on the mother wound (going nowhere)
i can't be the only one! (open diary entry)
i’ve been thinking about louise bourgeois a lot lately.
she’s become a comfort for when i think i am starting to lose myself, or, in some kind of transition i cannot name yet. she was, above all, a visual artist - someone who made something tangible and real when words felt like too much, when naming the thing feels too real.
i sometimes am envious of visual artists. i think my equivalent to making a sculpture of some kind is making a list of every bad thing that has ever happened to me and trying to get to the root of it before i scream. or maybe not.
i think about this quoute:
"My mother would sit out in the sun and repair a tapestry or a petit point. She really loved it. This sense of reparation is very deep within me.
I break everything I touch because I am violent. I destroy my friendships, my love, my children. People would not generally suspect it, but the cruelty is there in the work. I break things because I am afraid and I spend my time repairing. I am a sadist because I am afraid. Yet the reconciliations between people never really stick.”
i think, what hurts the most, is that i want to see my mother truly care for something, and i never have.
what i’m focusing on lately in louise’s work is the mother wound. louise lost her mother when she 22, and had a very complex relationship with her up until her death.
i try to think about what louise must have felt when her mother allowed the aupair to stay in the house with them, knowing her father was being unfaithful. i know kicking her out would not have addressed the problem, but, i compare my own parents: how my mother, in her own way, let my father’s world consume me and my sisters.
my dad was an alcoholic for the better half of my childhood, and a mean one at that. my sisters remember bits of him being playful and loving, but i think i mostly remember him being gone or yelling. i just remember the chaos - or, as louise would illustrate it: the red.
that’s not to say it didn’t happen, this is just my recollection of events. i miss him sometimes. i miss this person i’ve never really known all that well.
that is also not to say it was my mother’s responsibility to tend to him, to make him “better”. i don’t want to write as if you know her, so let me tell you this: even now, she says she didn’t know he was an alcoholic. i cannot assume what that means to her, but what i can infer is that she thought he would do these things, say these things to his children in a completely sober state of mind. i am not blaming her for him being an alcoholic, but when i ask her why she stayed and her only response is that i will understand when i am a mother, i find that, after becoming a mother myself, i only resent her more for not protecting us.
i feel like my mother brought me and my sisters into the world of my father. i resent her more, for what feels like her having no grasp on herself as a person. and, i know, that a lot of women, a lot of mothers struggle to find themselves, or, keep track of themselves after parenthood, but my mother is coming close to 65.
i want to think she’s had the time, or, i do think she has had the time. what makes me resent her is that she just hasn’t used it. i think she and i are just different in that way, maybe. i want my child, and, all my children to know who i am, because they can see it through my actions. i want them to be able to point to a part of themselves, maybe a point of tenderness, and say, here, here is where my mother gave me a piece of herself.
i am starting to think my dad doesn’t really know himself either, but i don’t really take the time to notice. i’m not really angry with either of them anymore, i can see my dad is still trying to channel some kind of softness towards me, and, i’m sure in a way i can’t see or don’t want to see, my mom is too.
i want to give them credit. i also want to tend to my grief.
it felt like from a very young age i lost my mother to my father.
unfortunately my pity for her, and yes i do mean pity, has turned to anger. i want to remain tender. i want to, but sometimes it feels like i have nothing left in me that is soft to give.
“I transform hate into love” - Louise Bourgeois, on making art, on identity
i think about this quote and wonder if i should extend more empathy towards my mother. i think of how my father used to do this, not overtly, but in a way he thought she didn’t even catch, and, not to go against bonnie, but i am not sure she ever really did know.
when speaking to her now, i will sometimes ask about the mannerisms of my father, her husband - and she seems oblivious to it all. and by this i mean, i ask, not so blatantly , but nonetheless the general sense of: did you notice him trying to make a fool out of you? did you notice how it worked? she will tell me, she will insist she has no idea what i’m talking about, or that she has never noticed that about him.
i think she is fighting the same battle in her head as i am: i am not what she wanted, she is not what i needed.
the truth is, she might know, at some point inside of her exactly what i mean but she refuses to say it out loud. she speaks pretty openly about how much she doesn’t like him, or how she is not going to put up with his “bullshit” anymore, but she remains absolutely the same. she goes away on weekends when it is only the two of them so she doesn’t have to be around him, she preserves what sense of autonomy she has left in ways that are familiar to her, but she stays. out of shame, mostly. divorce, to her, would be an unforgivable failure.
when two out of three of her daughters got divorced (my sister and i) she told us she was proud of us, in some way or another - buried underneath a lot of other ugly things she said to us, or, about us. but she would die, be absolutely mortified for the world, or, her world to find out.
i am identifying each wound as i write: it hurts to be someone’s shame - for doing something deeply human.
she tells us she is on our side, but when it comes to the public eye, she would rather say i am some kind of widow, i think, than admit i am a divorce.
i, cannot, or, will not meet her where she is at, and she cannot, or will not, meet me where i am at. what i could do is ask: well how do you see him, then? but i’m afraid it would break my heart even further. i’m sure she hurts, too.
all of this has gotten worse since i have become a mother. i remember the little talks we would have about things that have happened, i would ask why and her response would be, you’ll understand once you’re a mother, but the thing is, me becoming a mother has only made this worse.
in an imaginary conversation, or, the several i have had with louise, the answer i have found is that you have children when you think the wound - the parent wound - has somewhat healed: the scab has hardened. but, a different, deeper wound opens up.
louise became obsessed with her relationship to her father and to her children, and, i think, her own concept of herself as a mother. i think i understand that now, a bit more than ever.
there is a spider not far from where i live, that i will go and visit every now and then. i can feel it, when i’m under her. or, at least, i want to - this sense of some big ‘other’ protecting me. I don’t know. always searching for a mother feels exhausting, and at a certain point you learn to be your own — i guess.
i think you kind of have to want to, and i used to want to. i used to really want to, maybe in order to prove a point, to show my own mother how much i didn’t need her, how much it was breaking my heart to not need her.
but the older i get, the more i long for someone - something - some older wiser softer - even, idea, to look up to. some voice to speak to.
for a while, i guess it’s been louise.
it has been other writers in the past, but something about louise’s physical art feels a bit more real, and, i’ve been reading more of her letters lately, and i love how soft she is.
i have no place where this is going, i think i just wanted to share what i’ve been thinking about lately on mother wounds.
with love, always,
lucy j