Ten Reasons I Don't Have Kids

I have a theme for this blog- the "UN- mommy" blog!
I often get asked, or more I feel an implication of people wondering why I don't have kids. It's funny that people don't ask why people DO have kids....

1) Schizophrenia - My father's sister, his only sibling, was Schizophrenic. I watched my grandmother try to take care of her and all the methods they tried to make her better until she died when I was ten. Schizophrenia has an 80% heritability rate- meaning if a parent or their exact genetic match- a sibling- has it, their child has an 80% chance of also becoming Schizophrenic.

2) Mental illness in my mother's family. I believe that my mother has some kind of Sociopathic disorder that their father also had. In combination with the Schizophrenia genes, I do not want to purposely bring a child with those risk factors into the world.

3) Retinitis Pigmentosa- a genetic disease that causes blindness- my mother has it.  My mother blamed me for all her issues, so I feel like if I had a child they would in fact have the right to blame me for their genetic disabilities- and it is an awful, terrible feeling to have someone blame you for their physical and mental illnesses.

4) Diabetes- of course this is manageable, but injecting a child with insulin would be hard for me with my squeamishness around needles.

5) Alcoholism- there is a lot of Alcoholism on both sides of my family as well as in David's family.

6) Suicidal Depression- this is no joke- imagine your child killing themselves. There is suicidal depression on both my side and David's side.

7)  My own terrible childhood- my mother was a terrible, hyper critical, hysterical clingy nut-job that did not have any concern for my safety or well being. I did not have good boundaries or realistic caring modeled for me. I am afraid I would be overprotective and too anxiety ridden to let a child grow up with any sense of security or ease in the world. Note that I do not ever let the dog go to daycare or dog-walkers.... ;-)

8) People dying young of Cancer in David's family. You watch a young person clinging to life and screaming about the dead girls he is hallucinating as he is dying and change his colostomy bag and get back to me about having a kid with cancer risk.

9) There are 8 billion people on the planet. The planet is warming at a rate of 1 degree a decade. There will be sea level rise that will impact the amount of area people can inhabit. It is not sustainable.

10) We both had horrible experiences with adopted siblings who grew up to be super takers and we are sick of feeling taken advantage of.

11) oh, I didn't even cover everything in this list- the top reason we don't want kids is yes, we are selfish and don't have time to give all our energy to a little being. That we created. Who will put 10,000's of thousands of pounds of waste into a landfill by the time it lives to be 80....

I feel like there is an awful lot of judgment around people who don't want kids. I feel like you think I am judging you for having kids. If I could have a guarantee of two beautiful happy intelligent generous spirits that embodied the best of David's and my family and would definitely not have our genetic shit storms nor pass it along to their own kids, I might do it despite my environmental convictions, so it really is about the genetic risk factors that we have that you do not. So I love your kids, I love kids, I am so happy for you if you are happy, and please invite me to all the christenings and baby showers and bat mitzphahs and birthdays and graduations and charity fundraisers, because I will cheer and donate and make cupcakes and buy presents and show up.

Crossed Lines

I would like to let go. I would like to not be angry anymore. I think perhaps if I post this it will help to make me less ruled by her behavior, who knows, maybe it will help. I would like to say that I did call her answering machine and leave her a message that said I forgave her for these things that she has done. In my Little Buddist Instruction Book it does say though, "To forgive does not mean we let the injustice happen again." So I forgive her but I do not want to hear another word out her ever.

My mother has crossed many lines leading to me wanting to permanently end our relationship. As the child, though, I am the only one in the position of having no legal recourse to sever our relationship. She has some kind of mental illness like Malignant Narcissism, Sociopathic tendencies, or bi-polar something, which she will never admit to much less seek treatment for since she is a Christian Scientist and from my understanding does not believe in Mental Illness. She is prone to screaming hysterical fits, swearing, hitting, throwing things, banging her head on the wall until there is a dent in the wall, lying, manipulating, gas-lighting, martyring, insisting she isn't blind and it's your fault she's blind because you aren't a Christian Scientist, viciously attacking other family members behind their backs, gossiping, making stuff up, twisting your words around, criticizing, insulting, backstabbing, and is generally very unpleasant to be around.

