A lot of people wrote to me about how much they liked the story of me coming out as an atheist. I guess a sequel was inevitable. But things didn't go as smoothly as I hoped they would. I wanted everything to be OK after I came out in August. Everything looked like it was going to be fine. My brother and my father were fine with me being an atheist. They respected my choice. I thought my mother would come around and be tolerant. She didn't. I don't think that she ever will. She was really upset afterwards. I don't like it. I've seen her carry grudges around with her for years. There are some people she will never forgive. I hate to think that I'm going to be one of them. I never wanted that. All I wanted was for her to respect me.
I'm still glad I came out as an atheist. I don't regret it. I do feel better about myself. It's just that things with my mother went from bad to worse. I didn't want it to be like that. I didn't want this to be something that breaks our family apart. So I felt it was up to me to try to patch things up. It wasn't really my fault that things got so bad. But I felt that I was the only person who was willing to fix things. I feel I may have done that recently. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
Anyway, here is what happened between me and my
family after I came out...
Thanksgiving was well, weird. I went to my parents house for dinner. My brother was there. An aunt and an uncle on my father's side were there with their families. None of them were very religious. My mother's side of the family is the religious side. So no big discussions came up.
All night long my mother was really nervous and fidgety. I was calm and relaxed. She didn't say anything to me all night, well until the end. It was different. I enjoyed talking with my relatives. It was like the first time I'd been so comfortable when we had company over. Usually I felt nervous and stiff.
Then when I was leaving my mother followed me out to my car and laid it on me. It was scary. She just kind of exploded. She wasn't really mad or anything, she was just releasing a lot of pent-up emotions. They were all bad. She said a bunch of stuff about how I was all full of false pride like the Pharisees (or some bunch of people from the bible, I forget) and how I was a sinner and damned and fooling myself. She went on and on. I couldn't get a word in. I just stood there and let her talk. It seemed like she went on for half an hour. Then she said, "Mark my words young lady." and stormed off into the house.
It made me feel bad. Not that I was guilty or
anything. I felt bad because of how my mother felt. I never wanted to get
back at my mother. That's not why I told her I was an atheist. I just wanted
to be free from her. Now she's really hurt about it. I don't know what
to do.
It was like hell. They tortured me. And the heat was turned up too high in the back bedroom.
I shouldn't make jokes about it. There was nothing to laugh about. There was nothing to feel good about. I found out something that no one should ever find out. I found out that my mother never loved me.
Everything started out like Thanksgiving did. I thought it was going to be OK. I showed up about an hour after noon on Christmas day. My mother's sister and brother were there with their families. Their children were playing with all their new toys in the family room. Wrapping paper was still lying all over the place. The men were watching football and the women were talking in a different room. My mother was cooking a large turkey in the oven. It's wonderful smell was starting to fill the house. It was everything you'd expect Christmas to be like. It made me want to have a family of my own.
I said "hi" to everyone. They were happy to see me again. Well, except for my mother, but she faked it in front of the guests. Then I sat down with my two aunts and my mother and we all talked. I was calm and relaxed just like Thanksgiving. My mother was all fidgety. She kept excusing herself to go to the kitchen and check on dinner. I knew I was making her uncomfortable. I'd hoped she would have gotten over it. I'd hoped that she had gotten it all out of her system when she dumped on me on Thanksgiving. She hadn't. She was just getting started.
The afternoon went fine. The conversation was nice. I found out all about what my cousins were up to. I told them all about my big plans for the future. I felt like an adult for the first time. I felt like I was an equal. Dinner was great. We all stuffed ourselves with turkey. I think I ate more at that one meal than I do in a whole day. My mother may not be the greatest mother, but she's a really good cook.
After dinner I played with some of my nieces and nephews for a while. Last year I wouldn't have done that. Last year I thought they were just annoying brats. Things were different this time. I was thinking about how my own family would be. I wanted to see what being a mother was like. I found out that I wasn't really ready for it. But I found out that I liked children. I thought that maybe in a few years I'd start a family.
