On Conquering Mommy Issues

Recently, I have begun (to my great dismay) to enjoy the early 2000s classic television show Gilmore Girls.

Why to my great dismay you ask? Well, not only is it known to be a sappy, action-less TV show about a classic girl-gets-pregnant-at-sixteen quintessential chick show that I never in my life could have imagined being so drawn to, but it is a constant reminder that a relationship like that of Rory and her mother really does only exist on television. I am absolutely tired of TV giving false hope for certain relationships and fixable amends that so rarely exist. In this specific instance, it's quite simply put like this:

I don't like my mother. 

It's often an arguable sentence followed by "oh, you don't mean that" or "hell she birthed you, she's the only reason you're here." I'm here to say that that's malarkey because not everyone has to get along with their mothers because they owe them. Not everyone enjoys pity or essentially a lie.

We have all thought it at least once in our lives, deny it all you want. In some cases, it really can truly be seen as just an outburst of emotion because she won't let you go to a party the cute guy from school is at or yells at you for not cleaning your room. But in some cases, we go past the "oh its just temporary" phase and you reach a point where everything she says and does makes you want to kill yourself or someone else, which ultimately leads to a serious fist battle with a pillow. 

This, my friends, is me.

and really it's not always just the mother that does this. It can be anyone: another family member, a classmate, someone you barely know...we've all been there. But living with that person...sleeping within a small vicinity from someone who drives you to the brink of insanity...that can really drive someone mad.

I'm not ungrateful for the life she's provided me and the many opportunities I have because of the choices she's made, don't get me wrong. But I am tired of being blackmailed and held accountable for trying to enjoy the life that she has provided me. 

What mothers don't understand is that they can keep giving and give and providing and spending, but it'll all mean absolutely nothing if they keep buying those things in order to form a manipulative I-owe-you situation that you had no idea you signed up for. You accept what she gives you, and in return, she is able to later scold you for either not being grateful for whatever it is that she has provided you because you may not be using it enough, or by complaining that you are spending too much time with it. They will rarely resort to an in-between, and rejecting the object will cause an even greater flurry. 

Really, it's not a little-spoiled kid complaint about getting too much. Many of us so-called "spoiled kids" are very much willing to give up all the extra trinkets for a better relationship with our parents.

The little fights start when you're young, they begin to grow along with you, soon escalating out of proportion until trying to speak kindly to your adult figure is harder than trying to think of a single day where, after having interaction, a fight had not erupted between you and your legal guardian. These fights often stem from their own previous hardships rather than any truthful feelings of remorse they might've had towards you. It's especially easy to argue with your mother if you completely disagree with almost every one of her ideals and views on life. Lack of compassion, overly conservative: often the thoughts of a Soviet-born immigrant such as my mom. To really make me feel bad about our disagreements, mother often claims to see only my father in me, who she very blatantly despises for the multiple indiscretions he has committed against her. If that's not the most heart wrenching, gut turning insult a mother can think of, then I honestly couldn't tell you what is.

When I figured I had had quite enough, I began to wonder as to how I could possibly calm the storm. So, I started testing out a variety of theories on how to handle an angry mother with every fight we had. With each battle, I recorded the different results and the approximate time it took her to cool off. Let's think of this as a bit of a science project, shall we?

Procedure: 

Find a constant (keep the fights revolved around a similar, more basic topic so that the results aren't altered due to an arguably unusual mindset)
Act as though you are not running a trial or force the enactment of a reaction (to keep the results as practical and usual as possible)
Once you hear angry stomping approaching your location, take a quick look at the clock and remember the time (stopwatch may be used for accuracy)
Let the subject speak first, as to stray away from altering any mindset before beginning the experiment
Let the theory testing begin

Now here's a look into my three most entertaining or effective results...

1) Just Being Quiet.

This one was definitely the hardest one for me to perform, as I am not one to often take any shit without retaliating. I swear I could hear her mind screaming "why won't she respond." She was practically beginning me to allow her a smirk. But her dismay proved my theory effective, as she quickly got bored and retreated...for a while. I ran three trials of this technique and every one of them proved that although her first fit and empty threats lasted under two and a half minutes, a significantly smaller time frame than any other technique could provide, she would always end up returning with a second thought. I guess that without providing a second voice, I volunteered myself for an I'm-all-ears listening session. 

2) Using Logic

Oh, she especially did not enjoy this one. Thinking logically is not often something someone with her thought process might enjoy. For instance, tonight I used her bathtub to take a nice bath because, in my bathroom, the glass doors had fallen on me three times before and I was still a little paranoid. She barges into her room to complain about me for being in her tub when she had needed it. I offered that she go use my bathtub, which she had argued had been fixed properly and was "just as nice." With no adequate retaliation at hand and a serious loss for words, she became frustrated to the point of screaming and swearing me up and down through the locked door. Logic and proof that she was wrong did not make mom happy in this specific trial or any of the ones beforehand. The fight lasted half an hour before I decided to return back to the quiet technique and get the fight over with. This, my friends, is not something you should use to calm an angry mother.

3) Leaving the Room

In my hypothesis, I had predicted that this would be the winner to most effective at calming the storm. I was dreadfully mistaken. Leaving the room without a word only prompted her to follow me to my bedroom without knocking, which then spurred to the argument of a messy room and so on and so forth. There was no other room to escape to, it's her roof you're under.'

As much as it irks someone with my big mouth to say this, just being quiet and trying to shove your two cents up a certain hole is the best way to avoid a longer conflict with mama bear. After all, no matter how much you might dislike one another, you are family. Those moments that you spend not wanting to kill each other are the ones that'll help you remember them in a positive light, no matter how awful they sometimes may be.