1.  She claims she got pregnant with me without having sex with my father. I believe she got pregnant with me on purpose to trick a rich man into marrying her. Shouting and hissing at me that I was an accident and an unwanted child is a lie- since she DID want me in order to defraud my father and his family out of money. Lying.

2. driving us around in the car in Boston and getting into accidents because she was blind- other incidents of negligence of letting us run around the neighborhood with no supervision under the age of five.

3. giving us Jesse-they adopted an African American boy when I was two and he was a baby. They "gave him up" when I was six and he was five. They relinquished him to the state. She never had a good excuse as to why they would give back my only sibling- "he wouldn't sit still and read a book" she said once. He remained in the Penal System his entire life and is currently a violent convicted felon.

4. sending me to a crappy school in San Francisco in 2nd grade- complete with sex offenders taking pictures of the children's genitals and adults discussing the photos in front of the kids. The school was in such a bad neighborhood that the taxi driver didn't want to let her out of the car- yet they would send in a seven year old by herself.

5. sending me around on the bus by myself from the age of 7. not just the Muni, the Greyhound, AC Transit....

6. keeping me from my father. manipulating the custody agreement by being so hysterical and such a yelling, volatile psycho that I gave in to her demands to have joint custody. My father could see, was self-employed, was home when I got home from school, could drive me to activities instead of making me take the bus by myself, never hit me, never screamed at me, never swore at me, never sent me to school in wet clothes, never fed me hash from a can, took me for immunizations and doctors appointments which she couldn't do, lived in a nicer area farther away from the Zodiac Killer's last crime spree, and never left me alone with child molesters. I was by far safer and better cared for by my father. My mother cut the baby in half. Now she is reaping what she sowed.

7. My mother had me come home from school by myself- I was a "Latch key kid." In second grade a man followed me into the stairway of her apartment building and assaulted me. If I were not alone at seven years old, I don't think that would have happened.

8. She would have me write the bills for her and help her do her "Technical Writing" editing for her job as she couldn't see well enough to do it but wouldn't let her employers or anyone else know since for her Christian Science she couldn't admit to being blind. She would continually lie and deny she was doing this kind of thing. I would get screamed at for helping her and screamed at for not helping her- since she was incapable of explaining why we had to pretend she wasn't blind and why I had to do her work for her.

9. Male 12 year old babysitters wanting to "play doctor" with me- a parade a creepy dudes off the back of the Bay Guardian personal ads who thought I "had a cute butt...."

10. Ten different schools by 10th grade indicates a complete lack of any concern at all for my security or having any consistency in my life.

11. Gross free "Day-camps" with gross sex -offender counselors.

12. I was sexually assaulted again in junior high because she would send me around to do her errands after school while she was at work.  My expensive designer pants that my grandmother bought me got ripped in the course of this assault and she had the tailor glue them together but they were ruined. I don't know, if my daughter got sexually assaulted- I would BUY HER SOME NEW FUCKING PANTS. Even if I was mad that her father's mother spent money on her for nice clothes.

13.  Clingy, no boundaries, always wanting to "cuddle" me- fixing me up with her weird roommates that would end up giving me massages and having their boners pressing into my back.

14. Screaming at me in front of my roommates when she insisted on visiting in France my junior year abroad.

15. "Edie [my father's mother] didn't have much interest in seeing you." Lie. "I wonder if I had had an abortion of Andrea if I would have been a teacher," which she denied saying for years, finally busting out with - "I didn't know you were in the room!" = my fault for hearing her talking. Then-"Ok, I said it, are you happy now?" yes, mother you make me so very happy....... If I could abort my relationship with her! This is the same trip where she "felt like slapping me" since I asked why she couldn't leave Aunt Winnie's coffee where it was.

