Letting go? @ ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

I like to write about myself and my thought. However, this article is especially difficult for me to write and to share with you. This is an article about my mom and the various emotions I have around her. I have been contemplating whether to share this article with you or not. It isn't easy to share with you my vulnerability and my innermost feeling.

I thought of my mom, when writing the article “What is your priority?”. She is probably the only person in this world who causes me so many mixed feelings, guilt, anger and sadness. I am sad because I can no longer feel the closeness that once existed between us. I am angry because she treats me like an outsider. She has the strong and stubborn concept that a daughter once married is like water splashed outside the door. This daughter of hers is now someone else’s wife and she is bound to never burden, bother or trouble her daughter. The feeling of isolation from her makes me sad. In her mind, she is protecting me by not reporting any bad news. The fact that she would only tell my brother who is also married makes me mad. To her, my brother is not someone else’s husband; he is still considered as her son. I know. She still thinks me as her daughter but it makes me sad when she treats me differently and with courtesy. It hurts to feel like a stranger to her.

When she was here about seven years ago to help taking care of my son while I was on maternity leave, I confronted her with my feeling. Actually that was when I started to feel our distance. I was pretty moody then because of the hormone changes after childbirth. I might have a slight case of “baby blues”. She told me that I had thought too much and that there was no need to over-analyze to make my life miserable. She said that she had been through a lot of things that made her learn to let go and stopped her dead-end thinking. I was still too young to understand and I don’t know if I will ever understand. The feeling I had from her was indifference and cold-heartedness. Has she let go of too much that little is worth caring?

I know that she loves her daughter dearly and she sacrifices all her life for her kids. She wants nothing from them but the best for them. She would do anything for her kids. Still, I cannot help but feel sad for the wall that she built between us. As I grow older, my sense of priorities changes. More and more things have become trivial and not worth fighting for. Is that what she called “letting go”? Still, I feel it imperative to show my love to my love ones openly. I still feel it important to accept one’s love gesture. I don’t think that I will ever understand her. Could she also not understand me? How could she not understand me when I have inherited so much from her and from her husband?

The wall between us increases my guilt for her one-way street of giving. I cannot get over the thought of being a selfish daughter who lives several thousand miles away from her. There is no outlet for my guilt. It is so huge that it is unbearable. What can I do about it? Nothing at the moment. All I can do now is to hide it. Maybe someday I will be able to let go of it as she wishes. Maybe that is what she really wants from me, to live happily without guilt. Maybe I will get wiser as I grow older.

On 9/18/10 in Minneapolis