Monday, September 28, 2009

The Truth Hurts

Sometimes I feel bad for hating my mom 90% of the time.

Well, hate is a strong word, I don't hate her, in fact, I love her. She just annoys the shit out of me because she can't handle the truth. In the last year or so I've done a lot of self-reflection and I made a conscious decision to be more honest. Telling white lies is one of my mother's more annoying qualities that I had picked up and it was starting to take a toll on my relationships.

Being honest with people is hard. I'm not talking about telling someone that, "yes, those pants look like crap on you" but telling people how you feel about them can be difficult. One of the hardest things for me is to make myself vulnerable and tell people that they hurt me. I definitely think honesty in a friendship is a good thing (even if it has backfired on me and I lost a good friend) and I'm trying to me more honest with my mother.

Like I said before though, my mom can't handle the truth. My mom thinks she is perfect, I know this because I used to be just like her and I thought I was a genuinely good person, I was wrong. I'm not saying I was evil or anything or even that my mother is evil but we are not genuinely good people. We are selfish people, it takes a great deal of focus for me not to be the most selfish person I know.

My mother is also very, very melodramatic. She loves to be the victim, she loves the attention she gets from it so it's very hard to give her constructive criticism because she likes to take it as though you are attacking her and all she was doing was trying to save orphans or something like that.

So, I've been working with her very slowly, only giving her a little honesty at a time and it's been working pretty well...until yesterday. My brother decided to give her a big dose of honesty and now she's playing the victim. All my hard work is out the window and the sad part is that the only person it's going to hurt is her.

I really hope she is able to make some progress before she loses all her friends, I want her to be happy again, I want her to be someone I can trust but the truth is, she'll do anything for attention and that includes throwing her daughter under the bus. I'm worried that real soon we're going to reach the point that we can't go back and the damage will be irreversible and that makes me sad for her and for me.

3 comments:

Tara R. said...

Does your mother work in my office? I have a co-worker who can't take constructive criticism without saying you are attacking her or always yelling at her. It is exhausting.

Aunt Becky said...

Tara nailed it: it sounds EXHAUSTING.

ItsKelly said...

WOW! Your mom sounds exactly like my sister. She is constantly the victim and acts like because she's had such a hard life it gives her an excuse to say or do whatever she wants. (really, she's had an incredibly EASY life). Most of my family walks on egg shells around her, until yesterday. My husband had enough and totally went off on her. Big dose of honesty. I don't know what to do. She needs therapy, but you can't tell her that. *sigh* ... Good luck with your mom. I know how hard it is.