My Son Hates Me

I know that I have said it before, but it is easy to hate something that you don't understand.  How much do you want to know?  Everything?  Nothing?  I am a hard person to get to know.  I hide a lot of myself.  I am very private-secretive almost.  I spend a great deal of time worrying that people will think that I am totally whacked for some of the choices that I have made.  A lot of them are a little questionable.  As I am healing I am learning to let a few glimmers of my true self show. 

Seriously, I think that I hold back a lot of valid truths from Son because I feel like it will all sound like excuses.  It would be very easy to spill everything out just to rid myself of it all.  However...it feels like excuse making.

How can I say that the grandmother that he remembers through the eyes of a young child mistreated me like it was her hobby?  Every time Son starts in on his, "I hate you and resent you for so much" rant I want to just spew venom at him.  I wonder though if telling him the facts of the life that I have lived will only further alienate him.

For the record: I signed Son over to my parents after a GREAT deal of urging from my mother.  I was battling advanced endometrial cancer and I was caught up in a mother's bind.  What do I do if I do not survive?  I was constantly reassured that I could have him back when (not IF, when) I recovered.  To the surprise of many, including my doctors, I survived.  I was left bald and infertile. 

To add insult to injury, I was told that I had taken too long to get better.  I was told that my son no longer would consider me his mother.  What could I expect?  I had been sick for almost a year.  Then that lead to the "You can't send him to school with a birth certificate that says 'unknown father' on it".  Mind you this crazy woman had told me not to list Son's biological father so that the man would have no rights.

I was set up.  My mother stole my child from me.  How is that fair?  Why had I believed one single word she said to me?  Every piece of me knew better.  Every single molecule in my body knew better.

And here I sit now...My son hates me with a vengeance.  All because I feel this need to protect the person that hurt me so deeply.  Even now, so many years after her death it is like she still gets to win.  I may never speak up.  For me it is so much easier to remain silent and let Son have his own version of such a twisted truth.  A truth in which I am the enemy.  A truth that to him means I never fought for him.  A truth in which his grandmother is the savior. 

God...I may even hate myself a fair measure...