Biggest Fear

I think my biggest fear– actually, probably the biggest fear among teenagers and young adults– is this: I don’t want to turn into my parents. Most notably, my mother. I want to know that I’ll be able to outgrow the childhood fears she inflicted on me.

I was a very rational child. I rarely had tantrums based on emotions. When I wasn’t allowed something, the first time I would be upset, but sequentially I would just accept it, really taking to heart that there was probably a good reason that I was being denied something. I would often hear, as many children do, that I’d ‘understand when I’m older’ or ‘you’ll thank me later’. Now that I’m a grown adult, living hours from my parents and relying on my own social skills, I can definitely say that some of the things I wasn’t allowed to do have helped me become a more patient, frugal, compassionate person. For many other circumstances, I can confidently say that I was royally fucked over, and I’m just now experiencing the emotional and social consequences of said fuckery.

 My mother and I are locked in a rough relationship, based mainly on emotional need and corrupted by our fundamental differences. I love her, and she loves me. We both need each other for the same thing: a strong friendship, which she and I both lack (to some degree) in our social lives. She comes to me when she needs support, someone to confide in, and someone just to chat with about meaningless things. I call her for the same reasons, because we’re girls, and that’s something we need. I didn’t have a traditional ‘best friend’ relationship with anyone growing up. I generally have been friends with only 3 people at a time for most of my life, not counting boyfriends (Tori, Aubrey, Hillary; Hillary, Aubrey, Gina; Hillary, Gina, Alex). But until recently, none of them had ever completely filled that role. One or more were always leaving me behind. And I don’t mean not getting along with me all the time, because that’s part of having a best friend— they just didn’t care enough to want to include me in their lives. And I’ve heard my mother tell me the same thing about the people in her life. I would try and help her, telling her it’s all in her control, and that she just needs to boost her confidence. And I’d get frustrated, hearing her response of ‘they just don’t want me’. But as I take a step back, I realize that I’m in the same pattern. I can’t think of a single thing she did to impress her social fears on me, it just kind of happened. But I can’t go to parties. I can’t talk to strangers. I don’t know how to make friends on my own. My social world has revolved around friends of friends, and going to college felt like being stranded.

I often wonder how my life would have been different if I hadn’t had my allergies. Sometimes I think that maybe if I had been born a normal kid, my mother wouldn’t have been so dominatingly protective of me. I wouldn’t have been excluded from birthday parties and field trips. I would’ve been allowed to explore my own interests, my own strengths and weaknesses. A little taste of independence then would’ve done wonders for me now.

My mother didn’t like to punish me in the traditional ways when I disobeyed her, like grounding. She enforced what ended up being a much more effective preventative strategy—she would pound my head with stories of death and kidnapping, rape and murder, every time I asked to do sometime she considered unsafe. Instead of the traditional ‘because I said so’, she chose ‘because you’ll probably die’. She would make up statistics to make her point, which lead to an unrealistic view of danger in everyday activities, which is something I’m still trying to shake. The notion that ‘danger was everywhere’ seeped into every corner of my psyche. I didn’t expect to live into my 20s, which, as I came to understand later, is not a normal thing for a child to expect.

            Last night, I watched The Importance of Being Earnest as I painted some furniture. I wasn’t paying too much attention, but one line caught my ear: “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.” I immediately became terrified at the prospect.

            Recently, my parents moved to another state. And by recently, I mean 3 days ago. It took one night for my mom to throw a fit and demand they move back. My poor dad (with whom I’ve always sympathized) obliged, saying, “It’s okay. We’ll try again in a couple years,” all the while hearing my mother yell in the background “I’m never going back there.” After a talk from her sister, they managed to get back down there and move on with their plans. My mother confessed to both my sister and I that she was having PMS.

            She cannot change her own situation, her own apprehensions, or her views on life. I’m told that my grandmother, who I’m sure was a perfectly lovely woman, was more or less the same. She manages to be devastatingly timid when it comes to her own life and overbearing in the lives of others. Obstinate, manipulative, and hypercritical are three things that I’ve never wanted to be. Am I fighting against my genes?