I Don’t Like Your Mom (Confronting My Own Defensiveness)

          

            Sometimes, just sometimes, she gets on my nerves. It can irritate me to the point of shifting in my chair, looking around the room, fantasizing about escaping with the excuse of heading “to the bathroom”, but please know that I haven’t yet made that escape during a visit because I realize that this other person isn’t at fault entirely, if at all.

            (Oh! That’s right, I’m sorry, I forgot – My friend’s name is Meaghan and we’re gonna call her mom Lena.)

            Lena seems to me like she’s quite confident, which has to be a key part of her close, special friendship with her daughter, but I personally find her to be a little too pushy. It’s understandable that if you combine this with other details, Lena and I are just very different people who would not associate if it weren’t for the wonderfully nerdy Meaghan, and we only see each other every once in a while, anyway, so when Lena pisses me off, I have more than one reason for keeping my mouth shut, and instead of being immature, overreacting and blaming her, I remind myself to accept the challenge that these moments present.

          Here, I’ll explain. My friend’s mom pisses me off because I’m holding tightly to something that I technically shouldn’t be, leaning my weight against the flimsy door I constructed and propped up in the entrance to my figurative treehouse, and written on that door is something like,

because somebody has opposing opinions. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you know that I don’t want to choose something petty and rude and just commit to it, officially changing my address to that of the treehouse, an attitude that’s awfully limiting. No thank you. My Uncle John appears to have unapologetically maintained the same point of view on a number of things his whole life. He’s old school, as well as a white hetero cis male, a Catholic and the kind of person who gets their news from sources that are very few and very bias, which is how he likes his ideas. My uncle also says he has high blood pressure, significant aches and pains, and is notorious for his bad temper, so again, no thank you. I’m committed to growing, even if that means that occasionally, I’ll have to take a deep breath as my friend Meaghan’s mom goes on and on about something as if I’m her young daughter in need of a lecture, and I’ll ask myself why I’ve decided to be ticked off, what exactly I’m defensive about. If I want to be closed-minded in one aspect of life, maybe spend a few minutes playing the role of know-it-all, then why shouldn’t I get confident pushback from someone who may have an equal or greater quantity of jerk tendencies to my own? Facing challenges is part of why I’m alive, after all, and it’s useful for me to pause and reflect and let negativity move through me. To paraphrase Kyle Cease, of course I feel the [insert here] – because it’s leaving!

This person I don’t like is the mother of somebody I care about, and obviously, she’s one of my elders. I can behave, it’s no big deal. Being annoyed because we’re so different is just not important enough for even an eye roll, let alone a grudge. She and I both love her daughter Meaghan and I’m passionate about working on myself. Let’s chalk up my relationship with this older woman to being a course I have to take. I don’t currently have to deal with an annoying sibling bugging me when we’re together, so this is a lesson in place of that relationship.

          I’ll ace this course. We good.