Friday, May 16, 2008

Satisfaction

There is such a sense of satisfaction when you have the opportunity to right a wrong that has been done to someone. I love it!

Saturday, May 10, 2008

My (Least) Favorite "Holiday"

Many of us detest Mother's Day. It is yet another painful reminder of what we did not have growing up and what many of us continue to not have today--a loving mother figure who accepts us as we are and actually considers the effect her actions have and have had upon our lives. I'd like to wax poetic about the many ways my mother showed how much she loved me. I'd like to tell you about the warm hugs, the neverending emotional support, the security of growing up surrounded by so much love. But I can't tell you about that because that wasn't in the house I grew up in.

To be fair to my mother, I will say that there are some examples of some kind of love or caring from my mother--but they actually make me even sadder because of their pitiful lack. They aren't that heartwarming. Mostly the few displays stemmed from her own feelings of sadness or unhappiness and really didn't have much to do with me. They weren't recognition that I needed nurturing or was worthy of caring, much less love.

So this Mother's Day fills me with the same sadness it always does. The flowery cards available in stores just don't accurately reflect our relationship. Examples:
-"You were always there for me." No, can't say that.
-"I could always count on you." Um, to insult me, sure, but I don't think that is what the card is referring to.


Actually, it looks like e-mail Mother's Day cards contain much more neutral sentiments than the excessively sugary, nausea-inducing cards available in the greeting card aisles, but not many mothers would be satisfied with an e-mail instead of a card. Maybe it's that they want something tangible to show to themselves and others how wonderful they are.

Okay, so my mother wasn't always loving or supportive or "there" for me. That used to fill me with resentment, but now it mostly makes me feel sad. Don't misunderstand--there are days when she can still make me angry, but my overriding emotion when I think of her is sadness. I am sad because I now have an inkling of what she has missed out on and is still missing out on.
-She missed out on having a true relationship with me. Our relationship is very superficial. If I tell her anything "real", I frequently end up regretting it. Anything told to her can and will be thrown in my face at any time.
-She missed out on knowing what a good person her daughter is. This sounds self-congratulatory but I'm a good person. However, my mother doesn't know that because she sees me through a filter of her own actions and warped ideas. She always assumes the worst of me, but not of her other child(ren). I used to believe that it was a reflection of how she thought I was "dirty" or something similar, but now I suspect that it is because of her own feelings about her own behavior when she was younger. She always assumed that I was doing the "bad" things she herself did as a teen. She was obsessed with the idea that I was doing drugs and smoking when I was a teen; the fact that I hadn't left the house and wasn't allowed to didn't matter to her. She was sure I was doing it. Later I learned that she had begun smoking at a very young age. Her certainty that I was smoking was based on her own past, not on my actions. That filter hindered her from seeing me for myself or my own actions.
-She has to live with her actions. I wouldn't want to be her. If she is ever honest with herself, it isn't going to be pretty.

Most of all, I now know more about the mother-child relationship and what it can be like. And it isn't all about being the cookie-baking mom who doesn't work; it's about all the little moments that add up to an overall feeling of acceptance, love, belonging, etc. The knowledge that there is someone always in your corner, someone you can count on. Regardless of whatever faults a person may have, for a child to have that kind of security means to me that someone is a good mother. At that my mother failed, and I don't envy her having to live with that. It's true that she may not be in touch with reality enough to fully acknowledge that, but on some level I think she has to know and have regrets.

Happy Mother's Day? I don't think so.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Was it really doubt, or was the horror too much for you?

There are probably few people who have been able to avoid the news about the Austrian case which has horrified so many recently. However, this post is not about him or any of his victims. This post is about a young reporter whose introduction to it was how she doubted the story. Despite all her many years of life experience (about the same number of years as this man's daughter was locked up for his amusement), she began her trip to this town to report on the story with the preconceived idea that it was made up, lies.

Maybe her article originally had more and an editor cut it. Maybe an editor cut out a lot of the article. I would hope so because I found it to be lacking. I would hope that a journalist would be able to write better than that. She did not tell why she was so sure that it was false--was her childhood that idyllic? did she not believe that there are no bogeymen in the world?--or maybe she is so naive that she cannot grasp the concept that man can be so depraved. Would that we were all that naive, and that there was no need for us to have our eyes opened to the cruelty that exists!

Maybe she could not imagine the daily torture of living in such cramped conditions for a seeming eternity.

She did not share what changed her mind, what made her realize that it was indeed a true story. Fact. Or maybe she didn't change her mind--she never said.

She tells of spending only four days in the village and yet being glad to leave it, how she cried when telling her own father about the story.

That article has bothered me a great deal since I read it. Many people already know how people want to look the only way when there is wrong being done; it doesn't involve them, it's none of their business, there are oh so many reasons why getting involved would be inconvenient for them.

All this young woman had to do was her job. She went to the town on assignment with an attitude of doubt, and left it apparently (it was never stated in the article, another omission/edit/?) no longer in doubt that the horrible events had really occurred. She cried when telling her own father about it on the telephone.

So what was the point of the article? What was it supposed to have added? Was it really worthy of being published?

Or am I expecting too much from a field that has lost a lot of its luster anyway? More tabloid than news source?

Did I expect more from this reporter because she's a woman? I don't think so. I think it's the way the article was written. The title is used to highlight her disbelief, and the article states her initial disbelief. So the purpose was to grab our attention--which it did. But what strikes me is the utter pointlessness of the article. And why a well-known news service would publish it. I'm at a loss for what was supposed to be accomplished.

And maybe it's easier for me to focus on that than to focus on the true "story" behind her article--the people who have lived what is only a news story for reporters.