On My Mind - My mother the pessimist

By Omar Marsh, Contributor

MY MOTHER, I love her so, is largely a pessimist. I realised something was wrong from her constant recollections of her traumatic experience as a child.

Not having her teenage mother around much for nurturing, she had to play the role of nurturer to her younger siblings. Being constantly annoyed with the "little bastards", although only three and a half feet in height herself, she would fittingly spite them.

She was later quasi-adopted by a woman of no relation who treated her as such. She suffered being placed in confinement where she was verbally and physically abused. When she escaped she left with feelings of rejection and hurt and little feelings of love. The lessons she learnt as a child, combined with a limited education, hardly equipped her for the role of motherhood.

My brothers and sisters and I have enough horror stories of abuse to last us a lifetime. Oh, how I love stories with happy endings, pity! There's none.

They have all abandoned her abuse for a brighter future. They do not call but she doesn't mind because she hates them so. That's what she learned from both her mother and lady of no relation.

My dad, after awhile couldn't cope with her bewilderment. He married for love, he got a life of pain. He has left her and is happy once more.

Everyone knows our predicament of course because it's in her emotive and behavioural pattern to slander, scrutinise and besmirch people's character for self gratification. She knows not how to love and is dragging each family member one after the other through the courts.

It would take a psychologist to understand the things I've gone through trying to love her.

Is there no appeal for my mother? She remains dismissive of my attempts to help her. She's in denial and so is staying in her selfish little world.

Any suggestion to help her, please!

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