I'm a girl in my 20s

I Dated My Mom… Kinda (Therapist’s Words, Not Mine)

I once read, “Imagine being bitten by a snake, and instead of focusing on healing from the poison, you chase the snake to understand why it bit you and to prove that you didn’t deserve it.” I read this phrase a couple years ago and it has now hit me that I relate to it the most at this point in my life and here’s why.

I have a terrible perception of what I think love looks like, it is almost like self harm to be in love with someone based on what my mind thinks is love. And unfortunately, a lot of that strains from my childhood, weeks ago my therapist uncovered that I dated my mom. Yes, Freud has entered the chat. While talking about my ex, or snake, and bouncing between how I was treated as a child by my mom, my therapist bursted into joy when she realized why I was so infatuated by my snake. Growing up it always seemed like my mom chose her boyfriends over me and it made me want to become an attention whore, but I was too smart to rebel in a negative way. Instead I tried to get her attention by being a good student with honor roll and AP classes and a good daughter with minimal lying and avoiding drugs until the age of 17. Although I got my “I’m proud of you’s” and “good job’s” it never felt good enough, because she still chose toxic abusive men over keeping me in a safe and peaceful household. I had grown up thinking love was give and pull, because she would give me that love I had been looking for only for a moment and later return to a man that had a restraining order on her and gave her a domestic violence case. It’s no wonder the police sirens, the yelling, holes in the wall and the sound of mirrors breaking were so much louder than the I love you’s. This led me to believe that love was supposed to be mean and soul breaking. 

When describing to my therapist how I became more and more infatuated with my snake from the break ups, she connected the give and pull method he used on me because like my mom, he always had the upper hand on when he chose to love me and when he became sick of it. And it made even more sense when I remembered the first time my snake met my mom. They had the same humor, they talked the same, they even understood each other’s sarcasm. After meeting my mom, my snake actually told me in the car, “Your mom and I are very similar” to which I looked at him with disgust, I nervously giggled and I told him, “that’s not a good thing.” But deeply, I knew he was right. My therapist was bursting with joy making this connection and I will admit, it was a funny but a long awaited diagnostic. My perception of love was tainted so the voice in my head that controlled my feelings was actually always and constantly wrong, so I’m learning to ignore it because I know it’s not right for me. 

Yesterday, I came to the realization that I no longer want to talk about my snake, I don’t have any lessons to learn from it anymore and there’s no point in digging up an old body when it was buried for a reason. I didn’t realize this on my own though, it was actually when I received a text from my snake’s new girlfriend, or ex now, whichever it is. She disturbed my peace by asking for my side of the story because he spoke so negatively about me. It’s what she asked of me but I knew it was not what she wanted. What she actually wanted was to know how she was better than me to help her own insecurities, likely embedded by the snake, because if she did want to know my side she would’ve asked before they dated not after.

I’ve played her game before and it’s also possible that she reached out to see if I would complain with her and agree that he isn’t worth it, she needed the satisfaction that she didn’t receive from him, and I can’t judge her too much on it. Because I was once that insecure girl looking for answers, but what I had to learn was that sometimes things just don’t make sense and there isn’t a straight answer for why things went the way they went. And that’s what took me by the hand, it was acceptance that it happened and it is now in the graveyard. I no longer wanted to chase down the snake to prove why I didn’t deserve to be bitten, because it wasn’t worth prolonging my healing time. It was mean and selfish of her to do that, but I understood why. He had shown her what I looked like and I forever stayed in the back of her mind because men make women insecure, and she went looking for answers that weren’t hers to know. It was also selfish of him to share my information with his new little girl because I never sent an insecure man I was dating his way, and he agreed. My response to her? I shut it down, I apologized and told her it’s not a matter I want to speak on anymore, the time for that has passed and I’ve moved on from speaking about his actions for a long time. Was I annoyed that I was reminded of that pain? Yes, incredibly distraught. But it made me feel so much better to know, it was not my problem anymore and I no longer felt that pain the same way I once did. The drama that he created and continues to try and drag me down with is just simply not worth chasing anymore. 

The voice in my head is wrong, and my heart is right. I’ve been dating someone new for a while now, but I hadn’t brought it up because I did not realize how important he was to my healing process until that incident. I continued to write my blogs knowing he read them and I didn’t feel judged and I didn’t feel the need to sugar coat my feelings because he understood them. This man gives me the space to heal with him and without him, he lets me have the time I need to find myself and heal my relationship trauma. The communication issue I mentioned in the last blog? Not an issue anymore because he gives me the space to speak my mind. 

He caught me by surprise when he helped me cook dinner and I actually enjoyed his presence and wasn’t annoyed by him being in the kitchen. He caught me by surprise when he washed the dishes he did not use as I cooked. He caught me by surprise when he bought tickets to halloween horror nights at universal studios because my friend and I mentioned going together one time. He caught me by surprise when I expected him to be mean to me when I admitted my wrongs but instead he showed me kindness, something I don’t see often with the men I date. That voice in my head? It tried to convince me that my relationship with him was boring and not worth it. But because I had understood where that voice came from I realized that it was because his love, his appreciation and communication was consistent and even. There was never a time where he pulled away from me or changed his behaviors to make me chase him. Never once did he make me feel like he was not interested or drag me into drama. I try not to put people on a pedestal because people change but he might be up there. When I realized this, that self doubt and self destruction voice got lower and lower and lower. And my feelings for him and myself worth became more clear.

The purpose of this blog was not to talk about my snake, although it may seem like that I was only writing about the lessons I was learning at the moment and what led me to my self discovery. This post is the closing chapter and I couldn’t be more proud and confident about the way it ended. My goal for the next few blogs will discuss family and hard work. Stay tuned my three consistent readers!