It is a common complaint in women of a certain age and temperament - that is, older than 25 and furious. Sometimes it is justified, sometimes not; there are levels, you understand? Some have parents who tell them they were unwanted from a young age; some have parents who mention casually over a glass of wine that they never wanted children and it seemed like ‘the next thing to do’.
Others still find their acceptance is conditional; on mental health condition, on sexuality, on political affiliation. Or where two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and the child goes one way and stops, halfway down the right path, to see their parent staring in derision.
Have you considered that perhaps it is your fault, mon petit chou fleur? That if you were better in some key way - better at being healthy, perhaps, or better in the subject you detested at school - you would be loved and cherished still? Instead of finding faith between pages and quiet conversation, if the world was your friend. And you could just run cross-country.
Or if you’d picked a heartier career, maybe then you would be loved. Something with a slick suit and promotion aspects, a job for a life; a job that doesn’t exist anymore. Glass walls and skyscrapers, something terribly important where you can still take a day off.
These are, as I say, common feelings and complaints. But the truth is something you already know. For most people who say they are no longer loved by a parent - well, the truth is that they were never loved, even as a babe. It’s just easier to fake a deep bond with plastic teething rings and board books. The blueprint for being a child in your twenties and thirties shifts and changes - where you might be making your own money, but you’re three months away from losing your flat at any time. And any love your mother might have faked fades rapidly when you’re not there to be faked to.
For example; there will be no phonecalls, unless you call her. When you do speak, it will be information-swapping at best. There are no recipes to ask about, no baking techniques; she last baked with you when you were seven, and stopped making birthday cakes for you on your seventeenth birthday. You don’t ask about clothes. Everything you like makes you look ‘huge’, and you’re silly for caring about fashion, anyway.
When you get a partner, and that partner visits for the first time, she will exhale, and lean back. Because that is all she wanted from the moment you arrived on earth - to not be responsible for you anymore.
Unfortunately, there is no cure for what to do when your mother no longer loves you. May I suggest a trip to the Alps to rediscover who you are without earthly bonds? No? Not an appeal? Then how about eating or drinking your feelings? Pouring your heart out to friends and foes alike so they will know this strange inner battle you feel?
Buying presents won’t work, either. So at least Christmas will be cheaper - that is, if you see her at Christmas. Imagine, an entire year with the only trace of you being a room in her house she doesn’t enter and occasionally your voice on the phone! What bliss.
Man hands on misery to man/It deepens like a coastal shelf/Get out as early as you can/And don’t have any kids yourself.
Alternative titles I considered for this newsletter:
a mother’s place is in the wrong
world’s okayest mom
this be the blog
This, my lovely, is where the family you choose comes in and you are very much part of the family I choose 💜