My uncle, who's a minister, came in and watched me play with his kids for a while. He said I'd make a good mother some day. That made me feel good. Then he said that there were some things he'd like to talk to my mother and I about. I was like "Oh dear, here it comes". I'd been expecting they'd get together to talk with me about being an atheist. So he and I went back to one of the back bedrooms. My mother was there and her sister was there. We all sat down and my uncle John started talking. I guess my mother had told them both about what happened in August when I came out as an atheist. Well, she'd told them her version of what happened. They didn't ask me about my version. That was annoying.
They started out really civil and nice. Uncle John said he wasn't going to blame anyone for what happened. He only wanted to patch things up between my mother and I. That sounded fine to me. He started talking about how bad my mother had felt after the vacation in the mountains. He talked about how hurt she felt. He talked about how much she loved me. He talked about how hard she tried to make sure everything went fine. He used the great dinner my mother had just cooked as an example of how hard she works for everyone. He was right. My mother does work hard when company comes over. She wants everything to be perfect. And she was hurt after the vacation even though I felt that she brought it on herself. So I agreed with him.
Then things started to change. He asked me to put myself in her shoes. So I did. He asked me how I would feel if I went through so much effort and the people I had worked so hard for weren't grateful. Of course I said that I'd be hurt. What else could I say? Then he asked me how I would feel if I took my family on a vacation and they didn't act respectful of me. I knew what he was getting at. I started to say that I wasn't disrespectful but John stopped me. He said he wanted me to say how I would feel if I were in that position. Of course I said that I would feel hurt. Then he asked me if I understood how my mother felt after our vacation that summer. They wanted me to say yes but I couldn't. It wasn't like that at all. They were making it all out to be like I was totally responsible for everything that happened. Then I started to realize how much of a hole I was in. They'd tricked me. I had to agree with them. I couldn't say that she wasn't hurt and I couldn't say that I didn't know how she felt and they weren't going to let me argue about what actually happened. I was trapped. I couldn't think of anything to say. I started to say something three times and stopped myself. It was like anything I said was going to make things worse for me. It made me upset. I finally gave in and agreed with them.
Then uncle John asked my to apologize to my mother for how I acted during the vacation. That really made me angry. I didn't do anything wrong. If anyone should be apologizing it should be my mother. I mean, I know I said some dumb things but so did she. So I asked uncle John if my mother was also going to apologize to me for what she said. He said that that didn't matter right now. He said if I felt that I had hurt my mother that I should apologize. Well, I didn't want to look like a child so I apologized for the stuff I did that made my mother upset. Then uncle John asked my mother if she accepted it and she said yes. I expected her to apologize to me but she didn't. Instead uncle John started asking me why I said the things I said and why I did the things I did. I was going to say something about my mother not apologizing but I couldn't. I'd look selfish if I did. They had me trapped. I couldn't find a way out. It made me really angry inside but I couldn't show it. I had to sit there and do whatever they said. I was fuming inside but I kept it hidden.
So I told uncle John that the reason I did all
those things was because I wanted to tell her that I was an atheist. Then
he asked me if atheists were supposed to be disrespectful of their parents.
That really made me upset. Didn't they understand that I didn't have a
choice about telling her? So I said that I wasn't
disrespectful. Then uncle John said that I had
just admitted that I had been disrespectful. I said that that had come
afterward. The first thing I said was that I didn't believe in God. Then
he asked me how I told her. I said that it was during grace. He said that
saying grace is a holy thing. He said that what I did was very disrespectful.
I said that forcing me to do something I didn't believe in was also disrespectful.
He said I should have told her sooner or waited until after we said grace.
Well, I know I messed up when I said I was an atheist during grace. So
I said that it was a stupid thing for me to have done. It made me feel
like crap to have to agree with them all the time.
