I'm Angry..

..and so fucking angry. Quit making me out to be some directionless teenager.

I fail to comprehend and I fail to make sense of the customary put-downs that my mother practice oh so often. I don't know about other people's Ibus and Mamas but I am under the impression that it has a cultural pattern. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think, that some mothers find that the line of quiet, modest pride that they want to project to other people a hard line to walk. They want to tell other people of their sons and daughters' achievements without seeming smug about it. They do not want to sound superior or as if they are comparing their champions with other people's. No, that line is certainly hard to walk, particularly because they are feeling smug, they are feeling superior to other mothers, and they feel that no other child can top off your achievement. Your victory uplifts them.

I realize this.

So when there is fear that they might stumble off the line and into the side of smugness and superiority, mothers subconsciously give it a wide berth and end up on the extreme opposite end. It is the side where in front of an audience, nothing their children does is ever right and complaints would fill up the pages of a law textbook. Criticism after criticism, so that no, of course I don't think she's arrogant, she said her children can't be relied on to help around the house. Do you see?

But what the children receive is a terrible pain. Especially so if they are sitting beside their mothers when the criticism was taking place. How could they possibly maintain a calm demeanor when they are feeling utterly humiliated? Could they possibly look into the eyes of the audience and tell the truth, that what their mothers were saying are entirely unjustified? Would they be believed? Is it their place, their right to speak up? The criticisms, are those things what their mothers really think of them? If yes, then why weren't those brought up in private? Why tell everybody?

It's a terrible pain. It really is. Knowing that the audience would be left with the wrong image of you, burns you from the inside. Resentment builds up, with anger and bitterness as company.

But consider this, she's proud of you. Yeah, I'm okay now.