She is…..a stranger.

 

When a person looks at Maret Turner Buckley Williams McClure, I’m sure that they see just a normal woman, in her late forties, who spends her time moving from one place to another.

I’m sure that they would never suspect that she used to abuse her children, both physically and mentally. The children have gone on with their lives and only two remain. One because she depends on her mother, and the other because her mother depends on her.

I am the oldest, that escaped the home first. I am not welcome in my mother’s home, and I am not welcome in her heart. Every time I speak to her on the phone, I can tell that she is embellishing her feelings towards me; it is like she is forcing herself to be nice.

She tries to pass herself off as this poor little old woman, but she can’t pull the act with me, and I question her motives; therefore, she does not like to have me around. My sister, Donna; still lives with Maret, she grew up in the same environment that I did, but she denies that anything is or was wrong. She tells me that Mom is just a weak person, who has had a rough life, and we have to forgive her for the things that she has done. (Real or imagined.)

Last Christmas, my family and I went to visit my mother. When we went out to eat, the first thing that she did, which annoyed me and I took personal offense to, was when my oldest asked his grandmother if he could sit next to her, she said no, because she didn’t like children.

That was really an echo of my childhood, when my grandmother would push me and my siblings away, because she also did not like children. But did I say anything about it? No, I let her get away with it, telling myself that it was a concession that I would have to make so that my mother didn’t turn on me.

The second thing that she did, was sit at the head of the table and act like she was a royal Queen looking down on all of us. she was rather smug when a waiter came to take our order, "they know me here" she said with a quick look at me. Like this proved that she was better than me and they would treat us good because of her association with them.

Mom had some "Manechewitz", and we sat there drinking it, and talking about everything, but what I wanted to discuss. The past. My mother absolutely forbid Donna and I to talk about the past in her presence (this included everything, not just my step-father.) I think that the reason I listened to what she said, was that I still feel a child in her presence. And the other reason that I listened to what she said, was because I don’t like to do anything that makes my mother mad at me, because life was miserable when she was angry at me. Which really was almost all of my teenage years.

You know, no matter what I ever tell my mother, she always manages to insult me. The adult me, the childhood me. When I was pregnant for the first time, she was always telling me how fat I was, and that she was 19 hours of labor with me, and it hurt like hell, and she hoped that I got the same. And she was always telling me that she hoped my children were as rotten to me as I was to her. Huh? I was under such restriction when I was a teenager, that I couldn’t even think about something without wondering if my mother had found out what I was thinking. And too, I had a deep compulsion to tell her what I thought, to kind of off-set her anger, should she know before I confessed.

Here comes the point when you will ask me why I stayed, when I now have the free-will to walk away? I remember when somebody told me that children crave attention, and if they can’t get positive attention, they will be happy with any kind of attention, even if it is negative.

I can tell you, that the thought processes that ran through my brain when I was a teenager, still connects on certain subjects. I couldn’t hate Maret when I was younger, and I cannot hate her now. I know that all of the anger that I have deep inside me, is mostly on account of my mother, but whenever I get around her, I just want her to love me.

Some people have told me to put myself in my mother’s place. That is preposterous! Admittedly, I have inherited some of Maret’s traits. When I yell at the kids or the dog, Kevin says that I sound "just like your mother." But there would never be a circumstance where I would ever consider doing what my mother did, and I will not be compared to her in that regard.

I think that the reason that my mother hates me so much, is because she cannot control me anymore. I say what I want, to whomever I want, and I won’t keep secrets for her any longer. My mother is a very guarded person, who does not trust anyone, and she does not like for people know here as a person. Her walls are so deep and so wide that she would put Fort Know to shame. I certainly don’t know her as a person, she is a stranger to me, and I fear that it will always be that way.

I guess that things wouldn’t really be so bad, if she would take some of the blame for what she did. She says that she could do nothing about it, and it was my own fault anyway. She once said to my question of why she let it happen, that she thought that I like it!!!!!

My mother has no conscience, she has no morals, she could hurt you deep and kick you to the curb like yesterday’s garbage. The only problem being that I don’t think my mother ever took out the garbage her whole entire life. I know that when I lived at home, she would sit in her chair, barking out orders as though we were her slaves.

I remember once, when I was about sixteen; Maret woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me that there were dishes in the sink, and I had better get up NOW and do them.

I think that I now understand why abused people stay with the person (or persons) that are abusing them. Kevin was in and out of my life, and in and out of my house, for a year before I told him about Donald, and for two years after that before I left the house. And he still didn’t believe anything was wrong. And I told my mother seven years before it stopped, and she did not do anything about it.

In fact, Mom knew that I didn’t like being alone in the house with Donald, and yet she always found a way to go somewhere, anywhere, leaving me alone with him.

I wonder how she could look into my eyes, her first-born child, and tell me to do the things that she did. About six months after I told Maret, there was a night that she brought me downstairs, and held me down while her husband tried to have sex with me. I wiggled alot, and I screamed, and I cried. Afterwards she took me to the kitchen, gently washed my face, and told me that that was what I got for fucking herhusband. If I could do it when she wasn’t there, then I could do it when she requested me to.

I have never figured out my mother’s taste in men. She’s always picked out men who abused her, and had no qualms about abusing her children. The only thing that I can figure, is that she didn’t feel whole without a man, and the assholes are the only ones that would take a chance on her.

Could there be any other reason? I told her about Donald when I was twelve years old, and she told me that it would never happen again, but it did, and she was part of it for the last four years. She told my sister Donna, when she went away on a trip, to do "anything to please him", and she did–from that point on.

Donna told me that several times she "went all the way" with our step-father, and she was very proud of herself. She said she liked it, and today, she will tell you that nothing happened.

I guess everybody deals with things in their own way, but I cannot forget, and I am having a little bit of trouble forgiving. And that is the very reason why my mother and I cannot have a relationship, because I want to talk about the past, and she wants to forget that it ever happened.

Sometimes I think that I want to talk to her, but who I really want to talk to is the mother that lives in my imagination. The good, selfless, honest, loving, warm and open mother. The mother that I wish to be to my boys, and the mother that I wish had been there for me.

In my worst dreams, Mom is doing something to manipulate me and I can’t fend for myself. In my best dreams, Mom is holding me close and telling me that she loves me.