me. Because some of it makes perfect sense, now. More on that later.
The moral of the story for now is, don't judge anyone because you don't know what they've been through. Cliche, I know, but it is so very true.