Then uncle John skipped ahead to the part when I dressed up as a goth when my family went out to dinner. He asked me if that was a proper way to dress when I went out to eat with my family. I said that I wanted to show my mother how I dressed when I went out with my friends on the weekends. He asked me if I thought I would embarrass my mother by dressing up like that. I said that I felt I would. He asked me why I did that instead of showing her in some other way which wouldn't have embarrassed her. I didn't have an answer. He had me trapped again. I couldn't figure out how to get out. I agreed with them again. I knew I didn't have to dress up goth that night. I knew I did it just to push my mother's buttons. I didn't have anything to say in my defense. They made me feel like a two year old. I felt that way too. I felt totally helpless and totally wrong.
I asked to be excused to go to the bathroom. They let me. I didn't need to go. I just had to get out of there. I needed some time to think. I felt like my Witch Queen character in the role-playing thread. I was trapped in a cage and I needed to buy time to figure out a way out. But I wasn't calm like she was. I was feeling a whole lot of emotions. I was angry and sad and depressed and frustrated all at the same time. I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn't know if I was going to cry or break something. They had made me feel like shit. I knew the vacation wasn't like the way they were making it out to be but I couldn't argue about it. I couldn't think of anything to say. I thought about running away. I thought about just leaving the house and never coming back. But I knew I couldn't. That would just be admitting to them that they were right. I stayed in the bathroom for a long time. I just lay there on the floor trying to think of something to do. I couldn't think of anything. I couldn't block out what I was feeling. Uncle John knocked on the door and asked if I was all right. I pretended like I was fine. I wiped a few tears from my face and fixed myself up. I couldn't show them that I was getting weak.
When I got back to the room I took a look at my mother. She looked so smug. It made me sick. It's like she was saying to me "So there. You lose. I win.". I knew I was losing. Losing isn't a big deal to me. But I always hated seeing the winner gloat. I really wanted to wipe that smug grin off of her face.
Uncle John asked me why I was an atheist. I told him a few of the reasons I had. He began using some of the old counter arguments. It wasn't anything I hadn't seen a hundred times on the internet. I knew what to say. After a while I realized that he'd tricked me again. He had me trying to defend what I believed in. I knew how that trick works. I'd used it on my family in the summer. Now he was using it on me. So I started to turn things back around on him. He'd ask me something and then I'd ask him something. He figured out what I was trying to do. He kept turning things back around on me. We went back and forth for a while. It was kind of fun. We both were trying to trip each other up. Neither of us could force to other to make a mistake.
Then my mother said, "She thinks she's so clever. She's learned a few things from her atheist friends and now she thinks she knows everything.". That surprised uncle John. He told my mother that we should be nice to each other. She reluctantly got quiet but I could see she was irritated. She didn't like how I was able to stand up to uncle John. I knew I could push my mother's buttons. I knew I could make her mad. I realized that it was the way out of their trap. If I could get my mother mad then uncle John would have to be on my side. I jumped at the chance.
"Compared to you I do know everything.", I said. Then I went for her throat, "I read the bible to find out what it says, you don't care what it says. You just listen to your imaginary Jesus friend. He tells you whatever you want to hear so that you can feel good about yourself."
My mother got really mad. Uncle John tried to calm us down but it was too late.
"Take that back you little...", she stopped herself. There was a moment of silence.
"Bitch?", I added. I wanted to push her over the edge. "Come on mother. Call me a bitch. I know you want to. Call me a little bitch!"
She paused and then she exploded, "How dare you speak to me like that you little bitch!". She was yelling loud enough for everyone in the house to hear her. She kept on ranting, "After all I've done for you this is how you treat me. I carried you in my womb. I changed your diapers. I cooked your meals. I drove you to school. I quit my job to take care of you and look at how you turned out. You're nothing but a failure. A useless failure. You've failed at everything you've tried to do. You tried to learn the piano and you failed at that. You wanted to play softball and you failed at that. You wanted to be an actress and you failed at that. You wanted to be a writer so we sent you to college and now you can't get a job. We've always supported everything you wanted to do and you've always let us down. Now you're failing Jesus and God himself. You're failing our family. You're a failure as a daughter. You're nothing but a worthless failure."
I just sat there staring at her. I didn't know what to say. I'd always thought that she felt that way, but I'd never heard it until then. That was how she really felt about me. That was what she kept inside her. It really hurt to hear it. It hurt because I felt that it was true.
