I was reading this old interview with Augusten Burroughs'
mother.
I was about 22 years old when I figured out it was really
shitty to say anything not good about anyone's mother to that person, even if
they say not good things about their mother all day long. I've learned a lot
since then, too, including how not good my own mom truly is. I don't ever
remember anyone saying anything bad about my mom while I was growing up - not
to my face, anyway, or not anything that could be taken too seriously.
My dad was really the only person I heard say bad things
about my mom. He made fun of her long, pointy nose and her overactive startle
reflex and her absentmindedness. When they got divorced about ten years ago, my
dad said incredibly mean things about my mom, and to her. He was a big fat
whore, and in defense of himself, said my mom knew about everything that was
going on, and always had. My mom, of course, claimed to know nothing of the
kind.
I thought my dad was really reaching when he told me that my
mom knew everything he had been doing with other women for years. It wasn't
difficult to take her side - the man was loony tunes, and said all kinds of
things that didn't make any sense (for example, when he told me he was god). I've
never trusted the man that I can remember - one of my earliest memories is of
him mangling my two front teeth, the baby ones. I was only like a year old when
that happened, but I remember it, even if remembering something when you are
one year old is not supposed to be possible. And I don't remember ever trusting
him before or after that incident.
But my mom was different - everything she always said was
the truth. For example, AIDS is a result of gay men having sex with monkeys in
Africa. Also, it's okay to marry someone black, but it would be best not to,
because mixing my white blood with their black blood would likely produce a
child with a lot of health problems. She also said she loved me, that she put
her children before herself, and that she wouldn't have let anyone - including
my dad - hurt any of us (my sibs and me).
These are things that my mom said, and that I truly believed
with all my heart and soul until I was an adult, and even with conflicting
information coming in (and causing me to feel naïve and stupid), I somehow kept
hanging onto the idea of my mom as someone honest and smart. At therapy this
week, my therapist noted that I had an extreme loyalty to my mom. I didn't
understand what she meant at first, but we both worked it out so I could
understand: my loyalty to my mom was in my mind. In my mind, I stuck by my mom
like glue.
I'm sure I've done some mean things to my mom, but I can't
remember anything specific right now - btw, I have said a lot of times that I am
certain that something in my past was true about me, and can't remember
specifics. I'm wondering now if there were no specifics to remember - what if I
just believed what people said about me? Huh.
Well, maybe I haven't done some mean things to my mom. When I
was on drugs, I stole money from her, and I took cash out of her purse all
through high school, and I know SHE thinks I was mean to her, but I just can't
remember anything. I remember hating her, but not necessarily consciously
acting on that.
A couple of years before my parents split up, I was in the
kitchen talking to my mom, and I was going to come right out and tell her about
my dad's affairs (specifically the sexual ones), but I just couldn't tell her
something I thought would hurt her so badly. It was very frustrating how she
clung to my dad and refused to acknowledge anything bad enough about him to leave
his ass, and I thought by telling her straight up that my dad cheated on her,
she would be shocked into getting the hell away from him.
But I thought of how that information would hurt her deeply,
and I decided that it was my dad who was having the affairs, so it was my dad
who could tell her about it.
Once on her birthday, my dad completely ignored her and
nobody even could tell if he remembered it was her birthday, and it sucked. It hurt
me a lot to see him hurt my mom. I asked her why she let him do such mean
things to her, and she started crying. I was wrought with the guilt of my part
in making her cry.
I really cannot even imagine saying anything mean to her
growing up. In the last communication we had (about a year ago), I said a lot
of TRUE things about her, and about what she had done to me, but nothing
deliberately hurtful.
She was just always so VAGUE, about everything. It was hard
to even try to pin anything on her. It has taken a lot for me to get beyond
that mindset - my loyalty to her.
Needless to say, I say all kinds of mean things about her
now, such as "my mom is a mind-fucking narcissist, and I don't know why
somebody didn't ever beat the shit out her at any time in the past."
The way she is handling things now, my specific accusations
against her, is by pretending they don't exist. She focuses on what she wants
to believe and what she wants other people to believe. She is seriously a heartless
bitch.
So when I was reading this old article about Augusten
Burroughs' mom, I got very agitated when it got to this part:
"At this point, Running
with Scissors the
book and the movie are a great part of [Augusten]'s life," she says.
"But it's part of his life. It's not a part of my life. That book really
touches me very little. It's not my focus. "
When I read that, I was thinking, "well, no shit it's
not your focus - it reflects negatively on you and if you don't acknowledge it,
then you don't have to react to it." It's a very selfish thing for a
mother to do, to refuse to acknowledge the pain she caused her child, to act as
though it was never real, and as if she is tremendously gracious for saying she
still loves her child even though that child tried to say things that would
make her look bad.
I really do think it is foolish to say anything not good
about someone else's mom, but my impressions of Augusten Burroughs' mother
remind me very much of my own mother. And since my mother is my mother, I feel
perfectly comfortable in saying that the woman is insufferably evil.
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