A toxic mother and an unsuspecting daughter
My first serious girlfriend did good to break up with me. Ten years now I am nobody in the context of today’s world and its trends. On her end, she’s on her third job, all well-paying. She is a mother of two and married. If I am available, she tells me, ‘I can drive you in town’. Though the last time I was available she did not drive by.
As a rule, we do not disagree to burn bridges but to express
our views and show we cannot be slave driven. So I have contacts to all my sane
buddies – of talk we talk, of silent we mean no harm. And the other day when I
was doing my gardening and resting, she texts, ‘I need a listening ear’. I simp
by, ‘Here is Pât [she used to call my name beautifully], lean on me’.
‘I am going crazy with my fam, especially mom. We are at
war, Pât. Can you imagine I have schooled my siblings, built her new house,
medicates her kidney failure and all that yet when I fail in any of her demands
she nowadays gets cold on me? See, I have a family to take care of now, and it is
breaking me considering my siblings are also following in mom’s footsteps. I’m
drained; I wish her death! Sorry to say this.’
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'I am at war with mom, Pât', Pic source; dreamstime.com |
Tereng! When did I even become a family relationship expert?
What I know is to be as far as possible from my family. To only engage on the
necessaries. Proximity of any kind like often messaging and calls sooner breeds
contempt. Large families are breeding grounds for conflicts.
I tell her that mothers are opportunists by nature. When her
husband is no longer providing, she casts her net to the unsuspecting children.
The sons might develop a hard heart but a daughter is more likely to do all she
can to satisfy her mother. And like a bottomless pit, human needs will never be
enough.
The daughter, in good faith, will wish to change the life
status of the mother. She may not mind whether her brothers and father is
involved or not. Without knowing that hers’ are time-bound initiatives. If
anything she should be minding about her coming midlife, career, home and stabilizing
a marriage. Not in the fake dealing that her mother will be ready to welcome
her if things go south. How many cases are there of innocent girls slaving in Arabian land having sent money back home to fraudulent mothers only to find nothing worthwhile on return?
It is difficult to look after your parents, your husband/wife
and children [do not add siblings for black tax] at a go while at the same time
immersed in income generating activity as a job. It can be easy to talk on
phone and dream of all the possibilities but when it gets on ground, it
scorches. A parent could be having the security of a home and some land in the
rural yet the poor children slaving in the town to pay for everything there are
also required to remit some monies at home – for sugar and bread.
The mother having sucked out the juice in her daughter, she
will repel her soonest. She will want her to be equally at her marital home
forgetting she was the one who discarded the poor son-in-law. She had wished for a more ‘cooperative’ one. For the sons she may have
begrudged the daughters-in-law in one way or another. Hers is to survive as
long as she can, the way she first domesticated the man and family from the
wild pre-agrarian years.
‘You did not strike a model of association early – though it
is not late,’ I advise. ‘Think of the future you have and work on it. If
goodies are born out of it, those who depend on you will feed on them. That way
you won’t have time to be blackmailed into supporting what is not part of your
future!’
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