Dear Buddha

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned

Buddha

Dear Buddha

I understand that anger is like a sickness, it is why I was so susceptible to becoming an alcoholic. The disease in me feeds on my anger. It taunts me with the desire to loose myself in a sweet alcohol hazed oblivion. 

There are days when it is so tempting to throw away all of the hard work I have done, to let the anger and the darkness simply consume me and let everything I know I deserve come at me all at once. 

I pride myself on not asking much from those around me but instead giving them all I have. Yet I find that the more I give the more they take the less I want to be there. 

For instance, take my mother. Yes, even I have mother issues. I love her desperately she really is an inspiration to me. She has worked hard to provide for her children and in return I have watched her beaten, raped and abused for her efforts. She overcame all of that to work hard to help those around her survive the same situations.  

Yet in my heart I know that really the one person she cares about now is herself. She spends hundreds of dollars on clothing, on perfume and make up so she looks good, and on the outside everyone she comes across sees her as this beautiful wonderful saint. What they do not see, even members of my own family, is the manipulative woman beneath the veneer. 

Every time I go to a store, or anywhere really, people tell me that they know my mother, they tell me how wonderful she is. I hear "She's a good lady" on an almost daily basis. What I don't hear is, "gee I'm sorry your mother is an evil twisted bitch who sat back and did nothing when you were raped, or molested, or beaten and had your hair set on fire" what I don't ever hear is "how do you handle living with someone who cares more about her looks to the outside world then she does her daughter"

On the outside it really does appear that she cares about helping the outside world, but when I look at her all I see is a bitter, cranky manipulative mother that is more interested in her tiny corner of the world then she is me. 

For instance, several years ago I bought a puppy, this particular dog loved to jump out side car windows which is why we always kept the car windows up. 

One day a friend of mothers was driving the puppy home to me, because mother decided she did not want to walk the dog home, the puppy saw mother on the side walk and jumped out of the open window in the middle of high traffic. The dog was instantly killed and I swore I did not want another dog. 

The men and women that we work with however got together to get us a new dog, and against my better judgement I fell in love with this dog and still have him today. The issue however is that because he was given to us by the people we work with, often I would let people who come to meals play with or walk the dog. I decided he would be the neighbourhood pet, huge mistake. 

The people I trusted to protect this animal, to love him abused this dog, and several times without my knowing it he was beaten badly. So I decided then and there they would have no contact with this dog, for his protection. I would not allow him to be harmed by other humans ever again. 

Too little too late however, as it is my dog does not like strangers and he does not react well if I am not there to control him. 

This weekend I am supposed to go on a trip with my two best friends, she has waited until now to tell me that if I am unwilling to put him in a kennel she will not give me the money that I earned for the trip. 

Not because she is worried about my dog being at home alone while she is gone, because I have taken care of that. No, because she is afraid of letting people into the house.

This week my mother is in a rehab clinic, as I said she is in a wheel chair, Thursday is the only day she will not be home. Both Friday and Saturday she will be. One would assume it is too hard for her to walk the dog, it isn't, she is afraid of letting someone into the house while we are not here on Thursday. Forget the fact that this person is someone we know exceptionally well, and trust with our lives as well as my dog. 

This is shear laziness on her part she does not want to have to get up off her ass and walk the dog. 

The truth is she is a lot less helpless then she lets on. She doesn't need as much help as she pretends. For fuck sakes the woman won't reach for a piece of paper without asking for help, but of course only I see this side of her. 

The sad truth is my mother nor respects nor trusts me in any way shape or form. 

I see the look in her eye when someone compliments me, or when someone congratulates me. I see the roll of her eyes when I come up with an idea, a good idea and she is annoyed she did not think of it first. 

I remember being sixteen and hearing her tell my brother that there was something "wrong" with my brain, that I was retarded. She equates my ADHD with retardation. 

The truth is she is right about that, my brain does not work correctly, it works at such a high speed that I tend to forget things moments after they have happened. This goes far beyond just forgetting where I have put my keys or my lighter. This goes to conversations, events. I cannot always remember things I have said or done without help. I legitimately do black out during times of high stress or emotion. To her this is called retardation. The doctors however tell me I need to relax. To meditate and learn to calm myself, that the black outs will stop if I learn to just control my temper. 

I sometimes think that if I were to win the lottery she would never see me again, the more I think about this the more I know this is a very real possibility. 

If I could I would buy her a house, a nurse and I would walk away and be gone. Some of you may think this is awful of me. Consider the fact that my brother moved out at eighteen and didn't say anything to her about it for a month. I had to be the one to tell her. Clearly I am not far off the mark, I just wish I had been the one to do it first. 

I did try at one point, well into her illness to leave, as it turned out I ended up having to move home due to circumstances out of my control - those being my room-mate being the crap out of his girlfriend. 

The more I look at my future as much as I know what I want, the more I realize it will always be this. Always be me in her shadow, taking care of her, protecting her, doing everything she says because she holds not only the purse strings, but the control. 

Abuse comes in many forms my dear friends. 

The saddest thing about this is that some people think that the man I love is controlling, when the truth is he is my freedom in more ways then he knows. He is my prince charming and she is my evil queen. 

She keeps me locked in the tower and any attempt at escape is futile, I pray that the Universe will see this and work in my favor, that the Gods above will know that as much as I love her, I cannot be her care taker forever. I am trying desperately to escape and every time I get a little close to doing that she finds some way, to make it impossible for me to survive. 

This woman is has turned me into the stereo typical spoiled brat. Often in my growing up years when she didn't like my behaviour, she would see a doctor and they would shove pills down my throat. Usually sleeping pills, or "behaviour modifiers" like Dexedrine, or Ritalin. I have been on every possible behaviour modifier there was when I was a child. In return for her treatment of me I would receive a gift be it money or a new outfit or a hair cut. 

I spent three weeks in a mental hospital because someone convinced her I was mentally unstable. At the end of the three weeks, a doctor looked at me and told me they wanted me to stay longer because they had not had time to really get to know me. In the time I had been in that hospital, complete with automatic lock doors and steel beds I had never met this woman. In fact at the end of the three weeks I had yet to meet any of the six doctors in that room. I walked out. I was thirteen. 

This haunts me to this day and she cannot comprehend why. Why listening to the screams of truly insane children haunts me to this day. Why remembering what it was like to be housed with child predators still haunts me, and I do mean, children who preyed on other children. 

I have no pictures of my childhood, I have either burned or destroyed them all in one way or another, the few I have remind me of the abusive man I grew up with, and those are locked away, I don't even know where. 

I love my mother...the more I say this, the more I believe it, but it does not make it true. Believing something does not make it true. Mind you I realize now, you can love someone as much as you hate how they treat you. 

My mother is a great person, to everyone else. She is my albatross. My broken star. She is shattered on the inside, broken and rotten, and until the day she dies I do not think I will ever be free of the chains to which she has bred me to bare. And at that point, when I am finally on my own I have to ask myself what the hell I will do then. 

When I am free of her chains, and I no longer have to take care of this person who could care less about me, what will I do then?

Baby Love