I just love you...

I’m just your mother, after all…

Her voice rather trailed off after she said that. She was never one to drop a guilt trip on me and she never, ever played the victim, so I think that’s why for the first time in my life, I realized something rather horrendous; I had been consistently disrespectful to the person who showed me the most love, the most kindness and who had always been my biggest supporter.

At the time, I was a college student, working at least one job and raising a daughter myself, by myself. My mother had come to visit. Blaming a busy schedule and knowing deep down that “my mother understood”, I didn’t clean my condo very much before she arrived. I didn’t even change the litter box; even though I had a big ol’ boy who dropped aromatic bombs in it.

Had that been my father who came to visit that day, I would have killed myself to make sure everything was as perfect as possible – of course, no matter what I did, it probably wouldn’t be, but I still had to try. Why? Because I was terrified. Not because I didn’t want to dishonor him, but I didn’t want to provide any fuel for him to explode into a cruel diatribe about how lazy and terrible I was, how I was living like “pure white trash”, as well as how in the world did I turn out that way, among any other hateful things he could think to say. Lord help me if I showed that anything hurt my feelings, because then that would provide the direction for the upcoming assaults. It had always been that way and now that I’m older, I understand some things and I especially understand that anything gained through fear is not worth having. Or giving.

So this evening, for some reason I remembered my mother saying “I’m just your mother after all” and it made me reflect on why we often treat people we’re scared of better than the people we love.

It should be the other way around, but I don’t believe it often is. It takes an enlightened awareness to be kind, to love unconditionally and to give warranted, selfless respect.  Even this can be turned around into an egotistical mechanism for hopefully receiving the same in return, but that’s not enlightened – that’s bartering and it’s hardly better.  The true mark of character is how well we treat those who we know can do absolutely nothing for us in return. Who said that? Ghandi? I’m not sure, but I believe it.

But back to my story.  I covered “do unto others” in another blog post.

I’m talking about giving honor and respect where it’s due. 

One day about almost two years ago I was in a classroom of (mostly) teen age boys. Catholic school boys. The Red Hot Chili Peppers sang about Catholic school girls, but the boys, I think, are equally rambunctious.

They knew I was American and they were directed to ask me some “cultural” questions. For that age group, it’s very common that they’ll ask about “free sex”, parties like they’ve seen in Hollywood movies when the parents leave home for a weekend, and other such related “cultural” questions. One brave kid threw his trump card. He thought he’d throw me off my respectable and unshaken perch. He asked me what I did as a teenager that I felt the most guilt and regret over.

As honest as I had already been, I’m sure he thought the class was in for a big story, but I shocked them with another equally honest and straight forward story.

Of all of the things I did as a teenager that I had no business doing, the one that makes me the most regretful and that still hurts my heart is this: I lied to my mother. I lied to her regularly. My ego was so pumped. I just knew I was the best liar in the world and I imagined a bright future as a business leader, politician or lawyer.  What I didn’t realize until I was older is that it wasn’t that I was such a wonderful liar, it was that my mother trusted me. She loved me. She believed me and believed in me. And I took that for granted.

So why do we do that? Why do we often treat the ones we love with an apathetic dose of “Eh. Whatever.”?

Often on Facebook there are those (cheesy) shared photos that remind to tell our loved ones we love them because we never know how long we’ll have them around. Well, I guess the intentions are good, but it’s still all about us. Tell the people we love we love them so that we won’t hurt so much if they go before we do. Hmm.

How about we just show the people we love that we love them? Period. Let’s appreciate them, thank them, be honest with them and love them. What do we lose?

Maybe it’s the way I grew up, or maybe it was the realization that happened to me the day my mother reminded me of who she was, but I decided then and there I wasn’t going to give into fear any more. I’m not wasting my energy on people who are trying to scare me into doing their bidding. I will not be bullied.

I’m going to focus all of my efforts on the people who are good to me, who love me and who deserve my very best. I’m not going out of my way to hate the haters, but I’ll certainly try my best to never let those I love and who love me feel taken for granted and unappreciated. Not because I want them to do the same for me, but because they deserve my best. And I’m going to do my best to give it.

No strings attached.