I have to say this even if it takes away from the quality of the piece. And it does. But this is not about my actual mother. I can’t post it without saying that. I just can’t. My mom is such a sweetheart. So yeah, I just had to say that. Sorry.
~~~
Despite the rumors going around, my mother did not abandon me. She loves me. I think. Pretty sure she does. Anyway, I’m the one who abandoned her. I’m the one who changed the rules and got all upset and left in a huff.
See what happened is – this is the thing that happened, what I’m about to tell you – I found her diary in the attic and read it. I did that. I read it. That’s on me. But the thing is, now I know she’s a liar. Just a big old liar. And that’s not something you can forget, when you find out your mother has been lying to you.
Now she’s a nice liar. The nicest, sweetest, kindest, most gentle and soft liar you ever saw. And her lies are so wonderful that you just want to fall back onto them like a comfortable bed and drift off the sleep.
But they are lies, the things she told me. Not all of them of course. But a lot of them. A helluva lot of them. I mean so many lies that it kind of spoils even the true things she may have told me. I don’t even know anymore. And the thing that really gets me is she said we were about the truth. The truth, she said to me once, is what we are about. She said the truth would set us free. I remember exactly when she said that to me. I was nineteen and boy did I fall for that one.
This is hard to explain, but the hypocrisy is what bothers me, not so much the lies. It would have been okay if she had said, “The things I’m telling you are lies, but they are very nice lies, and you can have a good life if you’ll just pretend they are true.” I mean, that’s what she wanted. She wanted me to live with her in the lies. Nurtured and warm and happy, snuggling up to her until she tucked me into my grave, just the way she tucked me into my crib.
I actually could have lived with the lies, I think. If she had just been honest about them. Probably could have lived with them. Maybe. I can see me living with them. Well, I don’t know. Maybe not. It’s starting to sound kind of bad now that I’m saying it out loud. Actually it’s pretty horrible if you think about it. See? See what happens to you? Even as I was writing this it seemed to me like maybe the lies weren’t all that bad.
Okay. So my mom is a hypocrite and a liar. I said it out loud. Good for me. Whatever. Time to move on. Time to see what’s new on the horizon. I’m fine. I’ve over it. I’m so over it. You want to know how over it I am? On Sunday mornings I wake up and yawn and smile and say, “What do you want to do today? How bout riding bikes or something.”
Over it. Totally over it.
But goddamit, this is the thing that really fucks with me. Really torques my head, okay? She betrayed my love of the truth. But she is the one who put that love in my heart.
And I will never be able to figure that one out.
