Mother, Where art thou?

While pondering this interesting and life altering question I came upon one major agent or factor in my life that had the greatest influence and detriment, which if changed would of altered the course of my life completely. We are talking of course about every child’s god, “Mother” or more specifically my Mother.

It is not easy for someone to say that their mother as the most destructive influence in their lives, or to say that their sister made a better motherly influence then their own mother did. As I look back upon my life this is the conclusion that I would have to make. As I stated in one of my class discussions I started off in a typical military family were one parent i.e. my father was in the Army, and we being his family followed him to where he was stationed this of course being Germany.

My father had issues with other women meaning he liked them more than my mother. This did not help my mother’s already growing anxiety and personality issues, but these issues aside we were a family. It was a small micro-system that functioned adequately until the day my mother decided to abandon my father in hopes of following her dreams of being model. She ripped us from the world in which we were comfortable and we understood, and we had grown to be a part of the German community in which we lived. Transplanting us into a strange new social environment called San Diego, California.

My first language was German so when we were put into school here in the United States the identities that we had formed were ripped from us. We were forced to abandon speaking German and replacing it with English.  Add to this constant teasing by not only fellow students but teachers and other faculty as well. Now one of the reasons my mother decided to move to San Diego, CA. was that my aunt lived there and she was hoping she would be a source of support through this hard transitional time especially for her kids, however this was not the case.

My aunt saw raw material in which she could form what she considered proper children, and she disliked what she saw in us especially our language. Understanding that my mom chose to be a single mother, and this was difficult enough as it was, but add to it her inattentiveness toward my sister and me. Looking back at the stage of life that I am in now I can see how hard she had it as a single mother, but the personality and attitude that she had toward me and my sister were very destructive to us emotionally, physically, and mentally. She did not participate in any school activities. She did not participate or want us to participate in any extra-curricular activities.  She put other men before her children on several occasions even believing someone she considered to be her soul-mate over her own children when they told her that he was doing bad things to them.

A perfect example of my mother’s way of thinking or personality is dating a psychologist that worked in a psychiatric facility and having both my sister and I admitted into this facility so she and the psychologist can go take a vacation. Another example is having us put into foster care because she did not want to take the responsibility of her actions. As I got older she finally allowed me to try out for an extra-curricular activity that I had been begging her to try out for this being Varsity Cheerleading. I am not sure if she truly believed in me or she was just trying to get rid of me for the summer but when I was chosen for the team she told me that I could not pursue it anymore.

My mother was so in a rush when I was fifteen years old to get rid of me that she gave power of attorney to my sister and sent me on a flight to live with her in New Orleans, LA. Her reason behind this when I asked was that she felt I was changing because of the type of clothes I was wearing. She also felt I was going to get into trouble with guys from school, and other peers I associated with. She even told me she did it to save my own life.

Later on in life after I had graduated from High School and moved back to San Diego and was able to get a job she was asking for all my money to help with the bills of the house, and to come to find out she was using it to cover her gambling losses.  

Due to the example my mother set for me on how to treat men and what men meant, I went through several horrible relationships, and associations with men. No matter how good a person was if my mother didn’t find them to measure up I would find away to destroy the relationship. This was done both on a sub-conscious and conscious level.

All throughout my life all I wanted was for my mother to love me for who I was and to accept me. I wanted so much to be accepted, and I strove so hard to achieve this by changing who I was and molding myself into something I thought she would accept more, and it never happened.  That is why my mother is the biggest agent of socialization I would change in my life.  By changing just the way my mother dealt with life I believe it would have altered all the aspects of my life and my sister’s life if she just cared enough to believe in her children instead of other people, who knows where I would be today.