let's do some more touchin' up

I've blogged a few times (ok, that's an understatement) about my mom. Alas, dear reader, this is going to be another post about the lady who gave birth to me.

To say my mother had an unhappy childhood is putting it mildly. She was one of seven children of a drunk and a psycho. She cut off a lot of contact with her family when she started her own family with my dad, but still maintains some contact with them. As the child of a psycho and a drunk, she is not as bad as she could be. She loves her children and honestly believes that her motives are always pure when it comes to her relationships with her children.

We are not a family who shows affection very much. This makes me feel a huge disconnect between myself and my brothers and my parents. There is no casual touching of any form, no hugging or kissing. Everyone has their own personal space and GOD FORBID we ever invade it. My mother was not in a family of demonstrative affection either (in fact just the opposite as there was massive child abuse on both the part of her father and mother towards her and her siblings). And though she talks about how she wishes there had been more love in her childhood, that touching is important for showing people you care for how you feel, she is unable to express her love for her children through touch.

I'm not saying I want the woman to feel me up, I'm just saying that actual YEARS pass between any form of affection between us.

YEARS.

The other night, my mom was showing me a glass door that she had repaired for me on these built-in bookcases in my living room. She had promised me to get it fixed when I first moved into the house (they are original to the house - 1913) but never had gotten around to it. My Christmas present this year is the repair of these two glass doors. One is done already and my dad installed it while I was at work. I was looking at it, it's really nice, and I was saying all the right things: thank you, this is awesome, I so appreciate it blah blah blah.

Impulsively, I hugged my mom. The repair of these doors is more important to her than it is to me, and I wanted her to see that I really did appreciate it so I hugged her. She didn't push me away or anything, but she responded as a normal person would if a random stranger hugged them. Polite detachment.

And she wonders why I feel as if I can't stand to be with her for more than ten minutes at a time.

She gave birth to me. She is supposed to love me unconditionally. Yet the idea of touching me repulses her. How else am I supposed to feel?

Contrast that with the Gomez forum members I met two months ago in Chicago. With only a few exceptions, I was given bear hugs by these people who didn't know me from Adam and hadn't even seen a picture of me. Granted, there was a bit of intoxication and that tends to make people less inhibited, but still I felt more love from those people in those few short hours than I have felt from my own mother in quite a long time.

And now, of course, I feel guilty for resenting her. After all, she does a lot for me without being asked. I wouldn't be able to even have this house if it weren't for her and my dad and the support they give me. And I know she loves me. She is just incapable of showing it.

The worst part is that I can't explain this to her. I've tried. Without fail, she brushes off my feelings as ridiculous fantasies.

I have begged her to let go. She is controlling in every aspect of my life, when I try to exert independence, she turns on the guilt and I am helpless.

I cannot win ever.

I don't think I'll ever be free of her until she is dead. And that is sad to contemplate because despite it all, I love her.

If ever I am lucky enough to have children of my own, I don't know that I won't be just like her. I don't like it usually when people get too close, but for those I care about I wish I could break through that invisible barrier and be more affectionate. I always feel like I'm intruding on people's space, that they don't want me there if I get too close.

If you notice in the picture of me and Ben Ottewell, I am not touching him, I am not even leaning towards him. The girl who got a picture with him right before me put her arm over his shoulder and got in really close. There's other pictures floating around of me and the other members of Gomez at the after party, I didn't offer to shake hands or anything with them. I faintly remember tapping Tom on the shoulder to get his attention and the lovely (sarcasm) picture of he and I speaking (me telling him how amazing the show was), the expression on his face of disgust, well, that picture personifies my greatest fear when it comes to strangers meeting me for the first time. Thank you, Tom, for acting just like most people. Lots of people told me that of all the members of the band you would be the coolest no matter what I look like and while you were not the worst, your reaction to me was caught on film and not just in my memory.

Olly, though, Olly was cool. Olly seemed willing to talk to me all night. He wasn't ashamed to sit right down next to me like I was the most fascinating person in the world. And even more so, several people who I before that night knew only by screen names, they made that night the best night of my life. They grinned when they saw me, grabbed me up in their arms and hugged me as if it had been months seen we had seen each other and not just our first time meeting.

I still love Gomez, the experience of meeting them in person both increased and tainted my love for them. Now they are more real to me, less god-like. If all of them had acted like Tom and Ian, if the forum members had reacted to me as if I was some annoying freak I'm sure that I would have sworn off the band forever. Lucky for me, the experience was mostly positive and I'm looking forward to the next tour, hopefully meeting the ones I've met again and meeting others for the first time. In certain moods, I feel a little bit bitter when I hear Tom or Ian sing, but all I have to do is remember Olly and all the bad vibes from two-fifths of the band is erased.

That's some pretty powerful stuff, that whole being nice to people.