That's what friends are for

i have said many times that i have the best friends in the world. and it's true. i do. i had an awful fight with my mom the other day, and i didn't know who to reach out to. but, as always, my friends knew just where i was. i talked to d about it on the phone, and t via chat, and i told m about it the next day but left out where the conversation started. here's what i wrote in a few different iterations.

mom is suddenly being awful. i know that she is completely freaked out
by interracial relationships, and she can't cover that up by
pretending that she's against polyamory. (that's what she did during
the first year or my relationship with m.) i haven't told her
about my plans with him, or that things are getting more serious. i
told her that the visit was great and i feel really good about it, but
she can barely hear anything about him at all. so i've tried not to
talk about it.

last night i called her on my way home from atlanta, and asked in a
very calm, mature way what the nature of her concern is. she liked him
as a person, and having grown up on military bases he lacks a lot of
the mannerisms, speech patterns, etc that would usually scare my
mother. she flipped. she acted as if i was telling her i had bought
her house out from under her and was selling it and kicking her out.
just so upsidedown and instantly hysterical. the closest thing to a
better understanding is that there are "cultural differences" between
races that cause problems down the road in relationships, and it's
something she just finds disgusting at the core of her being. i find
it almost funny that she'd worry about the future of this relationship
(code for kids) and not about my relationships with e or d,
where there were significant legal risks for being long-term partners.

i expected the racism. what i didn't expect was for her to tell me
that i'm still at a stage where i make choices in order to rebel
against her. if that's how she really sees me, there is absolutely
nothing i can do to fix it.

earlier in the conversation i'd told her that i was eating really well
and feeling really good, and this calorie counting thing i found
suggested 1,200 calories a day on non-workout days. she said the idea
is that 1,200 calories a day should eventually get me down to 120
pounds. that's about half my weight and i haven't been 120 pounds
since before puberty, so i laughed. she was serious.

after we hung up, she sent me an email. i didn't read it until today.
she says she doesn't know how to solve this "disagreement" between us,
but she hopes i'll pay attention to wisdom, and do i even bother to
pray anymore? and then she said maybe if i lost 50 pounds, my world
would "open up." she thinks i want to be with m because only he
(or probably only black men) would love a fat girl, and i'm
comfortable with it because it goes against the grain of society.

i haven't cried about this, and i have no desire to fight with her
about it. i also have no plans to call her. if i can't talk to her
about m, or my future, or how i'm taking care of myself on a
daily basis, what's the point? we're planning a big trip for her 60th
birthday in june, and at this moment i can't see that happening. i
can't see where this ends.

the responses i got from the people i talked to about this were spot-on. here's one.

 this is horrible. they need to have a PFLAG for racist parents. i'm so sorry you have to deal with this.

the body comments are so tired. i'm sure all this hurts, but i hope you can get some distance and see that it's not about you but rather about forms of oppression that she's tapping into to exert dominance over you. presumably because she feels powerless in her own life. again, not about you.

clearly, your mother has boundary problems (which prob. set you up for codependency). and the only way to be safe around someone with no boundaries is to create them for yourself and vigorously police them. and remember that we are victims of victims. i'd bet your mother has experienced deep misery over her body and her race issues-- not to mention her boundary issues. just a hunch. maybe her misery isn't so literally connected to what she's doing. but happy, mature people don't behave in this way.

ok, maybe that's all too honest? i'm sure you love her and want her respect. but she's a long way from being able to give you that. so some grieving is in order. and then, some rosie the riveter.

and the other. 

WOW that is a lot. i am so sorry that your mom's freakout resulted on those kinds of claims on your body. that is a lot. i think you're right to try to keep your distance from it, because it sounds like she hasn't found the real concern yet--even though her concerns are Big Concerns for a mom, i still don't think she's found the real one. from the outside, it looks like irrational parent freak out (like something my dad has done to me before, for example). 

i am so sorry...there are no words for this kind of thing. i am sending you the biggest hug. if it starts to go downhill and you need someone to talk to you/remind you to take an ativan, i am here.

so now i'm remembering that having and enforcing boundaries is not the same as cutting someone out of my life. and i am very, very strong.