16. "Stop being so hysterical" when I called her to tell her my father died.

17. Adding Christian Science jibber-jabber into my wedding ceremony. Freaking out on David and the Officiate before the ceremony, generally screaming at people and being a problem throughout the whole wedding.

18.  Being a pain about me moving two bus rides away instead of one when we able to buy a house. Wanting me to come over on the bus and ride with her back to my house so she could come over whenever she felt like it.

19. Her mother's funeral was Thanksgiving 1997. I would have gone if Edie, my father's mother, didn't need me. Edie had ONE surviving descendant = me. Grammy had 100. My mother wanted me to be her sighted companion and get a bereavement fare, which you wouldn't get if you weren't blind because of Christian Science.

20.  Over Edie's dead body my mother says to my step-mother, "No-one knows how hard Bob's death was on me..."

21. She never told me that their father was actually convicted of molesting the daughter after my mother when that daughter was 3 years old. They used to take me to his nursing home before he died and everyone thought I was so cute there IN MY DIAPERS.

22. In 2001 I insisted she go to therapy because I didn't want to hear any more complaining and screaming and I wanted her to get on grip on why her bad boundaries and constant harassment of me was not acceptable. She "didn't know this was therapy" because she does not believe in therapy because of Christian Science, however she does have a DEGREE in Marriage Family and Children Therapy.

23.  Upon hearing that I was in a Depression group, she says, "I knew someone with depression, we always thought she was just lazy and slow." She has a DEGREE in Marriage, Family and Child Counseling, but she cannot get her license because she won't go to therapy because she doesn't believe in it.

24. Finally she admits to saying she should have had an abortion of me after lying about for 10 years.

25. "What did Edie do to you?" like taking care of Edie had turned me into a monster who wanted her mother to ask nicely when she needed help and to stop screaming. Edie never screamed at me, threw stuff at me, criticized me, left me with perverts, hit me, sent me to school in wet clothes, lied to me, badmouthed me to other relatives, took things I said out of context and repeated them to other relatives, forced me away from my father, gave my brother away, made me do her job for her because she couldn't do it, banged her head in the wall until there was a dent in the wall, etc.

26. This is the biggest reason I never want to hear another word out of her ever again: "I'm not going to kill myself to make it easier for anyone else." My father's father killed himself because of -we think- his advancing Alzheimer's.

27. The therapist wanted me to apologize to my mother. I end up kind of freaking out, digging my nails into my skin and rocking back and forth and crying, "I'm so bad, I'm so bad," my mother sits in her corner whispering, "I never did that to her." Yes, yes, you did.

28. "Get her to stop saying that" she screamed and threw a water bottle at me. In therapy. "You're just doing this so you don't feel guilty." She hissed at me, which is of course the worst crime a person could perpetrate on a parent, trying to set up 2 hours a week of working for them for free so they won't feel guilty. She said, "My blindness is an inconvenience to Andrea."

29. Her slinking out of therapy hissing "My mother didn't want me either," and shutting the door behind her.

30. We got into how horrible I was for not taking her to her mother's funeral and she said, "At least I had my nice nieces to help me instead of my bitchy daughter." Nice nieces are allowed to "help" her but other people get reamed for saying "taking care of..."

31. They asked me what I wanted and I tried to be honest instead of manipulating a sacchyrine lie designed to once again for the ten millionth time get her to shut up and stop complaining and said, "I wish you lived 3,000 miles away and I had two codependent older sisters to take care of you."  Which is what she had with her mother.  She then told her sisters I called them codependent which is not what I said.  I could have said, I suppose, 'I want you to ask nicely for exactly what you want and then say thank you, nicely, without a tone, when I try to do it,' but that would have never happened so I guess it's not worth second guessing now. If a person lived 3,000 miles away from their vitriolic mother who had other people to complain to and lambaste, you could just send her chocolates now and then and call once and awhile and keep up appearances. I do not have that luxury- I feel like it is all or nothing with her. And absolutely nothing will get her to stop screaming and swearing and acting like a monster. 