I'd tried. I'd tried so hard to do all those things. I really wanted to succeed. I really wanted to make my mother happy. I just couldn't do it. Something always happened. It wasn't my fault. I'd tried my hardest. That's all I can do. But my best just wasn't good enough for her. Nothing was ever good enough for her. I always failed no matter how hard I tried. I was a failure.
Uncle John was trying to get my mother to sit down. She had stopped ranting. My father and brother had come to the door. They wanted to know what was going on. I was sitting there on the edge of the bed. I felt tears coming on. I didn't want anyone to see me like that so I got up and left the room. I walked out of the house and out to my car. My brother walked out with me. He asked me if I was all right. I said yes. I was lying and he knew it. He let me go anyway. I gave him a big hug and got in my car. I needed time alone. I remember him standing in the driveway as I drove off. He really cares about me. He's a great guy.
I got back home and collapsed into bed. I lay there staring at the ceiling. I'd been holding back the tears for the whole drive home. Now I could finally let them flow. It hurt so much to hear how my mother felt about me. It was true. I'd failed at a lot of things. That's why it hurt so much. I wished that I had one thing that I could hold up as something I'd done to show my mother that I wasn't a failure. I couldn't think of anything. All I had was the hope that I'd succeed one day. It wasn't enough to make me feel better. It never was. I'd been hoping for something like that all my life. I had nothing.
I kept seeing my mother's smug face. She wanted to defeat me. It made me want to defeat her. We ended up beating each other. We were both losers. We were both failures.
I couldn't get to sleep for hours. I was getting really depressed and upset. I cried a lot. I've had bad nights before but this was one of the worst. I couldn't stop thinking about all the horrible things that had happened that night. I was grateful when sleep finally came.
I went back to my parents house for dinner the next day. I don't know why. I was really depressed. I didn't feel like going back at all. But I'd told them I was off work that day so I had to show up. I didn't even try to act happy. Everyone was kind of nervous. They were trying to pretend that nothing had happened but it wasn't working. It was on everybody's mind. I guess they were scared that my mother and I were going to start fighting again. We didn't.
I ate dinner. I couldn't each much. I finished half my plate and threw the rest away. I wanted to leave. I was starting to feel ill. My head was pounding. I was tired.
I said good-bye to everyone and headed for the door. My father beat me to it. He wanted to give me a big hug before I left so I let him.
I said to him, "Do you still love me even though I'm a horrible, disgusting, atheist?".
He smiled and looked me in the eyes, "You'll never be horrible or disgusting."
That made me smile. I felt a little better. I
looked over at my mother who watching from the kitchen.
She turned away but I saw the expression on her
face. She was jealous. She was jealous that my father still loved me. Finally
things started to make sense.
Now I know why my mother hates me so much. It's not because I failed at a lot of things. Those are just her excuses. She hates me because my father still loves me. She hates me because he loves me more than he loves her. Now she's trying to get back at me. She's trying to punish me for something that's not my fault. She has to compete with me and beat me at everything. That's why she was so smug when uncle John was making me apologize and admit that I was wrong. She wants to make everyone else think that she's right and I'm wrong. She tells everybody about what a terrible daughter I am just to make her feel better about herself. She thinks she's a loser and she needs to feel like a winner so she makes me suffer whenever she feels bad. I feel that she's done that to me for my entire life.
I have this image of me as a newborn baby. My father takes me in his arms for the first time. He looks at me and falls in love with me. He says "How's my beautiful baby girl? How's the most beautiful little girl in the world?". My mother looks at him and feels betrayed. She feels like my father has left him for another woman. She feels anger and jealousy. She feels his love slipping away from her. She feels hatred towards me. She feels like I stole the only person who ever loved her away from her.
And now my whole fucked up life finally makes sense. My mother never loved me. That's why I could never make her happy. No matter what I did she could never truly love me. She wanted to see me fail. She wanted me to suffer for being who I was. That's why I felt like a failure all my life. That's why I feel that way now.
