How Time Flies

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since I posted the story about my pom. I'm happy to say she is still with me...albeit her 'new' vet did not think she would live. I nursed her back to health and although she is no longer as vivacious, losing a lot of her sight and hearing, she is still my constant companion and does give an occasional bark. She mostly likes to sleep, especially next to me on the couch (under the covers now that the weather has turned colder).
Well, actually, I have a different topic to talk about today. I have been retired for a little over two and a half years and finally feeling less anxious, more calm, restful. My mother recently invited herself out here to visit for Thanksgiving and what should have been a joyous occasion, seemed marred even before she arrived. My life with my mother has had it's ups and downs over the years. Over the past ten years I felt we had finally established a good relationship, but for whatever demons haunt her, it seemed to crumble a few months ago. I made the fatal error of posting a photo of my mother and father, (separated 1964, divorced 1967) taken in the 1950's, for father's day on my Facebook. She saw it on her friend's page, she doesn't have a computer, called me and really laid into me (her friend had friended me a week earlier).

I'm not really sure why, I suppose there are millions of us that do this, but I still seek her approval even after all these years. For reasons that are hers alone, she does not want to give it. During my childhood, she was a fierce parent, not necessarily what one may want as a child. I have no memory of hugging or kissing or caressing...raised in the true german fashion, children are seen not heard. Punishment was swift, painful and doled out by both parents, those were the times.
Fear ruled my life and it wasn't until my mother made a snide comment to my daughter about my sister and me being afraid of her, as if it were an accomplishment, that I realized how much I live in the paralyzing fear that was my childhood. I'm not saying that I didn't laugh or have great times. No, not so one-sided, there were many times of laughter and happiness, but also an underlying fear. It followed me everywhere. Everywhere. Fear of moving. Fear of pain. Fear of hunger. Fear of wrath. Fear of speaking out. Fear of failure. Fear of getting caught. Fear of intimacy. Fear of someone seeing me. Me.
Well, it's time to let go. It will be interesting to see if I can, since I've lived with it for so long. The process is difficult, to say the least, trying to find all the tentacles, but I have nothing but time on my hands now.