My mom has committed a sin that I find unpardonable. Okay, not entirely unpardonable. So I'll say my mom has committed a semi-unpardonable sin. (Caveat: let it be duly noted that I love my mom, that this "sin" is not a sin per se, and that she actually has been pardoned. Thus the label. Continuing on . . .) Anyway, a recent conversation between my mom and me devolved into talk of my ex-boyfriend--the one who broke up with me roughly two weeks ago and I'm not gutsy enough to communicate with any longer in person. Not at the moment, anyway. I told her I would be his friend. Eventually. On my time, since I apparently felt more decimated by the dissolution of the relationship than he did. She just shrugged noncommittally, then looked at me and said, "I don't think that's the last you've heard from him. He'll come back into your life and I wouldn't be surprised if you two dated each other again."
That was the sin. Right there. No mother, in her right mind, should ever say such a thing out loud when talking to her daughter, someone who is already supremely confused and only sinking deeper into it as the days move on (confusion, incidentally, is like quicksand; once you step in a little, you're toast for a while unless somebody is on hand to grab a vine and dive in to pull you out). At this crucial thinking time, it's not cool to instill hope into someone who --a mere week and a half ago--was watching Elizabethtown, crying on her cookies, and wondering if she is, after all, a "substitute person." (Of course, Mom wasn't a witness of that one. But still!)
My dad frequently likes to tell me to think about what I say before I say it, to evaluate the reaction of whoever I'm talking to, because I have a tendency to let whatever I think pop out of my mouth. ("Pop" may be too mild of a verb, since such not-thinking-ness often causes explosions of a catastrophic variety) He has always told me this because he has the same tendency. I used to think he was the only parent with it, but I suppose almost thirty years of marriage would cause certain tendencies spouses have to rub off on each other . . .
Anybody is allowed to think anything they want; there are just certain things nobody should say.
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1 comment:
Ouch, yes. Holding out hope while trying to get over someone is, sad to say, impossible. Having tried to do it not once, but twice, I fully commiserate.
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