“Wow, I was, like, a super-bitch to you as a kid.” I said to my mother on the phone yesterday.
“Nah. Not really. You were a kid. You didn’t know any better.”
“No, I mean, I wouldn’t let you cry. I’d get angry if you cried. You had to be my mom and nothing else. You couldn’t be human. I’d get so angry at you the times you showed any emotion over Dad leaving. I’m sorry, Mom.”
This conversation occurred at the exact moment my father sent me an email out of the blue explaining to me “why he is the way he is.”
This sounds like the beginnings of a “heavy” post, but it’s not. These are interactions I have with my parents on a semi-regular basis due in part to me becoming more objective over my parents divorce as I grow older, me apologizing more and more to my mother for not letting her mourn the divorce, and me occasionally snapping at my father for always being the good-time fun guy I used to idolize. I still look up to my dad, but in different ways than I used to and the matters (more…)