I had my mother visiting this past weekend, for about four days.
It has been hard in a sense. My relationship with my her, and my feelings about our relationship are complicated, even confusing.
She is not the one responsible for what happened. I know this, yet there are things I think I resent her for. Or at least I did for some time.
Some of them are related to what I see as ignoring signs that something was wrong, other have to do with reactions and things have happened after I told her.
Over time I have come to accept and understand my mother's limitations, and her difficulty in dealing with it all. It has taken her time to assimilate.
I always knew that it was going to be hard for her, I tried since the first moment I told to make clear that he always behaved very different when she was around. Yet I know she has felt responsible and in a certain way blamed herself.
I also know that a part of me feels in a sense let down by her, even if I know the responsibility lies completely on my father.
I think I don't resent her for these issues anymore, yet somehow they are part of our relationship. I don't rely on her for anything.
I realised when talking to my C prior to the visit, how stuck I am with respect to my family. Well, I already knew that, what I got to realised was that I was not ready at all to consider that anything could change in that area.
I had come to the conclusion some time ago, after years of longing for some support and understanding, that it was never going to happen. So I decided to stop waiting, and closed that door. Managed, after a long time, to accept it, and learned how to be around them without hurting too much.
They have become somehow something apart form my life in a sense.
I am trying to get myself into a life where I feel comfortable.
I have stopped relationships with people that made me feel uncomfortable, or unsafe, or somehow on edge or wary (except for them, my family).
So I am not very sure how I regard them. I haven't tried to stop contact, though it has become less frequent with time. It is not my intention to not see them again, and I do visit myself sometimes. I feel some sort of obligation to do so, that I know I have imposed to myself.
This behaviour goes apparently against everything that I am trying to change in my life, and it makes difficult what I intend to achieve.
So, in the light of all this I tried to talk to mother a bit about some of the issues.
Conversation was long and difficult, and I am not sure it was what I wanted it to be.
I kept changing my mind about whether or not I wanted to talk to her while she was here, so it finally came out without having been properly planned or thought out.
I guess time will tell if anything is to change.
On the positive side, we did not argue, and in general none if us took a defensive position, or a hostile one.
