An Open Poem to My Mother

Well, kids, I wrote another fucking poem. At this point it’s starting to resemble dysphoria, the way I insist I hate poetry. I’m sure there’s a school of self-loathing poets somewhere I can align myself with.

This one comes in the form of an open letter to my mother. I’ve come to understand a lot of things about her during the last year and a half in therapy, even though it’s just been me on the couch - she worked so hard to make me into her, you see. You can’t shape clay without leaving your fingerprints on it. When I act out her neuroses, I learn what they are, or at least, what they were when I was small and learned to mimic them.

In today’s session, my therapist shared this “Relationship Grid” with me.

The general idea is that when we have a critical lack of self-esteem and confidence, we fall into one of these areas in acting it out. A lot of us will wobble between them, that’s very normal. In adjusting to our behavior, others learn to balance out our own grandiosity or shame with the opposite in themselves, and thus learn these same relationship patterns. We spread it around by teaching each other to act this way, orbiting each other around the volatile edges of the grid, never attaining a healthy balance of boundaries and self-worth.

Boundaryless and One-Down

The classic image of a needy person with a lack of self-esteem. We can’t see any value in ourselves, so we constantly ask others to reassure us that we matter. We pour out our life stories to strangers, have sex we don’t want, cling to partners who treat us badly, because we are like leaky buckets, and nothing is ever enough to fill up the hole in our hearts.

Boundaryless and One-Up

It might seem like the grandiose person has a good opinion of themselves, but in fact this is simply another manifestation of shame. This is externalized shame. We can’t see any value in ourselves, so we need to make the external world reflect our inner world, and we rage when we fail. We blow up because we are terrified to be ignored. We only value our own perspective when we can convince others to agree with it, to change in response.

Walled-off and One-Down

This is a posture of learned helplessness, the position of the martyr. Disillusioned and disconnected, we can find no way toward sharing ourselves with others, because we believe we’re worthless. Connection is too painful or frightening to even attempt. Opportunities are merely opportunities to fail. We fall into depression and addiction, numb out to avoid being alone with ourselves. We don’t think we deserve success or happiness, so we content ourselves with short-term comforts and live small lives, shrunken by doubt.

Walled-off and One-Up

So desperate to believe we are better than others, we don’t dare make contact that might expose us to error, or doubt, or pain. We cling to indifference because it’s better than getting hurt. We can’t express our needs, because we don’t believe we deserve to have our needs met, so we’re passive-aggressive and condescending. This grandiose person is also, fundamentally, lacking self-esteem. We don’t genuinely believe that we’re worth anything at all, so we need very much to be better than others, to establish hierarchies where we can feel superior. Our self-worth comes from outside, from anyone we can believe is below us.

Obviously, the goal is to enter that nice, pastoral realm in the middle, where we have boundaries but are still able to be open and vulnerable, where we feel remorse for behaving badly but still know our own worth and value ourselves. I’m, ah… not there yet. Most people aren’t, not all the time. If you’ve ever lived with a narcissist, you probably got thrown out a little on these axes. One-Up people tend to pair up with One-Down people, so when someone is grandiose, they push you into a position of shame, especially if they have a lot of influence over your mental state and development - like, for example, your parents.

This pattern can flipflop down generations - Grandma was One-Down, a histrionic martyr who demanded everyone dote on her and admire her… so Mom becomes One-Up in response, needing to be louder to even be heard at all, needing to have some control in a world defined by someone else, needing to demand recognition and respect because no matter how much she gets, she never really believes she has any worth. Then Daughter responds to Mom’s grandiose behavior by becoming One-Down - withdrawn, depressed, given to addiction and self-harm, desperate for attention and love because she doesn’t believe she deserves any, certain that her failure to satisfy Mom’s bottomless need for validation means Daughter is worthless… and Mom agrees.

SO… that was the academic armor around the tasty candy center that is my pain here, and now I offer it up for you to devour. We’ve danced this dance down the bloodline of my family, and I’m sick of it, which is why I’m pointing it out. I’m sick of us sucking each others’ blood to survive.

