I think I figured it out, why today’s bullshit is causing me so much strife. It’s the utter disdain she displayed. Disdain for my boundaries, the audacity of demanding they be respected, of being fed up and speaking out. Disdain for what she perceives to be my transgressions against her and the inflated sense of my “rebellious, disrespectful behavior” (hence her telling me I need to just scroll, as if this wasn’t the first time I’ve publicly asked her to leave me out of her crap). Disdain for my independence, my autonomy, my audacity to believe myself to be her equal as we’re both adults and I am a person and I’m not obligated to kowtow to her or police my tone to assuage her ego-driven authority complex, when she can’t even respect me as a person.
But really, the absolute disdain she holds for my spiritual path. That she believes she has the right to trample my boundaries, and uses my personal, occasional posts as a weapon to justify her constant stream of shit. She thinks she’s trying to save me, that it’s her responsibility to protect me from myself, to shove her beliefs down my throat until I choke and suffocate and bend to her will. That she has the audacity to tell me I can’t talk about my path while she’s in the middle of talking about hers. Even though I tell her a lot, leave me alone, I’m not changing, I don’t want to hear it.
She thinks she knows better, she always has, always does. It takes an act of deity to make her shut the fuck up and listen when she’s wrong. Honestly my sis and I usually had to enlist other adults, our grandparents mostly. I really wish my grandfather were still alive. He wouldn’t like my path, but he’d at least tell her to shut up and leave me alone.
It’s crushing, that she has such disdain for my path, won’t even listen or hear me out, because only her comfort matters. My comfort doesn’t matter, it rarely ever has. That’s why I found myself miserable and lonely and angry and suicidal as a Christian in high school. Why I abandoned my search for more loving Christianity because you know what? Fuck a god who would ignore a child crying out in distress. I couldn’t reconcile with the abrahamic god and I damn sure don’t intend to have anything to do with him through my mother’s sneering “judaism”.
I have not been so comforted by religion in a long time. I have not felt so close to a deity in a long time, and I don’t even have a proper shrine to Her. So close and comforted, with the feeling of I can just reach out? Just like that? A little prayer, and there She is? I never got that as a Christian. Not that I strongly recall. I always tried though, so hard and for so long. I cried so much. I never felt comfort, never felt touched, never felt like I was really being heard.
Yet here is Kali, who waited patiently for seven years, who will not be blocked by other gods, who will not be swayed by my mother’s disdain. I have no shrine, no community, and yet, and yet, and yet, there She is.
And my mother doesn’t care, doesn’t want to care, doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t actually care about my happiness, my fulfillment. She truly and genuinely believes that it is wrong, that it’s fake. Partly because Kali is misunderstood in the West, but mostly because she still holds tight to her belief that she knows best, and that there’s only one true path, and that she has the right to try and force me on it. That any disagreement and refusal is disrespect, is snide, and has no value.
The quotes around the word goddess, saying I post lies. She has so much disdain for me and doesn’t think she does. She honestly believes I hate her and am always against her, that if her words came from someone else I’d listen. It’s not true, at all. I don’t have the energy to be that petty, nor the desire, and I’ve never hated her. I’m just done trying to please her, because pleasing her means consuming myself, shrinking myself, enslaving myself to her whims and values.
It was so disrespectful that it hurt more than I was expecting. “goddess” posts. Then the nerve to say “you’re just reading into it.” Like, what the fuck did you mean then? Why did you put quotes around goddess if you weren’t implying my goddess doesn’t exist?
Then to say “I’m letting you go” the implication being abandonment, like honestly that’d be mostly nice if I had more help available, but it’s just manipulative. Then to call me later like nothing happened, just have an innocuous chat. It’s crass.
I honestly don’t care if she believes, or agrees. But like, why do you get to share your joy and wonder at your path but I don’t? Why don’t you want to hear about my joy? I actually didn’t mind her sharing about her path until she started invading every conversation with it and trying to force me to learn about it and attend her worship. She actually went behind my back to my fiancé to convince him to convince me to give her religious service a chance. He refused, because he isn’t stupid and knows me, and he literally does not care what I’m into if it isn’t expensive or violent, and he cares even less about my mother’s opinion on anything.
I rarely share my joy where she can see. I know it makes her uncomfortable, there are other folks on my facebook who wouldn’t like it, but again, why does she get to share her joy, and I should just scroll, but I don’t get to share mine and she demands not having to scroll? To use my rare occasions as a weapon to run roughshod over my boundaries? Unlike her, I’m not trying to convert her and everyone else! Why is everyone else allowed to share their joy and also establish boundaries in a shared space?
I’m just talking about the sacred too. How it brings me joy and comforts me, and even, though gently, challenges me. “Devour your enemies” a charge to stand strong for myself, for what’s right, to let no one crush me. Who fears death with Kali? Not I. My mom is just gonna have to be angry. That doesn’t make it hurt less.
Resting in Her Wild Hands 