Wanting To See A Connection To Choices We've Made

It's been over 17 months since mom died, and she hasn't seen fit to visit me in my dreams. I vacillate between thinking death and the afterlife (if there is any) gives us the ability to go wherever we want to be. I just have not felt her presence. I felt a splinter of her presence, with a very vague sense she apologized for leaving, but not something as vivid as the dream I had where dad visited me. Even in death with infinite possibilities of being able to move her energy wherever she wants to be, she isn't visiting me. 

Death is like being permanently & relentlessly abandoned and rejected.

Seventeen months of silence has given me nothing but time to ruminate and even question what I remember. I feel as if I were gaslighting myself, questioning reality as I experienced it, "Was she as bad as I remembered?" "Was she a good person who did or said hateful things, or was she hateful with intermittent moments of good?"  

I am pretty firm in my belief I wanted better things for her than she wanted for herself. And initially after she died, I was furious, and in some ways I still AM. I am not resigned to it yet, but my prevailing emotion these days is just pity. 

All this time also has made me analyze choices I've made in my life, namely chasing after men who were otherwise unavailable to me, whether they were married, or a different religion, culture, or skin tone.

My first husband was Jewish. And after four years of marriage, I converted to Judaism, in preparation for us to have kids. In a way I hoped also it would lead to me finally being accepted by his father. (This never happened.) 

I also think of how my first husband was a byproduct of domestic violence & rape, and he was also LITERALLY an abortion that lived. He was not wanted by his father, and quite frankly, what kind of mother tells their son they were an abortion that lived? (His fraternal twin was aborted, and by the time they realized this, it was too late to do anything about it.)

I think of the devastation of my divorce, and I cannot help but think of similar themes with my siblings.

The lesser of the parallels is: my sister married a man who was the byproduct of an affair. His birth father didn't want him--and still doesn't want contact. His birth mom died, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother. Despite this genesis story, my sister's marriage has lasted 30 years, and seems healthy/functional enough.

The greater of the parallels is: my brother married a woman, who, like my exhusband, was Jewish. There are far more parallels between my brother's first marriage and my first marriage. Stunning parallels, in fact. 

(I now wish I had asked my parents what thoughts they might have had where 2/3 of their kids married people who were from a different religion than our family was.)

Just like me, he went through the conversion process (though there is a lot to be said about his conversion!), and he had a Jewish wedding. 

After several abortions (after genetic testing they realized those fetuses carried the gene for the health issue his wife has), they finally had a child together.

Not only was his first wife Jewish, but she also hung around, benefitting from his regular paycheck. Unlike my first marriage, she stuck around twice as long as my ex did. And just like my ex, she left him emotionally devastated and destitute, just like my ex. Within a week of her leaving him, she left him with the mortgage in arrears and the house about to be foreclosed. She destroyed his world.

I see parallels between all three of these spouses--though my sister's seems the most functional of all the "first spouses."

I see us all as having some degree of abandonment or rejection life trap/schema. Each of us gravitating to people who were either damaged goods, or with tragic genesis stories. 

I say this not with any snobbishness, but I feel my choice in my second husband was more grounded than my first. I wasn't making a desperate choice. I wasn't looking to be saved. I wasn't looking to save anyone. I wanted someone with less emotional baggage than I had--and I think I got exactly that. 

I see us all as having made similar choices in mates. And even though I have remarried, I married someone who isn't from the same culture or religion I was raised in--yet despite that, his family have accepted me completely. I truly feel like Ruth from the bible.

I am not sure if this post is cohesive, or if I just merely WANT it to be cohesive. I know I want it all to make sense. And therein is my suffering: my attachment or expectation or need for things to make sense.

I see each of our marriages as byproducts of being emotionally abused--byproducts like how water ripples when you cast a stone into it.