Letting Go of Anger

I have a hard time talking about my mom.

Sometimes when I’m with friends I just want to sit and talk and talk about all of the good, the bad, and in-between.

Tonight I found myself spewing random memories and feelings at some of the friends in my unit and I noticed when I said something that I hadn’t ever before found the right words to describe how I feel.

You know, sometimes you just word vomit and as you’re explaining something, the words just fall into the right pattern. I was explaining how the relationship with my mom is really hard and I found myself saying

“It’s not that I’m actively angry at her. I don’t put any energy into my feelings toward her. It’s more that I’m passive aggressively angry at her.”

I don’t even know if that really makes sense to people that haven’t ever experienced what I have when it comes to having an estranged relationship with their mom.

But what I mainly mean is that… I’m really, truly not actively angry anymore. I’m no longer looking for reasons to be upset and I don’t spend much time thinking about what I could have done differently. I understand that addiction has underlying explanations and I understand that none of those reasons are a result of something that a child does. I was seven years old when DCFS took my sister and I from our mother, and though it felt like it was my fault at that time, I now understand that there are multitudes of reasons why it happened.

And none of those reasons were because of something I did.

I know that I was innocent in the matter and I’ve accepted that it’s part of my past that I can’t change, even though I so desperately wish things were different. Of course part of me wishes I could have done anything to make matters different, but that is just simply not the case.

So I guess the best way to describe my feelings is that I’m not actively putting any energy into being angry. Of course I still feel sad and upset, but I’m more passive aggressive towards the situation than I ever have been in my entire life. There were days in my junior high years when I punched walls with anger and cried myself to sleep – and I’m not saying I still don’t have hard days accepting what my life is – I’m just no longer wasting any energy on hating my mom for everything that she wasn’t. I’m no longer wishing I could have been better for her. I’m no longer feeling like the reality of our relationship was at the mercy of my own hands.

I was a child and she was wrapped up in addiction.

And that’s all there is to it. No more. No less.