It’s Hard Not To Feel Like the Most Stupid Person in the World

The way you laugh at me when I say something, the way you almost roll your eyes with disgust when I use words, the way you brush me off.

What is this game we are playing? Am I projecting my own insecurities onto you? Am I playing small? Why am I so insecure around you? After all, you came from me.

Does God feel this way about his people, just blaspheming his name this way and that? Treating him like he didn’t create the world?

How do I step up and show you my strength, my vulnerability?

How do I get real?

See, I don’t have a mother and when I did I always treated her unfairly. I treated her like she knew nothing. I had a lack of respect for her.

But all these years later after her death, I feel somewhat bad that I couldn’t see her as a human being. I saw her flaws and her ineptness and I’m afraid that’s all you can see of me.

Can you see how I fought for these years sober? Can you see how I fought to break a cycle so that you didn’t have to grow up the way I did? Can you see how hard I tried to fight these demons in my mind? Can you find some grace for your poor old mom? Can you find some kindness in your heart because I am here to say that when your mom is gone, she is gone and time goes by so fast.

The hole in my soul missing my mom hasn’t gone away. Even though while she was here I tended to wish her away.

I may be old or outdated although I try to stay up with the times (just that sentence dated me.) Can you try to see my positive attributes, maybe how loving I am even though I am too scared to annoy you. This time on Earth is short and precious and the time we have to spend together even shorter, but here’s what you need to know as your mother, I would die for you. I would do anything to save you. I care more about you than myself and you are my first love.

When you treat me like a nuisance or someone not cool enough or that what I say is some kind of running joke, that everything I say is dumb, that everything I say is somewhat funny to you in a negative way, it hurts.

I know I was a teen too. I was a young adult and thought I knew everything. I know that the adults in my life seemed dumb and slow.

I have to admit that I treat people older than me sometimes like that now. I roll my eyes or make fun of the way they constantly repeat themselves. I think they are inept and annoying.

Is this just a typical generational thing that I shouldn’t take personally? Is this how kids feel about their parents when they reach a certain age? Is this what it’s like. Fake acknowledgments and pretend kind words. The I love you’s that are meaningless when we are in a room together?

Are there only happy families on television and social media?

Is this how all parents feel?

Do I not know how to show love and affection? Am I too closed off to care?

I struggle with family. I struggle in close relationships.

I tend to be closed off. I fear rejection.

Am I projecting all of this onto you?

Am I too afraid to be warm and open?

Am I too afraid to put myself out there because I may be rejected?

Am I feeling small not because you are making me feel small, but because I already felt small and like some kind of not-good-enough failure of a mother?

Do I suck at this because it wasn’t modeled for me?

Can I start to try in a new and different way?

Can I be vulnerable and share how I am feeling without being too awkward?

I was traumatized as a child by family and I fought to protect you, but in the meantime, I have walls up protecting myself.

I struggle with depression and anxiety. I can be insecure. For some reason, your presence accentuates all of my fragility.

I aim to feel confident in your presence.

I aim to feel like myself in your presence and to be proud of my accomplishments.

You are one of my accomplishments and I should tell you how proud I am of you, of us.

But I neglect to share any type of emotion even though that is a trait I struggle with in others.

I neglect to have the conversations that are vulnerable. I fear looking weak in your presence.

I play it cool and stoic, but my mind is going crazy.

Can’t we just have a conversation without me looking like some kind of fool?

I guess my mistaken belief is that I am not good enough, but who told me that?

My caregivers and all of the times I have been bludgeoned and beaten in this life, but no more.

What if this ends with me here and now.

We don’t wait to tell people how we feel about them until we are laying on our death beds, right?

But it seems to me that is sometimes how it goes in this life.

We are too afraid to let others know how we feel so we say nothing at all and make generalizations and judgments about what we think we know.

We are too scared to risk being truly seen by another, even when it’s someone we truly love wholeheartedly.

We act timid and afraid, too meek to share our true fears and vulnerabilities, afraid to look weaker than we already feel.

But what if we change that narrative? We change that tape and stomp on it.

We create new life, love, and family.

We speak our truth.

We come clean.

We are as authentic around others as we are with our families.

I don’t think my family would know what goes on in my brain, as much as they try to understand they are not mind readers.

I write to help others who may feel similarly, but never for my own family. That would be too close to home.

I wrote a book about breaking the cycle of addiction and family dysfunction, but I am not out of the woods yet. These are my deepest struggles, still.

I have come a long way, even though it may seem hard to see it.

I have broken a cycle, but I still get pulled back into the darkness.

My hope is that we can begin to see one another for who we are truly are.

A son and a mother who are trying their very best to be good enough for one another.

In a family, we are supposed to love each other unconditionally, but that doesn’t always happen, does it?

Adults can be critical of children and now I see children and young adults can be critical of their parents.

Maybe my parent's generation had it right with Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll. It seems like such a simple solution to all of these problems and emotions. If only we could just bury ourselves in such mindless activities. If only thinking didn’t consume so much of our time and mind.

We are in the same house but we feel miles apart from each other. One week is too hard to say everything I’ve wanted to say so it looks like I will say nothing at all.