The Home Coming

I spent the weekend with my mum this weekend gone and ...it was not what I had expected.

I'd planned this with her weeks ago, you see she had come to visit for a few days but her visit coincided with the last few days Luke and I had together before he went away for a month. Mum cut her visit short by a day in order to give us time together and I promised I would go to her for the weekend on her next weekend off. I have to admit it was a hasty promise and one I threw out there more because I was (felt) stuck between a rock and a hard place - Luke and my family - then from any real thought. Harsh, unfeeling and...no I am not proud of myself or my motives. I've always hated empty gestures and that was an empty gesture.

To say things have been strained and difficult between my mum and I lately is a bit of an understatement. I'm not attributing blame to any one in particular but between the two of us and a shocking lack of communication we managed to make an emotional time, in which we should have been there for each other, 100 times worse. One single fact is glaringly obvious now; we weren't there for each other, we pushed each other away (because we were hurting and to hurt in turn), and we withdrew completely from each other believing ourselves to be abandoned.

For a long time spending time with my mum only served as reminder of the hurt I felt whenever I looked at her and was in her company. I was reminded of what we had once shared and what we now had. It jarred me. It didn't feel right to feel like that, it hurt and it confused me and it made me angry and all felt horribly wrong. My mum has always been my best friend, she has always been there for me - no matter what I did or went through - she was the one person I always turned to first whenever something was upsetting me or I needed advice on.

And suddenly she wasn't. I'd needed her, really needed her like only a child who is hurting and confused and vulnerable can need their mother - instinctively and primally. And she let me down. I turned to her for help, for support and for understanding and she wasn't there. It hurts, still. Yet, I can't overlook my part in it either, I did all those things to her too.

For months I had been feeling so miserable, isolated, misunderstood, fearful and full of doubt. I don't know when exactly this started to change but recently I have felt less weighed down, less tearful, less negative about my life and relationships and less afraid to trust my instincts.

I came away from spending time with my mum this weekend sad to leave her and this isn't something that I have experienced in a long time. Before this weekend time with my mum had been fraught with tension and tangled emotions. May be it was the wine, may be it was something inside of me just letting go, may be it was that my need for her and the security that she represents finally outweighed everything else. I really couldn't say for certain and to be blunt...I don't care about the how and the why, it's taken long enough for me to get home and I just want to enjoy the home coming.

My mum is once again my mum and all that that encompasses for me, for us.