Mom is Getting Married

“By the way, I wanted you to know that I’m getting married next month… let me know if you want to come.”

She squeezed it into the middle of a card I didn’t even want to open or read. Yes, a CARD! Not even a letter. I wasn’t surprised. Nothing she does surprises me anymore.

The bitch is crazy.

The latest in unwelcome correspondence from my “mother.” A term that can only be applied to her role in my origins and has nothing to do with her instincts. It is why I cut her from my life. Her instincts were those of a feral animal that eats its young.

She thought nothing of my pain, which was often ignored because of the limitations of her shallow emotional availability. Everything she did was the opposite of what the occasion needed from her. Expectations were observed only when they suited her moods and desires. The rest of the time, they were conveniently excused.

It has been six months since she and my father were officially divorced. Now she is getting married! Who is this guy? How does she even know him? Why so soon? How is this healthy? Has anyone pointed out how insane the timing is? This is the worst thing she could be doing now.

I feel abandoned and rejected all over again. But why? I already cut her from my life after she threw me away. Why are these feelings still so fresh?

Because this is exactly what she does: rush toward whatever she feels is right instead of facing what she has broken. She needs therapy more than anyone I know, but she keeps denying the damage she has done and sweeps it beneath the rug of her delusions.

I always knew she was codependent. It was what drove her to make me her sole companion and “best friend” as a child. I needed a mother, not another friend.

The things she told me about my father were beyond anything I could handle at that age. She couldn’t protect me from herself, much less from her version of him—a version I had not experienced the way she described, or anything resembling the man I have since come to know, understand, and appreciate.

Don’t misunderstand me; he has his issues as well. But he is facing them. More importantly, he has been putting in the work. He is sober now and emotionally available. He does therapy and shares what he has learned, but not in the excruciating detail she used to unload on me. Details that were none of my business. He lets me be a kid, though I’m almost 20 and seriously need to figure out the next steps for my life.

For the first time, I feel optimistic that the safety of my circumstances will allow me to explore and make mistakes without the safety net dropping and I end up on the cold, hard surface I’ve always known.

And now she is getting remarried.

Give being single a chance. You are still taking care of my little brother. How is this supposed to make him feel safe? He isn’t a child, but even at 16, this will unsettle him. At least Dad made a room just for him where he can stay anytime he wants. Hopefully, he will use it. It’s the only thing that made me feel safe again.

My dad and I talked about her decision. I trashed her because it feels like I’ve earned the right. Dad refuses to engage or heap on the negativity. She hurt him as much as she hurt me, but he doesn’t dwell on the pain beyond what is necessary to get healthier and break the toxic patterns. It has made my life easier.

I asked him to be honest with me and tell me why he doesn’t want to date or find love like Mom has. His reply surprised me.

“Looking for someone to complete you is how you stay incomplete.”

I pressed him further, and he explained that, for the first time as a fully mentally developed adult, he was finally getting the chance to know himself. His most urgent responsibility was to my brother and me. He wished he had been healthy and mature enough to give that responsibility its due sooner. While he likely couldn’t have changed the outcome of his marriage to my mother, he might have protected us more from her imbalances. At least he could have avoided giving her reasonable complaints to use against him while she undermined our respect for him.

So, in this season, he would stay single and available for our needs before considering adding someone else to the mix. “Besides”, he would say with a smirk, “Any woman interested in me at this point is a red flag.”

He didn’t let himself notice the way women looked at him. He couldn’t. It would distract him from the work he felt responsible for: finishing the job of raising his children into healthy, successful adults. Now wasn’t “the proper time or season,” he would repeat.

So why did she reach such a different conclusion?

I knew the answer. It drove all her choices.

She felt like it.

And for her, feelings are reality. Logic alone would never persuade her.

For all her quoting and misapplying Scripture to my brother and me while growing up, often applying it to everyone but herself, one verse screamed loudest in my mind: “There is an appointed time for everything.”

What about this?! Getting married to a guy you hardly know three months after you started dating, before the ink on your divorce decree has even dried!

Is now the appropriate time for this?!

Whatever.

Enjoy your life with this new dude and his developmentally challenged grown son, who will always live at home and looks more like you than my brother and I do. I guess it’s no surprise you found a family that suits you.

Right time or wrong, you are no longer my problem.

And NO… I do not intend to come to your ridiculous wedding.