Bitter

Since my parent's Mom-initiated divorce, my Dad and I have become closer. We say "I love you" when we part ways or hang up the phone. It's easy for me to walk up to him and give him a big ol' hug when I'm feeling down and it picks me back up again. He calls just to check in. It wasn't always this way. Maybe it was my awkward teenage years but I had trouble showing emotion around my parents, both of them. Until I became a parent myself it was hard to fathom why they set such boundaries and stuck to them at all costs. Now that I have my own children, I can relate to limits and rules and unconditional love. I understand sleepless nights and lover's plights. I know that marriage is something you have to work at or inevitably it can become a comfort zone where two people cohabitate together in their unhappiness because it's too disconcerting to shatter the peace. That's what my Mom and Dad did. She stewed in her own sorrows too long before she just burst at the seams, overcooked. She was for all respect of the word, pretending she was happy.

But now she and I are the ones having trouble communicating. It's actually worse now than when she was married. I cannot tell her "I love you" when I get off the phone. Nor do I go out of my way to call her. Since her new lover came into the picture (before the marriage was dissolved) she's withdrawn from family social events. She has not done anything with her grandchildren by her own accord for years. I have to ask her to watch them and I feel like a burden when I do so. That's what hurts the most I think, her not being involved with the boys. My best friend's mother does not get to see her own grandkids because her son married and divorced a spiteful bitch who denies access to them. Yet she still longs day in and day out for her relationship with her grandkids like it used to be before divorce froze the family ties. At least she wants to see them. My mother doesn't even hint at it.

So Mom, I don't love you (or at least I can't tell you that I do) because you don't invite it. You don't make the effort to see your grandkids, fine but remember they will be here long after I am gone. You made your pretend bed, now lie in it, on your pretend fluffy pink pillows, in a pretend flannel nightgown and pretend that your sweet dreams are really just that, sweet because there is nothing more surreal to me now than dreams.