It’s no secret that my relationship with my mother has been a rocky one. I can spend YEARS describing the trials and tribulations, the roller coaster ride, the *any metaphor you can think of* that has been our everyday for almost 30 years now. And maybe one day, in my wildest dreams where I’m an insanely popular author with a best selling memoir, I will tell the every detail of it.  But instead today I want to skip to a few weeks (maybe months now? ughh what is time?!) ago sitting in the kitchen of my 1 bedroom apartment in central (also known as middle of nowhere suburbia) New Jersey.

My best friend L, oldest younger brother E, my mother, and I were sitting and discussing the meal we had just had at Killer Vegan in Union, NJ. Sidenote, if you haven’t eaten there yet GET THE F*CK ON IT!! Two words: DISCO. FRIES. DOIT! Thank me later.

So anyway we’re sitting, chatting it up, when we somehow got on the topic of this time when I was a teenager and we had a major blow out fight. I was a teen and my mothers idiot boyfriend came into my room and ripped the phone out of the wall by the jack. It was a phone that had a cord attached to it (gasp! I know! those did exist at one point!) and he was stomping out of the room with it. I was holding onto the receiver end of the phone while the coiled cord stretched and stretched and stretched.

To put some of this into context, my mothers boyfriend was an alcoholic and we had an explosive relationship.  To this day I harbor so much hatred (even though I know it’s not good to hold onto those types of things) for that man, if you can even call him that.  So yeah, he was an alcoholic and super abusive. Never to me, partially because I think he was afraid of me killing him in his sleep. I may or may not have threatened to do so a few times. *shrugs* I’ll never confirm which it is though.  So anyway, alcoholic, abusive, narcissist, egomaniac.  You name it, he embodied it.  My mother clearly had STELLAR taste in men. At the time she was fighting her own battle with addiction.  And she was on the losing team.

So we used to fight endlessly.  This day was no different and he had come in to rip my phone out as some type of “punishment.” As he was proudly boorishly making his way out of my room, I was holding only the receiver waiting for the chord to stretch all the way out and for him to turn around so I could slingshot it right into his smug f*cking face. <—- My exact thoughts in that moment.

I guess as the chord was stretching out my mother decided she was going to try and talk some sense into him and calm him down.  Be the “hero” of the situation. But in that exact moment the cord hit its full length, he turned around… but moved to the side!…. and my mother stood in the direct path of the flying phone, and well; BAM! X marks the spot! Right in the center of her face it smashed it’s way into her nose.

Most people probably would have run over, apologized, or made some movement to help. Me? 14 year old, angry, little me? I burst out laughing. I mean all out, belly rumbling, tears coming down my face, hysterical laughter.  If I’m honest I still laugh about it.  Mostly because its f*cking ABSURD that it happened and instead of my intended target I hit my mother who is the biggest baby and cries when she has a hangnail, but DUDE. I. LOST. MY. SH*T. LAUGHING.

She ended up being fine and the a*shole just kept going with the phone while my mom cried and got ice for her face.

Back in the present time, I’m telling this story to L still laughing about the ridiculousness of it. Not even quite sure why the story was relevant to our conversation, it was meant to be funny, I know that. And my mom is staring in disbelief as if its the first time she’s hearing about it.  Like she isn’t even one of the main characters! So finally I look over at her and she’s just looking at me, slightly confused, with a thoughtful look on her face. When I made eye contact with her in that moment I was prepared to hear the denial or defensive retort I was used to whenever I brought up a not so wholesome memory from the past. What I got instead almost knocked me off my chair.

She said, “I don’t remember that.  I must have been really messed up then. I’m so sorry Jane.”

And that was it.

I honestly can’t tell you if I responded, although I’m sure I did. Whatever was said next the conversation kept rolling and the afternoon ended nicely.  But that one moment. Those few words would stick in my mind for WEEKS afterwards.

“I’m so sorry Jane.”

I hadn’t known, for TWENTY NINE YEARS I hadn’t known, that that was all I ever wanted to hear.

I marinated on it for a while.  And then I understood what all my years of resentment and anger were for…. I had felt like I was OWED an apology from her. She OWED me for the lack of childhood I had felt I had, she OWED me for all the years of fighting with her boyfriends, she OWED me for all the things I felt like she should have taught me but didn’t, she JUST OWED ME.

But it was in that apology that I also realized, that she actually didn’t. 

The bag in the featured image is an Ipsy bag from their monthly subscription last October. My mother gave it to me last year because she knew I would like it.  Because of my affinity for all things “woo-woo” (since I carry crystals, practice Reiki, and read planets & tarot) made her think of me when she got this. And I do in fact love it.  I carry it only the month of September and October so I can keep it in mint condition because I’ve come to treasure it.  But it wasn’t until that apology that I realized those things. And it wasn’t until that apology that I realized I was reluctant to admit that because prior to that this bag was just another thing I felt like I was owed.

The reality is that no other human being on this planet owes us a single thing. Not our friends, our lovers, our family, our parents. No one. And my mother had been trying for YEARS, in her own way, to make up for her wrongs.  Even if she wasn’t willing to admit them at the time.  But I was so caught up in my own anger and my own entitlement to understand that. To show her compassion. Or to appreciate the small gestures she was able to make.

It was in that brief moment, those few syllables, that I was able to admit my own wrongs. And I learned to let go of that anger and that feeling of superiority and entitlement I hadn’t known I was feeling. I feel freer for it. Lighter.

I’m still learning the intricacies that are to be this new relationship with my mom and I navigate them gingerly as a spider weaving her web. Sure to not step twice in the path I’ve already left behind. Hoping that when it’s over what’s left behind is nothing but the beautiful strength that is a result of what it took to get here.