Monday, June 8, 2009

dear shadow, alive and well

i'm not sure whether i want to be more or less like my mother. i'm sure that inevitably i will end up being more like her than i will ever fully realize, but if i had the choice, i'm not sure which i would choose.

i think my issue here is that i that i am able to see in myself the negative qualities that she possesses but not the positive ones. it's hard to say whether this is because i focus on faults more than i should (a quality that we share in different ways) or that because we are mother and daughter, i am not able to see the positive traits we share, since we don't always interact in a capacity that reveals them to me.

i will admit that an irrationality and impulsiveness of mood, which i can hardly tolerate in her, is something i unquestionably share. she is a harder worker than me and is able to take pride in a job well done in a way that i do not. i also wish i had more of her "joie de vivre," per se, as i love those times in which our family becomes effortlessly fun - kevin has inherited for sure, but that is also partially because i sometimes think he and my mother are nearly one and the same. mimi is like her in a different way, but i think this is because it is so easy to see my grandma haha in her. and of course my mother and maternal grandmother are going to have at least a cursory resemblance of disposition.

the reason i write this here is because i find it difficult to accept how well my mom knows me and can read me. i have such a need to be independent, even though i am not very good at it. honestly, she knows what mistakes i am going to make before i make them and what i'm going to succeed in before i do. i have such a drive to please her because somehow when she is happy with me, i know i can be happy with myself.

when i was a baby, so the story goes, someone told my mom that there had never been a mother and child so bonded. in a way, i think we still are - i think i might kind of be her shadow, the parts of me that come from her change and fluctuate all the time and in different settings.

i want to belong completely to myself, but i know i will always, at least a little, be a part of her.

No comments:

Post a Comment