(If you expect a goody goody two shoes kind of posts, stop at once and leave this blog. Unvarnished truths from my point of view isn’t for the weak of heart)
My son and I are currently estranged and chances are we won’t be seeing each other for a while much longer. My relationship with my son (if I can consider still having any with him) has entered a totally different inexplicable level.
My desire, however, to get on with my life is stronger: Stronger than dwelling on the treatment I received from my only child; treatment from him I never deserved. As I’ve mentioned before, my responsibilities had been carried out to the best of my ability.
How was I as a mother? Not bad, I believe.
I took care of him and hardly had any help in nursing and raising him since he was a baby. I made sure nothing bad happened to him.
I put food on the table. I sent him to some of the best schools for his academic and music education. I made sure he’d be exposed to good literature, arts, traveling, and even sports.
He was constantly at the top of my list (something I dearly regret these days because my late father’s pure love for me, however imperfect, had been taken for granted).
I told him every day how much I loved him and supplemented it with hugs and kisses.
Okay, it’ll be easy for anyone to point a finger and tell me, “Hah, you think they’re enough. Admit it, you must have messed up.” My response: “What makes you so sure you know quite well the task of right parenting?” I once did. I was dead wrong.
Perhaps my son has focused more on my shortcomings and the stuff I wasn’t able to provide him. In addition, maybe I wasn’t good enough, to his standards, as a parent. Yet I did try to do a very fine job. Why? First, it was my duty. Second, I won’t lie by admitting I’d thought maybe he’d be there for me when I reach old age. Third, motherhood was one thing I simply had not intended to fail miserably.
Something went wrong along the way – which escaped my full awareness during all those years – that made my son, in the end, convey the implication I can’t claim success as a mother after all. And there’s the likelihood I overlooked the hard fact he’s his father’s son even though he hardly spent considerable time with the man.
You know the worst thing someone you value would learn about you? Letting them know you’ll rely on them in the future and you may not be able anymore to compensate them for that in return.
I’m mindful somehow I deserve what has happened because I hadn’t been a wonderful child to my parents either. Although I can look anybody straight in the eye and say I wasn’t as ungrateful to them as my son was to me.
People around me has said it’s natural I get the blame and flak for everything negative that could have taken place in his life (FYI, he’s a top-notch Engineer holding a very good job right now). Or he could be hiding something he wouldn’t want me to know.
Whatever. Maybe it’s for the better. Besides, I don’t want to justify to anyone, not even to my own kid, why I think it’s alright to spend my own money – money that I had worked hard for – for myself at this point in my life.
What made me write this kind of post? I regularly see the Philippines in my stats and wonder if it’s him. Most probably, it’s not. If it is, I’d like him to know he has succeeded in sending the message I’ve flunked as a mother for having a child like him who has been unbelievably rotten to his only parent.
(Note: This is kind of a rant I may delete tomorrow or next week or never)
Bohemian Sentiments 