But It's MY Perception!

I perceive my beloved Daddy as having been unconditionally loving, accepting, and nurturing. I perceive my not-so-beloved Mother as having been critical, rigid, and never satisfied. That's my worldview, my Weltanschauung. I've lived with it for 61 years (next week), and you haven't.

I've carried around my baggage of being unloved and unlovable. You haven't. I've developed habit patterns to try to jump through the appropriate hoops and behave in a way that would make me more capable-of-being-loved. You haven't.

<Tangent On>
My first marriage lasted for ten years. Ten miserable (my perception) years. I knew two weeks into the marriage that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I begged my husband for us to go to therapy. "No, we don't talk about our private problems." Three-quarters of the way through the ten years, I suggested/begged that we go to a Marriage Encounter weekend. He refused. Finally, after ten years, and after I told him I wanted a divorce, he acquiesced and said we could go to Marriage Encounter.

The best thing I took away from the weekend was this statement: "Your feelings are not right or wrong. They just are."
<Tangent Off>

I've just spent three-and-a-half days with my sister-in-law. We have known each other for 44 years. She is four years older than I. She's smart, talented, accomplished. She's been the general manager of several software companies. She's skilled at project management and knows how to get things done. She's sat on numerous boards and is highly respected in her community. She's neither afraid nor hesitant to tell you what she thinks, whether you want to know or not.

I don't feel love for my mother, who will probably die within the next six months. I respect that she sacrificed a lot for me. I appreciate being adopted into a family that was able to recognize my musical talent and financially afford all the music lessons, the purchase of the accordion and clarinet and oboe and organ and piano. I appreciate all the schlepping to piano lessons and sewing lessons and so on. I try to treat Mother with respect, as I feel she deserves that. But I don't feel love for her.

To tell you the truth, there are times I question my ability to feel love for anything or anybody. It's almost as if it were bred out of me by her critical and demeaning words and actions. Thank [YourDeityOfChoice] for my children, my grandchildren, my Good Husband, the Jazzman, and certain special friends, thoughts of whom remind me that I can, actually, feel love.

What's my point? "It is what it is." I don't feel Mother loved me. My sister-in-law talks about how much Mother loves me and cares about me and looks forward to my visits. Whatever. For me, that's a fiction. It is not reality. In any event, it is not my reality.

You're welcome to say, "I'm sorry you feel that way." "I'm sorry you never felt loved by your mother." "I'm sorry you had to struggle your whole life."

You're not welcome to say, "That's just wrong." "You're wrong."

I'm not wrong in my perception. It's my goddamned perception. I may not like it any more than you do, but that doesn't and cannot negate it.

It's neither right nor wrong. It just is.