It's Always My Fault

Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash

It is always my fault.

I don’t think there was anyone else to blame in a way that made perfect sense to her until I came along.

Throughout my life, I have tried and tried to nail down the single moment in my life, the exact time of the mistake that was so unforgivable that I became the one to blame by default.

Sometimes I cringe at how much accountability rolls off the tongues of people these days. “We need more accountability!” And maybe we do…the patriarchy, tone deaf organizations, the government. But in any new wave of life, each generation tends to scream one thing out loud repeatedly like it’s a new word.

Accountability is not a new word, in case you were wondering.

And, accountability can be toxic.

I should know. My mother blames me for ev-er-y-thing.

Just yesterday, I was overwhelmed. Parenting never gets easier. Every few days or weeks, there is something new that you bump up against. And my mother is not the mother I am. My mother talks only to hear herself speak. My mother needs to have control. My mother isn’t a hugger. My mother doesn’t say I love you unless she fears something bad will happen. My mother invested a significant part of my childhood to further her education, to further her career ambitions. There’s clearly a theme here. One that puts her in the center, and requires everyone and everything around her to be secondary.

But yesterday, I needed something….

I’m not a needy person. I know that about myself. And I also know what happens when I need her. It’s not even a lack of not wanting to ask for help, I will. It’s that I feel responsible for taking ownership for my problems, for my issues. The same way I feel responsible for taking care of my children, so I never did drop them off to their Grandmother on the weekends to have my time. Admittedly, my mother has said more than once that I never ask her for anything. Why should I?

Yesterday, I wasn’t asking. I was exasperated. I have been trying to help my daughter meet a new version of herself, and it’s almost like she is not ready to hold the awareness that it requires. And I understand, she’s 9.

I texted my mother as a joke. I said I think that being a parent is a form of a humiliation ritual. And for me that’s the hard part. I dealt with a lot of embarrassment growing up for various reasons—I was a very shy and quiet child. But a lot of it orbits my mother needing to be the center of attention even at the cost of other’s discomfort.

My mother’s response to the text was to ask how I had been humiliated and I told her. I immediately told her all the things I had been working on with my daughter.

It didn’t matter.