As if I haven't had enough going on lately, I've had some nagging emotions/thoughts about hope. I just thought I'd share these here because I know a lot of us struggle, at the root of our issues, with letting go of the hope that we will one day get what we need from either our parents or some perfect parental replacement.

I watched this show the other night about people who have just randomly gone missing (it's non-fiction). The particular episode I was watching centered around an interview of a woman, who at the age of 5 or so, lost her mother. She never knew what happened to her mother and was told that her mother just left and never came back. She continued growing up as if nothing happened, no one in her family ever talked about it. It was simply as if her mother was there one day and gone the next.

She talked about how she used to come home from school and just sit on the front porch swing and wait for her mother to come home or drive by or SOMETHING. It was extremely sad, but she told the story almost as if it was happening to someone else (as I'm sure most of us tell our stories).

What struck me most was how sad I was for this woman. I mean, how awful, right? Of course, her bastard father was a suspect in her mother's disappearance, but as a little girl, she couldn't comprehend that. Plus, he was raising her! How could she possibly hold on to the idea that he could have done anything?

But in my sadness and general upset about the whole situation (I really should find something a little less provocative to watch!), I realized that I was also very jealous of this woman... of the younger her. What an awful thing so say! But it's true, I was jealous of this little girl whose mother disappeared. After I thought about it for a bit, I realized that I was jealous of her because she got to hope, for so long, that her mother- this wonderful, idealized, 5-year-old version of her mother- would one day come back for her. She hoped and prayed and waited for something that was actually possible! Was it likely that her mother would return? Not at all. But she got to spend 35 years of he life HOPING that her mother would come back and love her again... and be a mother again... and be interested in her again.

I can't have that hope. I will never get what I was supposed to get from my mother. And that's what's so hard to grieve... the fact that no matter how good I am or how well I do in life or what grades I get or how hard I bust my ass at work or how loved I am, I will never have a mother who loved me enough to be 'good enough'. I have the choice to sit here amidst my other relatives, in this ridiculous land of dilusion and denial, OR I can choose to give up the hope that I will ever be good enough to make a mother love me or be proud of me. I have to choose to quit hoping that a mother will ever comfort me... but it feels so endless. This illusion of hope feels better- feels safer- than this pain, sadness, disappointment, grief and anguish I feel. I want something to hope for. I want to sit on the porch and wait for my mommy to come home and take care of me. I want to be hugged and loved and cherished and adored and sacrificed for.

But if I hold on to this hope, I can't live in reality. The truth is that there is no mother coming back for me. I can sit on this proverbial porch swing until I die, but there my mother will never come. There sure have been plenty of look-alikes, but none of them are her and none of them ever will be her. That alone makes me want to cry forever. It makes me never want to have a child of my own. It makes me want to shut the world out and die.

Well, the girl's mom never did come back- her husband- the little girl's father- killed her and hid her under the house. I guess if the mother had mysteriously come back after all those years, she couldn't have been all that her daughter needed at that point anyway. If mother had come back, they couldn't have just picked up where they left of at 5. I mean, you can't just skip over the fact that the mom had been gone and the little girl had been hurt/abandoned.

And I guess if my t were here, she'd say that I do have something to hope for; that I can hope that I will one day see that I have everything I need within me, that I don't need someone else to do it. But, fuck, I hate that so much. I WANT someone else to do it, damnit!!!! I took care of myself when I was little, I want someone to do it for me now! I don't care what I do or don't have within me, I want to be taken care of and I want a mommy!

Ok, I guess I'll stop whining now. Thanks for reading. And btw, I mean no disrespect to anyone who's mother did disappear. I don't mean to suggest that that kind of life would be all roses, by any means! I don't think of these kinds of situations in terms of easier or harder or better or worse, I just know for me, I would like to be able to hope for a mother.

-CT