instant ending

Growing up, I believed my mother didn't love me. I believed she didn't like me either. In Mommie Dearest there was a scene in which the teenaged Chrisina Crawford came to the same conclusion and it was disbelief at first, almost a question being whispered, My mother doesn't love me. When you say that kind of thing out loud it becomes a million times heavier than it is when it's still inside your head, and then the full weight of it crushes you beneath it. My mother hates me. My mother hates me. I said it with her.

I don't believe my mother hated me anymore. I think she was frustrated with me and with parenthood, and with her life in general. And I know she expressed herself in ways that highlighted the negative, leaving positives to be assumed rather than stated. I needed them to be stated. I was a sensitive child, easily hurt, easily damaged. It doesn't heal the child to feel better now - as an adult who is sometimes angry and frustrated as well. But it helps me to understand.

At times I have a heightened awareness of this type of self-expression, overly critical, stating only the negatives and leaving the positives unsaid. In my teaching career I have made it a habit to make as a public a statement as possible out of every positive and to make criticisms very gently and very sparingly. Some other teachers probably think I'm too soft. But it's important to me. It's what I believe in.

Regretfully, I don't think I have always been as careful with the people that I love as I have with my students. It's something I want to get better at.

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