32. I said 'take care of' one too many times, and she shouted in therapy-  "Take Care of me, FUCK YOU!" and I left. The therapist chased me down the stairs. Because boundaries.

I understand that she has lots of problems, none of which I caused, can cure, or have any control over. I just think that my relationship with her is over. I have no goodwill for her at all, ever, she completely extinguished it. I tried everything I could try and my well is completely dry.  I am happy for everyone that had a nice mother that loved them. I did not. 

"I Already Buried My Mother"

I already buried my mother.
The one that wanted me, the one that kept me safe, the one that loved me most.
I already buried my mother- in rocks and rainbows and saxophoned Danny Boys.
I already buried the woman who would have walked through broken glass for miles carrying me and lain her body down to cover mine from attack.
I already buried the one who thought I was the prettiest and smartest and most talented-
who never criticized me or swore at me or left me alone with child rapists.
I already buried the woman who felt my fears and hungers and cold as if they were her own.
I buried the one who didn't complain about where she was sat for my father's funeral or tell me I should stop being so hysterical when he died or want the bedspread off of his wife's bed.
I already cleaned her blood off her white carpet and winced when some clueless person smashed her glasses into the stitches by her eye trying to hug her.
I already buried her son and her husband and her daughter. I polished all their treasures, their medals and degrees and letters and packed them away in boxes in my closet. I signed on all the dotted lines, I sent all the Crane's Stationary Thank You notes for all the condolences.
I polished her treasures and set them in a box in the closet.
Her husband's fraternity pin, the silver compact he gave her, all the photos and the books inscribed "To the family."
I buried the whole family that those books were inscribed to.
I put the jewels in the safety deposit box, the marriage and birth and death certificates in the safe.
I dry cleaned all the chenille suits and took them to the consignment store, I tried to find someone who would enjoy the vast collection of $300 size five narrow heel pumps.
I put her paintings on my walls and her keepsakes on my shelves.
I already buried my mother, after waiting in the hallway of the hospital where she was dying until midnight and taking the bus home in the rain- then coming back at 6 in the morning because she needed me.
I already filled out the death certificate and picked the second best casket for her to be cremated in.
I already buried the woman who never hit me, never slapped me, never spanked me, never told me to Fuck Off, never swore at me, never called me a bitch, never lied to me, never banged her head on the wall until there was a dent in the wall, never cut me down, never coerced me into hanging out with creepy dudes she met through the personals on the back of the Bay Guardian or the Muni bus. I buried the woman who always believed me if I was hurt, never told people things I didn't say about them.
I already buried the woman who loved me the most.
I already buried my mother.

Since someone won't let me sponsor them in a recovery program that helps us learn how to get weirdos to leave us alone, I thought I would add some things I have learned on that topic recently. One question I find it important to ask myself is "Did they ask?" Do these people actually WANT me to mother, manage, martyr and manipulate them? Do they want 24 extra cupcakes that take me 10 hours to decorate? Do they NEED me to make them all charts and make sure their equipment is in operating order? Do I HAVE to be the designated driver? Do I want to do all the ceaseless minutiae

that I think everyone else is too overwhelmed to handle and only I can make sure it is done correctly? "Don't do anything that will give you a resentment" is another little gem of a reminder that helps me to keep the resentments from piling up so much that they completely paralyze me.
   On to practicing some more, maybe I should write a song where the refrain is "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO...."

Adventures in Boundaries

Adventures in Boundaries. How to know where you leave off and I begin. Unacceptable behavior. Throwing things at me, swearing at me, telling me you feel like hitting me, lying, and screaming at me are relationship-ending actions. 

I felt the anger drain out of me and I was left with a sense of peace, a feeling I had never experienced before. I wish that last sentence were true. I am writing this to find my way to that truth.