Ready to Investigate

I'm home now and I feel like I can breathe. I want to say that I know I'm lucky. I have a family who loves me and cares about my well being and supports me. I have two bitingly hilarious brothers, a very sentimental and caring father, and a nephew who is so completely adorable he makes Dakota Fanning look like a snot-nosed brat. And then there is mom. I love my mom - so completely and so deeply and wholly that as I write this I can't help but tear up. As a child, I spent hours sitting on the edge of her bed as she laboriously french-braided my hair. She spent many a moon making alterations to my dance costumes so I would be the flashiest and most well presented during my recitals. She helped me practice for my choir auditions and competitions. She helped me learn to drive, write English papers, and paint my toenails without getting any polish on my skin. She was there, even when I thought I didn't need her to be.

So now I find myself in a bit of a crisis which is further highlighted during trips to my hometown. I know I'm essentially a part of my mother; everyone I meet tells me how alike we look. Family members inadvertently call me by her name. I'm mistaken for her when I answer the telephone at my parent's house. And the thing that plagues me the most is that most of my behaviors toward food were learned from her. I feel sometimes like she is clawing at me, trying to keep me like her and to keep me from pushing past the issues that keep weighing me down. This last trip was most difficult and I won't pretend that I wasn't hurt by some of the things she said to me. I feel like she's making a deliberate attempt to carve away the self confidence I've busted my ass to achieve. And why? That, I have no answer to. Some of my closest confidants think it's jealousy and I'm not sure I disagree. Our lives have taken very different paths, and a part of me wonders if she is wistful about the freedom with which I live my life. I'm not sure that my mother's life is what she would like it to be.

All of this leaves me feeling, for lack of a better word, lost. I feel like I've hit a plateau in my recovery and that if I don't deal with all of this 'mom stuff,' I'm going to be stuck here indefinitely. I'm not much for New Year's Resolutions, but I think in this case I'm going to make an exception - only this will extend beyond 2008. I am going to confront this part of myself. Maybe it means I have to lay it on the line with my mom, and maybe it means it have to resolve it within myself. For as long as I can remember I've tiptoed around addressing a part of my life that is probably the most definitive. And I think that 20+ years of tiptoeing is enough.

I am unwritten
Can't read my mind, I'm defined
I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand, ending unplanned