I feel I can get over it though.
But I feel my mother never will.
I'm not a failure. I'm not a success. I'm Veyanne
and that's all I need to be.
I guess I was being hard on myself when I wrote the story about Christmas. I was feeling upset and I poured all my feelings out. I don't really feel I failed at all those things I tried. I felt I failed my mother. Now I feel that I could never live up to her expectations anyway. When I look back on what I've done I feel good about myself. That's the important part. I mean, take acting. How many girls dream of being an actress when they grow up. A lot of. How many make it as an actress. A few. Does that mean that the rest are failures? No. It only means that they aren't the best.
Some of those things my mother said she said only to hurt me. I mean, I never took wanting to play the piano seriously, and the actress thing was really short lived. I got so stiff when I had to perform in front of others. I was awful. It's not easy to act. Saying I was a failure at softball hurt. I was good. I was a starter all three years. Well, two and a half. Our first coach was great. She didn't put any pressure on us. She just liked to teach us how to play. She wanted us to have fun. We did. We didn't win a whole lot but we had a lot of fun. Then my senior year we got a really serious coach. She was like, "Winning is everything. Get off my team if you aren't here to win". It wasn't fun anymore but I stayed on. What really did it in for me was that she wanted us to play rough. She wanted us to take out the second baseman to break up the double play. Well, one game I was on first and that situation came up. The other team's second baseman was so tiny. She was an asian girl no taller than 5'. I couldn't do it. I felt I would have really hurt her. So instead of sliding into her I held up short. When I got back to the bench the coach really let me have it. It was so stupid. I quit.
I know I'm not a failure as a writer. I know I can write well. It's just hard to get a job. Nobody has it easy out there.
So I don't feel like I'm a failure. That's not the reason I don't like the idea of failure and success. It's just that if you believe that you have to succeed you're going to be let down most of the time. We shouldn't put so much pressure on children to succeed. We shouldn't make them feel bad if they don't. They'll just end up feeling bad about themselves. And the ones that do succeed usually end up neurotic it seems. Is that what we want? Do we want everyone to end up feeling bad about themselves? No. If you feel that you have to succeed then things aren't fun anymore. And if they aren't fun, why do them?
OK, so I'm way off the topic of what happened over the Martin Luther King Jr.'s Day weekend. Actually I only met with my parents for one night. We had dinner and my mother and I talked about a few things. I feel we resolved a lot of issues. Maybe it's the start of something good between us.
We don't usually get together for dinner. And Martin Luther King Jr.'s Day isn't a holiday for me. The whole reason why we got together is because I talked on the phone with my uncle John after Christmas. I was talking with a friend in e-mail and he suggested that I make the call. It was worth it.
My uncle John and I talked for about an hour. It helped a lot. He wasn't as angry with me as I thought he would be. I felt he thought my mother was in the wrong for insulting me. He said I shouldn't have snapped back at her. I agreed. Then we talked about my mother for a while.
He told me about the rivalry between my mother and her sister (his wife). They fight a lot but they hide it. He knows about it because his wife tells him about all the terrible things my mother did and said to her. It goes back for years. They've been fighting since they were little kids. And they've never truly forgiven each other. I remembered one time when they got into a fight sending letters to each other. My mother was so angry. She ranted on and on about all the things my aunt said to her and how wrong she was and how spiteful she was. That went on for a month and then they stopped speaking to each other. Uncle John stepped in to patch things up, well, enough so that they would talk to each other again.
I was like WOW. I didn't know my mother was such a competitive person. My uncle said that I should deal with them the same way he deals with his wife, just go along with them, don't make waves. I told him that I felt that I had to make waves to feel like I was my own person. I told him that I felt I had to come out and tell her that I was an atheist so that I could be free from her control. He asked me if I felt like I was free. I said yes. He said that I should be able to go along with her now. He said that if I knew in my heart that I was free then it didn't matter how I acted around her. Wow. That was like a bolt of lightning. It's like, it doesn't matter how she treats me as long as I feel I'm free. I thanked him for talking to me. I felt so relieved.
