FOUR

FOUR.

That is the exact number of telephone calls received between 8/18 and 8/22.

1. 8/18 Audrey called to wish me a happy birthday.
2. 8/18 Audrey called back to apologize--she thought the 18th was my day.
3. 8/19 Audrey called--and we SPOKE.
4. 8/22 Audrey called YET AGAIN, this time, to see if I  got the birthday card she sent. I neither picked up the call, nor did I call her back. Clearly, this was her weaponizing my birthday, all to get more attention out of me. Attention and energy (and give-a-fuck) I outright lack.

The card was another, non-descript, impersonal card, the kind you get in a bundle when you donate to AMVETS or St. Jude Hospital.

The card is bad enough--and then there's the inscription she put inside. I really feel a bunch of different emotions reading it:

1. Initially I feel like she's trying to appeal to my sentimentality--and is trying to manipulate me that way. 
2. Then there's the feeling like we are living in entirely different universes. "It was a journey we took together." AS IF I had any choice in this endeavor! Also, I find it interesting her use of "was" and not "IS." Neither of us is dead (yet), so it's an ON-GOING journey, isn't it?
3. Then the anger hits me. The anger in it taking her 50 years to attempt to appear thoughtful--what about all the years I actually needed love or validation? JUST LIKE HER FATHER, she has the ability, and she just turns it on and off, at will.

And knowing myself, I know when the time comes and she'll no longer be in the land of the living, I'll be even more pissed, as it took her fifty years for her to attempt something that resembles thoughtfulness--but I know the thoughtfulness is not its own end--but is a means to an end, in this case, weaponizing my birthday/birthday card, in order to achieve her END, which is more attention in the form of a telephone call. What about all the years I needed the unconditional love that a mother SHOULD provide? All the years she was emotionally unavailable to me? 

I cannot take even the simple act of a card at face value, I cannot let my guard down, because that's how she worms her way back in. I have her pidgeon-holed right now, in a designated space, safely at arm's distance away. And even the fact I am actively aware of doing this, it takes energy and headspace to be vigilant and protective of myself and my life.

I have spent roughly the last 18-19 years flying solo. No parental safety net--not that I had much of one to begin with. I have built a nice life, and I'm protective of it. This is perhaps the most stable time of my life.

Sure. She gave me life, but in many ways, she's tried to destroy it, too.