A Child (Not) Raising Children

Through decades of therapy, I've come to understand that my mother never grew up. She related to her children, then, as a child. We were her dolls, Charles and Charlene (a la Ken and Barbie), raised in a doll house with her doll dogs. Our inconvenient emotions were not welcome in the facade that was our home. Anger would not have matched the fabric. 

So it still animates my words on the page; it still occupies my dark heart. A heart that knows the truth but can't reconcile it all to set myself free. Free from her limitations, her failures, her cascade of daily judgments and microagressions that left indelible marks on my psyche. She was a child, after all, as I remind myself daily, paving a path to forgiveness. I've done my work. I often wonder how it would have all turned out had she done hers.