Is it weird to listen to breakup songs and think about your mom?
I never listened to them much before.
I’ve never been one for breakups in general.
If I like someone, I keep them around
and if I don’t, I don’t.

But I never had a chance, with you.
You decided we should meet.
You decided we’d be friends.
You decided I was yours.

And I wanted to be yours.
I broke my skin
my body
my brain
to become what you wanted.

In games they call it
a “supposed-to-lose” fight
and sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re in one,
whether you’re failing because you’re bad,
or because you were never intended to succeed.
When I do well, your face displays a broken jpeg.
The dialogue is all wrong
it’s got no voice acting
and sounds like it was written by someone else.

My wins don’t even register with you.
There’s only smug contempt when I ask for praise -
”That’s what we expect of you. You should do that every day.
Why don’t you try harder, go above and beyond?”

You’re fucking horrible to me all the time, that’s why.
You make up a new cruel name to call me every week
when you’re not stealing the ones the bullies at school came up with
and asking me why I can’t see the funny

You gleefully tell strangers all my mistakes.
No one can ever see me as worth more than you think I am.
You bring up every stupid thing I’ve ever done
so the whole family can laugh
and I have to laugh too, because if I don’t
you’ll say I’m a drag
a bitch
a teenager
(how dare I!
I should have stopped aging
stayed small enough for you to ignore)
It doesn’t make a person hunger to succeed.

I don’t know what success even feels like.
I don’t know if I’ve had any. I don’t know what counts.
If I ever did, I couldn’t feel any joy. Just like you couldn’t.
Because that’s what I was supposed to do -
everything.
That’s what I’m supposed to do.
And this is not enough.

I am not enough.
And not just “not enough” - deficient. Sub-normal.
Less than.
Less than people you liked.
Less than people you hated.
Less than people you held in contempt.
I was less than all of them… because I was supposed to be better.

I was yours, after all.
And didn’t you deserve it?
After all your work, all you’d been through.
I was supposed to give you what you lacked.
I was supposed to be what you needed.
I was supposed to never go away.

I know all this because you’ve never been shy.
”I brainwashed you,” you told me proudly,
”I had you to be my friend, a friend who would never leave.”
Even so deep enmeshed that hearing you say that felt like love
I had my doubts.

It turns out I’m a person, though.
I had my doubts about that for a long time.
Every failure proved you right,
and all success belonged to you,
merely an adornment in the glittering expanse of your ambitions for me
A footnote in the breathless history they’ll write
of the worlds I conquered in your name.

I thought there was no other way to live but yours.
I thought you knew everything.
I thought you knew me.
But we were both wrong.

Things change so much faster than you told me, Mama.
Things change so much, so fast,
and people change, too fast for you to keep up
unless you listen very, very hard.
It means you have to shut up.

(I know you don’t like that phrase, and I’m sorry
but each of us is an open spigot and knows it
and to quote Cat Stevens,
”From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen.”)

You have to let people tell you who they are, instead of dictating.
That’s the only way you’ll ever meet anyone but yourself.
You’ve always been so dreadfully lonely
and that kills me because it’s not your fault
and it is.

You’re lonely because you collect jealous mirrors.
You need to be heard, to share what you think and feel
but doing so never seems to satisfy. It never makes you feel worthy.
And that’s because
you don’t think your feelings matter. You don’t think your thoughts are important.
You need others to tell you that they do and they are
because you neglect yourself and mock yourself.
You treat yourself exactly like you treated me.

If you can’t find something in you worthy of love for your own sake
Could you try for the sake of that kid
who would have died to make you see her
who cut and starved herself to make you notice
To be more than a mirror to you
And who maybe wouldn’t have had to “love you from afar”
if you loved yourself a little more?

I guess all I’m saying is…
You always tell me we’re the same.
I am yours, a part of you.
I’ve always felt it. I know you’re right.
Brainwashing? Maybe. Doesn’t matter.
What matters is, we both believe it
which means we are the same,
which means the thing I realized about myself might be something you need to hear:

Maybe if your life was about you,
you wouldn’t need anyone else’s to be?