Heart to heart with my MOM?!

      I was invited for dinner last night. I left five hours ago and I’m still running over it in my mind. It’s just so weird. My most recent thought was of why I’m still so an joins over it all. I could feel my heart beating faster, and the butterflies in my chest as I climbed the front steps of my old house.
     All this time and I still just want to please her. To somehow keep the situation calm, to keep from the sudden anger, or frustration that would come from her end. Waiting for the happiness of the moment to end. For it to all come crashing down. That all familiar screaming panic in my mind. That feeling of my very soul screaming inside my head while I think "No! No, not again PLEASE not again, this CAN’T be happening WHY?!" Wanting nothing more than her approval, to get along. To be good enough. To be something other than the problem child.
     But it never happened. She was calm, accepting and completely without judgement. I opened up to her, but now I’m wishing I hadn’t. Yet I don’t feel traumatized with regret, I seem to care much less. I suppose I never expected her to be the one who would bring up the past. Not in a million years did I think that would happen.
     The strangest thing though, I’m left with a residual feeling that it was somehow an apology. Like she was seeking acceptance from me, asking without doing so, if she had done an alright job. Begging for me to see that she had tried her best.
     But hat, I already knew. We can only give our children what we have. If we are lacking in a great many ways, we can not give them what they need.
     She didnt seem to see my anxiety at all. I didn’t want to tell her I don’t want to ruin the moment, or make her feel worse than I’m sure she already does. That I’m still so afraid of her that eight years later, coming to the house and trying to hold down a conversation with her gave me an upset stomach and I needed to run to the washroom. That my constant fidgeting, my reference to someone I knew who spoke Mexican (wtf is WRONG with me) was more than just a small amount of nervousness. In still terrified of her.
     The truth is still te same: I grew up being afraid of her. Web I was old enough to make her afraid of me, that was just what I did. And violently.

     I do forgive her of course. I don’t expect am apology, ever. That’s ok. Because I do forgive her. She is my mother, after all. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still afraid of taking to her all these years later.
     Now, if only I could get to sleep.