Letter to Mom

I dashed off this email to my mother. To an extent it's self-explanatory to outsiders (and the rest of the meaning doesn't signify to outsiders,) so I think it makes sense to post it as is. It's interesting that a note like this could come from someone like me, because I'm actually very meek, but the note is quite assertive and doesn't bother with tact.

I'm very nervous in the hour before you head to work, because this is an hour during which I almost certainly will be severely chided for something by which I am completely blindsided. I didn't hear you ask for your butter tub of food this afternoon. As far as I was concerned, you'd already packed (as in, put in your lunch bag on the chair) any food you'd wanted to take, but had forgotten the bottle, which was the only thing i heard you ask for. Sure, I heard you say you were packing a butter tub of food last night but it didn't signify (a) because it was several hours ago and (b) because, again (and again and again, since it didn't come across to you when I said it) I thought that was already in your bag or purse, or on the chair. And these are not conscious thoughts of mine -- nothing at the forefront of my mind, nothing being actively thought about, because the only mention of a butter tub of food I EVER heard of was over TEN HOURS ago -- completely outside of the context of this afternoon's request.

Getting someone in a position where they can be shouted down [I should have somehow indicated that she had raised her voice and my heart rate without actually accusing her of shouting, because in fact she was not quite shouting] at any time without warning puts them on red alert for the ENTIRE time. And our lives have enough stress without you doing this. I'm letting you know now, because if you care, you'll stop. If you don't care there's nothing I can ever say that will influence you.


Speaking to my father today, I recalled some impressions of my mother's stress-inducing behavior that I had when I was six. I felt like, when Mom was around, strife could appear out of nowhere without warning, so it was a little nerve-wracking to hang out with her. When I was ten I used to meditate to get my stress level down, but my mother would sometimes yell at me for meditating because I looked like I was doing nothing. When I tried to explain to her that she was undoing my healing and that I would need more time to heal again, she insited on taking it as a threat that I would be idle to somehow requite her for interactions I didn't like. She therefore took my statement very, very badly, furiously intoning, "I will not be threatened."