Your Mom Hates Me Because My Mom Hates You
A family feud over something I wrote…
I made you livid with the story I wrote. Probably because your mom read it. She was hurt. Although it is hearsay at this point, I don’t doubt it. Your sister read it too. Your niece showed it to her. Of course, they were all shocked. They saw what my mom saw in you.
When we arrived at your house in the mountains I was overwhelmed by the warmth and generosity of our reception. Your family welcomed us into your home and made us feel like we belonged. I fell for them hard. I was particularly endeared by your mother. She quickly took to me as well. I was touched when you told me I had made her light up. Not anymore.
To your family, as to me, you are larger than life. You are a special person, or else my timeline wouldn’t be bifurcated by our meeting; by my knowing you. But unlike your people who venerate you, my people disdain you. There are two clans. The one that saw the magnificent you, the one for whom I fell so swiftly and so deeply in love that I was disoriented for days. And the one that rejected me down to my core and that met my broken heart with resounding silence.
When I got back my friends and family indulged me to no end. Since they had never witnessed me fall in and out of love, they appreciated the severity of the issue. They all could relate, because, as I learned, you never forget the first person that cracks your heart open. They cared for me like one does a deeply wounded friend; with open arms, kindness, and infinite patience.
On this particular occasion, I was talking to my mom (who of all of my people despised you the most). She aptly pointed out that you are a grown-ass man. She went on to note that, at your age and to your confession, you had a lot of experience with women. She believed you should be held completely accountable for how you behaved, including how you made me feel, no matter how inadvertent you claimed it was. During this conversation, in an attempt to heal my hurt, she very much held you responsible for how, in her words, “he seduced you” and, even worse, how you reacted when I fell for you.
Until then I had been trying to understand why you wouldn’t just tell me you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore, why you wouldn’t outright end things, why you had to eclipse yourself. I was so desperate for an answer I would have welcomed a lie. Eventually, I came to accept that no response is a response. At this time; however, no response was still a gaping question mark. One I ruminated over instead of sleep, of work, and to the detriment of my overall physical and mental health.
The only thing that seemed clear to me in this whole haze of a broken heart was that you never expected me to fall for you. No one did. In the text you sent me about us before I left (the only proof that what we had was real), you said it was unintentional and unexpected. I’m sure your mother would agree, but obviously, my mother felt otherwise.
If I’m being honest, I don’t know with whom I agree more. I think it was a little of both. I think you flattered me because you can’t help yourself from coveting women you find attractive. I think you felt our connection and you too were drawn to it. Yet you got a little too close and a little too charming for someone who wasn’t ready to commit. That is where you faltered. So claiming it happened despite you is a stretch.
I have, unlike you, never fallen in love. I have loved, but I have never face-planted into it like that. Sure, the circumstances were perfect. And I doubt it will ever happen again, lest such a confluence is serendipitously recreated. Nevertheless, you are by everyone’s admission an inward-thinking man and you are keenly aware of yourself. As such, you cannot be absolved of all guilt.
I hung up the phone and dumped a series of analogies about a man who ignited the love of a woman without the intention of loving her back. It was clever. I was particularly pleased with myself. It was what I was thinking in that instant, at that precise moment. But it didn’t negate the fact that I loved you still. That I probably always will. It was a creative way of sharing this perspective of you that surrounded me at the time. It was a way of letting out my frustration and if I’m being truthful, the pain caused by your disappearance.
I did think you might read it and I thought if you did you surely wouldn’t like it. But I grossly underestimated the importance you still placed on my opinion of you. Or perhaps, more accurately, the importance you placed on your family’s reaction to my candor.
The thing is, I purposely never named you, and I never will. You saw yourself in it, and to your abjection so did they. Truthfully, it is not entirely how I feel about you. It is; however, exactly how my mom feels about you. So now, because of these blurred lines, I have to live with the fact that your mom hates me because my mom hates you.
For the inquisitive minds, the story that spurred this controversy is ‘Doomed to Fall in Love’.
