It's hard listening to someone complain about their life, over and over again. It makes me think about Dane Cook's comedy skit where he says, in a prissy woman's voice, something along the lines of, "I can't just break up with him, Karen, it's not that easy - my CDs are in his car. I can't just walk away without my CDs."
My mother is like Dane Cook's character, but when it comes to all things that equate to her happiness. She worries about things she can not fix, she comes up with barriers to her own happiness, she plays the victim card every chance she gets, but when we get into a serious conversation about her making some important life choices she responds with the likes of, if she "hadn't sacrificed her life for us, she wouldn't be in the place she is in now." Or, if her life hadn't been destroyed by this and that, she might be able to live the life she always wanted.
We say, "Okay, Mom, so now what?"
She says, "I can't just move - it would be too hard on Zelly."
Zelly is our golden retriever...
We look at her and say, "Okay, Mom, that's an excuse."
The thing is, it sucks to pat someone on the back during a repetitive pity party. You want to just shake them awake and yell, "If you aren't happy, change it! If you need something different, do something different. If you don't like where you are, go!"
However, if there is something that I've learned from growing up in my family, it's that you can't change anyone, no matter how hard you want to. Instead, you must learn to accept them for who they are.
I'm doing my best to accept my mother for who she is. I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that she sees the world a whole lot differently than I do. I figure, if I went through a divorce, I would be sitting in a developing country on a beach, figuring out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I'd go all Eat, Pray, Love on my life and go learn a language in another place, go backpack into the mountains, or chill in a rad location I'd always wanted to move to. My mom...hasn't quite got there.
I'm reading a lot of Carlos Castaneda right now, and one thing he makes me think about is that we all have our fears, but we have to face our fears. It is scary when life is ripped up from under us. It is terrifying when the world is shaken up, discombobulated and unlike what we've always known, but I believe that it is infinitely more haunting to imagine a world where you never seized that uncertainty and took advantage of your opportunities to live a different life.
I said to my mom, "You are in a unique situation where you can work on creating better relationships with those around you. Whether that is with your friends, your family, your daughters, what have you, you have the opportunity to focus on cultivating better relationships with others, as well as with yourself."
But, the pity party plays on. And, I worry about her. I worry about her priorities, about her goals, about how she sees herself, and about what she dreams of creating for herself. I just don't get it. I hope, for her sake, that she takes a second to look around - at what she has and either accept it, or harness the courage to move on from it.
She laughs when we talk about Carlos Castaneda, because she hears talk about Peyote, spirit animals, and existential questions, and she brushes them past with the wave of her hand, because, to her, they are simply not important.
She tells me about her living situation, her job, her baggage, the story of no resolution, and I brush them past, because, I too, believe that the things she is hung up on are not important.
I wonder, when will we see eye to eye?
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