I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 33

Mother seems to have an odd attitude towards gifts. One year at Christmas she gave me a video that at one time I would have been delighted to receive. I took one look at it and quietly said, “Uh, oh.”

Danice heard me and asked me what was wrong. I quietly explained my feelings about it to her and mother overheard me. She wanted to know what was wrong. When I explained it to her, she held out her hand and demanded that I give it back to her. That she would find something else to do with it. She didn’t offer to replace it with something else or exchange it for me. She simply took it back.  Had the situation been reversed, I would have either told her where I got it so she could exchange it or offered to exchange it for her. I certainly would not have demanded that she give it back.

She once bought a children’s worship cd for Caleb. When I told her that I wouldn’t be able to play it for him, as we didn’t have a cd player in the living room, she asked me to give it back to her. She would then see if she could exchange it for something else.

She also made a lampshade for a crayon shaped lamp and gave it to Caleb. He later got it taken away from him as he broke the bulb in it by knocking it over. Mother happened to come over and ask why it was in the living room, instead of the bedroom. When I told her, she said if we were going to give it away, she’d like to have it back. At this point I told her that she had no choice in the matter as she’d given it away.

She doesn’t understand me and has never really tried. I’ve quit trying to force her to. It doesn’t work anyway.

I know I was rebellious as a teenager. I realize now that it was largely the result of mother’s efforts to control me. I was not free to choose what I wanted to wear or what I read. When I was a teenager, bib overalls, spaghetti straps, halter tops, tube tops, two piece bathing suits, and short shorts were not clothing options for me, nor was anything strapless. All my bathing suits had to have a skirt or a little fold of fabric to hide my “jutting” pelvic bone. She even asked our pediatrician about my pelvic bone and received his assurance that there was nothing abnormal or “jutting” about it. Didn’t make any difference in the kinds of bathing suits I was allowed to wear.

Even as an adult living in her house, there were things such as the comics in the Sunday paper that I enjoyed reading, but that wasn’t allowed. Then there was a book called, “The Last Starfighter,” which she not only wouldn’t allow me to read, when she did catch me reading it, she took it away and destroyed it. The book didn’t even belong to me. It belonged to Andrew.

I have two regrets about my rebellion. One, I didn’t know then why I felt so rebellious and therefore didn’t understand it. Two, I was sneaky about it. I honestly wish I’d had the courage to tell my mother to “go to hell!” That I was going to explore who I was and what I wanted from life regardless of what anyone thought.

There was an evening when I was about nineteen or twenty and Andrew took me to his apartment so we could watch a movie on TV together. Mother insisted on coming and picking me up by a certain time, period. Despite our objections and telling her that Andrew would bring me home. I really resented that. She made me feel like I was a child who couldn’t be trusted on a date by herself. That wasn’t the only time she meddled in my relationship with Andrew.

One day he invited me out to dinner. Later he came and told me that he’d told a friend, Tracy he would take care of her son, Jacob, for the evening. I got upset with him, as he hadn’t consulted me despite the fact we already had a date for the evening. I told him that if he was going to take care of Jacob, I wasn’t going to dinner with him. He wouldn’t change his mind so mother went to dinner with him in my place. When they came back, she had the nerve to tell me she didn’t understand why I wouldn’t go to dinner with him and Jacob, as Jacob had been a well-behaved little boy. How well Jacob did or did not behave was not the issue. The issue was his refusal to consider my feelings and put me first in the matter.

 After Tracy took Jacob home that evening, he came to me and wanted to make it up to me by taking me out the next night. I was so angry and hurt by his refusal to put me first earlier in the evening, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go out with him. I screamed at him to leave me alone.  That I would think about it, as I didn’t know right then if I wanted to go. Mother came in a few minutes later and told me it wasn’t fair to Andrew for me to leave him hanging like that. Then she demanded that I make up my mind and give him a decision as I wasn’t being fair to him. I didn’t care at that point what was fair to him; after all he hadn’t been fair to me by agreeing to care for Jacob without asking me first.

I only agreed to go to dinner with him the next night because I was pushed into a decision and did not want to miss a chance to eat out. I hate to say this, but I didn’t really enjoy anything about our date. I didn’t go out with him that evening because of a true free will desire to be with him.

Andrew and I have since talked things out. He understands that what he did that evening was wrong and hurt me abominably. Yet this incident continued to bother me, but I couldn’t figure out why until someone told me I needed to forgive Andrew for what happened. That’s when I realized it wasn’t his part in this, which still bothered me. It was mother’s. I resented her interference in what should have been strictly between Andrew and me.

Another time Andrew got upset over something someone said to him on the phone He went outside and I started to follow him out but mother motioned for me to stay inside. Then she went out and talked to him about what was bothering him. I got so angry; I took it out on him for not refusing to talk to her. I realize now I was angry with her for doing what I should have been doing. She pushed her way into the situation. And she still, to this day, pushes herself forward.