After that I felt like I can be fake or nice or anything and I won't resent it. That's what really got to me before. When I was faking it I felt so bad about myself. I felt I wouldn't feel that way anymore. So I decided to put myself to the test. I called my mother. I said I wanted to come over and talk. I said I wanted to apologize for the fight on Christmas. I said that I wanted us to stop fighting. She was all self-righteous and asked me if I thought they would like to have me over after what had happened. I stayed calm. I said I wanted us to make up. I wanted us to finish what uncle John started. She had to agree, otherwise she'd look bad.
So I came over for dinner on Saturday night. My mother's a great cook. She fixed a wonderful tuna casserole for my father and I. I stuffed myself again. I don't get home cooked meals very often.
We went into the living room after dinner. I started off our talk by telling my mother that I didn't want to fight with her anymore. I said that I apologized for upsetting her on Christmas day. I didn't say that I said those things because she said some nasty things to me. We would have got into another fight. My mother accepted my apology. She's good about things like that. It makes her feel like she's won. It's kind of a weakness for her.
Then I decided to dig into her past. I said I didn't want our relationship to end up like the one between her and her sister. That made her uncomfortable. She said that she didn't want to talk about it. I asked her why. She said that the things that went on between her and her sister were private matters. I asked her if she still held things against her sister that happened when they were children. She started to get upset. She said that she wasn't going to get into the past. She said that the past was long forgotten. She said that I was only going to make things worse if I tried digging into it.
Well, it was easy for me to see that she was hiding a lot of things. There were a lot of unresolved issues in her past. That was obvious. I really wanted to get into them with her. I feel that I could really help her with her relationship with her sister. I feel it would help our relationship too. But I know that therapy isn't something you can force on people. She didn't want to talk about the past at all. I left it alone. Maybe one day she'll want to talk about it. I won't hold my breath.
I asked her if there was a way to make our relationship better. She said that if I admitted that I was wrong everything would be OK. I said that I had apologized for the bad things I'd said during the summer vacation and Christmas holiday. She said that she meant that I should say I was wrong about being an atheist.Well, I wasn't going to do that. And I didn't want to get into another argument about it. So I asked her if she would ever be OK with me being an atheist. She said that I should know how she felt about that. I asked her if she still loved me even though I was an atheist. She was quiet for a while. I was really nervous inside. I know I'd asked a really tough question. I had no idea what she was going to say.
"I don't think I can love someone who doesn't believe in God.". Those were her exact words. It was strange. I didn't feel let down or disappointed or sad or anything. I've heard the same thing all my life. My mother believes in conditional love. She withheld it from me whenever I did something that she didn't like. That happened a lot. Only it wasn't always what I did that she didn't like. Sometimes it was just who I was. I was her rival for my father's affection. When he showed me that he loved me it made my mother feel bad. That made her withhold her love from me. I know that's the real reason why she never loved me. All those things she says about me being a failure or me not believing in God are just her excuses. That's clear to me now. The neat part is that I'm OK with it.
I asked her if I was still going to be invited over during holidays and when we went on vacations. She started to say something about how she wasn't sure. My father spoke up for the first time all evening. He said that if they disowned me then I'd never come to believe in God. He said that they needed to show me good Christian love. He said that I would eventually see what's right. I know what you're thinking. You think that my father turned against me. He didn't. He was really on my side. He was being sneaky. He didn't really care what I believed. He only wanted to see me again. He was just trying to convince my mother that they shouldn't throw me out of the family. My mother wasn't quite convinced. I said that I promised that I wouldn't get into any more fights. I said that we could always discuss religion and that I would be nice about it. My mother grudgingly said that I could still come over and do "family functions". Well, family dysfunctions is more like it. She said that I was only allowed to come over if I would be respectful of God and Jesus and the religious side of the family. I said that I would. I know that means going to church and saying grace and all that. To me that's not a big deal. It doesn't bother me to do that. I was just happy that I would get to be with my family again.
So in a way my mother accepted me as being an atheist. I'm sure she doesn't realize it.
In a way that's kind of funny.
