Most people hold their mothers with a godly reverence. I don’t. I’ve never felt close to my mother at all. She neither neglected nor abused me, but I just never had that connection with her. She was always there, but she always felt distanced. She was a mechanica mother.
My father never was a good husband to my mother, in terms of virtues and marital vows, but he’s always been a splendid father to us. He always worked on creating genuine connections with us, while my mother got her way through manipulation.
I don’t know how to explain it, but time always felt organic with my father, while my mother felt very mechanical. It’s as if she was doing her part for the sake of it and the end justified the means.
I know I should be grateful for her being my mother and all that, but I just feel I could have gotten more from her given that we had so much growing up. We had a good house and my father provided for almost everything and even after they separated he still did his best to cater for her and my sister’s need.
If we did some minor infraction my mother would say things like "If I could go back to my youth I would never have had any Kids/ not given birth to you. " or something like “One day I will wake up and leave all of you, I will go very far away and never come back.”
Other times she would over react on small issues just to see us wincing and shaking in fear of her wrath. This got her into very many fights with my father because he believed it would cause us to have “heho” (anxiety in Kikuyu), but she did it anyway. And as the old man predcited, it happened.
I know to grow ups reading this, it might sound like useless whinning, but to a child it meant everything.
Being threatened with abandonment by your mother and being constantly made to feel as if you are the sole cause of all her suffering is not something an eight year old developing child should go through at all.
A child looks up to whomever is their guardian as the true ultimate authority and thus I ended up believing those things.
Even as I grew up my mother remained mechanical about everything. I remember being fifteen and walking by this boys whose mother was deeply serious giving him concerned advice in a kind and mellow voice and it felt so odd. My mother always complained, but never gave any advice. It made me feel very lost about myself.
If it wasn’t for my father, I would be suffering from serious anxiety or even depression.
My sisters were not luck though.
My grandfather was once a serious drunkard (now reformed) and used to beat on my mother and my grandmother a lot. I am told that my great grandfather beat his second wife (my grandfather’s mother) to death with a club for failing to cook his favorite food properly while his young kids watched helplessly. Maybe this might have had an effect on who my grandfather became and in turn affected my mother.
NB: I know we don’t talk about family issues here, we burry them deep in our hearts and let them fester and take over us completely. And I know it’s not manly to do this, but I’m not even trying to be a man here.
I just want to know if there is anyone else who feels something similar about their mother.