achievement v. 4.0

Yes this is a after 1 a.m. entry and so who can know yet exactly how this one might play out. I just checked my grades officially and I got an A and I have a 4.0 gpa right now. Yes yes I know that I�ve only taken this class and yes yes I know that a lot can change in the coming weeks and months.

When I was in highschool I was an average student earning B's and C's and that almost always D every semester. I could never concentrate and when I think about it all now it's no wonder because I was living with an alcoholic and within a dysfunction that reached heights the Statue of Liberty won't ever reach. It's amazing that I didn't ever develop a coke habit and even more amazing that I had only one boyfriend from age 15 until age 20. If you read the statistics it's f'n amazing that I even graduated from highschool and doubly so that I'm not an alcoholic now.

For a girl who�s Mother told her daily I would amount to nothing, be nothing and end up with nothing looking at a gpa listed as a 4.0, even if that lasts only the next 5 weeks until I receive the grade for my current class�.I am reveling in it. I am glorious in it. I am pinching myself and proud of myself. And words can never explain the years of abuse I lived through in my teen years. I cannot tell anyone adequately what it was like. Sure I can give you the detailed incident about the time I came home from work at age 18 to find a half of a can of spaghetti sauce smeared all over my bedroom up and down the walls with a note on the can informing me that I wasted the sauce by not using it all. I can tell you how she screamed at me, slapped me, and pulled my hair on a regular basis over nothing things like I forgot to straighten the shoes in front of the door. I could tell you all sorts of idiotic abusive stories but bottom line is....Yes my mother was and still is clearly not right.

But at one point I was a child and I loved her passionately and wildly. I dreamed of ways to please her. If only I did�.if only I could�.just do things perfect. Then she might, oh god how it might be if she might only love me.

And yet she was the one person who consistently told me I was nothing. Told me I would never measure up. She informed me often and loudly that I would push a broom at McDonalds. For years I humored myself by saying that some McDonald's workers do in fact make more money than my mother who was and I believe still is a bookkeeper for a bus company.

I used to have this little light somewhere within that I believed in. I thought that one day I might overcome and find a way into the doors of some elite college. And then I would do well. I played it all out in my mind. That perhaps then she would come to my graduation. After all I spent my high school graduation out in the woods with my first boyfriend Steve drinking cheap Pabst Blue Ribbon beers crying my eyes out because I didn�t attend my high school graduation because I was too embarrassed to walk down the isle knowing my own mother would not attend. So I kept that little light of possibility. If only I could be �good enough� and oh it could still happen one day. Good enough, bright enough, smart enough to garner her attention and her love. Yes one day I would do better, be better, and earn her affection. Yes, I would SHOW her. I believed that I could make her love me if I just did more, did better, and did amazing things.

I don�t think that a 4.0 gpa makes a girl good enough for a Mother like I had. I don�t think anything makes you ever feel good enough when all you want is your Mother. Hell�there have been moments that I have wanted for �any� mother. Nights I have cried so deep and so hard that I think I winked at hell for the amount of pain that I endured. The day my son was born I lay in the hospital with a newfound idea of what parenthood and motherhood was. That little being came from me. I gave life to another human being and the responsibility and love I felt was so huge. So overwhelming. It was so unconditional and so perfectly pure. And it served to remind me that surely my own mother felt some semblance of that feeling the night I was born. So how how how could she push me out, walk away, remove my photos from albums and pretend that I never existed??? Refuse to speak my name or acknowledge I ever existed???? Normalcy cannot do this.

To say I have overcome this, I wish I could. To say I am stronger now, yes I surely am. To say I need her, I know that I don�t. But there is that little girl sitting on the bed with her baby dolls who still wishes her Mommy would kiss her goodnight. It�s still there. That fractured part of me.

So when I see myself achieve what she so blatantly told me I couldn�t. Even if it turns out to be momentarily, I want to touch it, dance with it, move into it, and become all of it. Because it is mine and nothing she ever said can change what I have now achieved despite everything she tried to take away.

I have a 4.0 gpa even if my Mommy said I never could. I have a 4.0 gpa even if she will never know. I have a 4.0 gpa and I am not pushing a broom at McDonalds. I still think about you, mostly I remember the pain. It has never gone away, even if it subsides sometimes. I still wonder why you did and how you did the things you did and even if you pretend that you have forgotten, I find it hard to believe that because the little girl waving her big fat gpa like a banner she never thought she�d have�she still wishes she were good enough to have a Mom even though I realize I don't want it to be you.

When I graduate, I will walk down the isle this time, even though you won't come again. But this time, I'll walk down with my head held high for not only am I good enough I am better than you.