Gemini Girl

I wish I could shake it.

The hold that my mother has on me seems like it will never go away.

Things that I do today, that affect me adversely… is because of her.

I peeled another layer off of the onion in therapy today.

There are so many layers.

Why do I spend?

Because if I buy clothes (or things for my home, or things for my girls) I get complimented. Why am I prisoner to compliments? Why do I need to constantly be reassured? Why do I need everyones approval…

When I was a little girl, I was a tomboy. I loves roughhousing, I had a big mouth and crazy hair. I was not dainty in anyway.

My mom hated that I wasn’t her “small, quiet, gentle” little girl that she always imagined having, she would constantly berate me and tell me that I should have been born a boy.

Heavy words for a 6 year old to hear.

What I heard was … “You’re not good enough. Your not what I wanted in a daughter”

Once I got married, I wanted to TTC right away. I knew I had an ovary, and fallopian tube removed and thought that might create problems in becoming pregnant.

 I was right.

Every month that passed, every negative that popped up on my home pregnancy test .. just proved my mother right… I wasn’t woman enough.

When I did finally become pregnant, I was sitting on top of the world. I loved being pregnant. I had no real morning sickness, and I embraced my body. I was allowed to eat what I wanted (i was carrying twins) and relished getting bigger. I felt like I won some sort of feminine lottery- I wasn’t only pregnant, I was pregnant with two! In your face mom… you see, I am a woman.

Of course my negative self image  wasn’t helped by the fact that I gave birth prematurely. It just proved that I wasn’t ‘woman enough” to hold my babies in for a few more weeks. My body had failed me. Mom won.

In a way, I envy pregnant women because they are proving to the world that they are, in fact, women. And an insane part of me wants to get pregnant again, now, just to prove that I have what it takes to have a full term baby. Crazy, I know.

The intellectual part of me knows that she was wrong, that no mother should say those kinds of things to their kids… but it still doesn’t change the fact that I see myself that way. I have never been woman enough, feminine enough.

When I get compliments for my clothes, or anything in my appearance, it makes me feel like I’m getting it right. Like women kind is giving me their stamp of approval, like I was given their secret handshake.

This leads me down a road of spending.

I am trying to rid myself of all the poison streaming through my veins, so that I wont infect my daughters.