Breaking Free
I realized today why I always go back to unhealthy relationships. I was sitting alone, my family having once again abandoned me, and I started to look for somebody to talk to. Nobody online, and I always feel guilty and intrusive when I call or text people, like I’m walking up to their personal lives and forcing them to remember me, and while I know this is foolish I still end up thinking it. The only person online was the person I had sworn to limit contact with because she was one of those people who drew you into madness and trouble of the bad sort, and I before I knew it there was an empty instant message window open and I was about to type “hello”. I closed it, angry at myself, and I asked myself why I couldn’t just be happy alone. The answer was obvious; I don’t like myself, and I hate my own company.
And so, as these thing soften go in my mind, I asked myself why that is. And the only reason I can think of is that I am used to being in these terrible relationships, and that I despise the weakness in myself. And so I asked, “Well then why do I do it? Why do I always go back when I realize there’s a problem? Where did this cycle start?” And the answer to that, of course, is with my mother. Cliche as that sounds, my mother started it. I have never been able to get away from these charming snakes because my mother always sees the blade for the shine and presses me back to these people. It isn’t until something overt and socially embarrassing happens that she will insist that she never liked somebody and that I was a fool all along, and take that to heart because she’s my mother. She’s also the one unhealthy relationship I’m saddled with for life, ‘til death do us part, mine or hers.
I’ve ultimately decided that I can start trying to fix myself, but that will be a slow process and never perfect. I can hope to avoid doing it to my children, but I fear it is almost inevitable. Everything I hate about my mother she hated about hers, and so on as far back as there were women. As soon as I find something that I won’t do, no matter what, I realize that perhaps that’s cultural and I don’t want to lose that, and perhaps I wasn’t so bad after all and maybe the dangers of the world justify that sort of psychological hamstringing, and before I know it my psyche, like all the television horders has broken down and gathered all the trash there is back into itself. Just recently my boyfriend tried to tease me and told me that I sounded like my mother, and I almost cried. I look like her, I sound like her, I have the same eyes. I fear that one day I’ll wake up and be her, and then my daughter will be sitting in her room, crying that she can’t avoid this vicious cycle. I suppose that the best I can do is try, or perhaps just sterilize myself now and save everybody the trouble. I know its maudlin and I’ll never do it, but I can’t imagine a way to ever truly break the cycle. Can we fight nature and nurture both and become a free spirit? Or do having her eyes mean that we share the same window to the same soul, and that we’re doomed to be the same person?
