It gets hard hearing so many people endlessly saying how much they miss their mother and how awesome they were. That's not true for everyone, including me. To the rest of the world my mother was a saint, to me she was somebody that put my fourth behind everyone and everything else. She's gone, but literally the last phone call I ever had with her was the first time in my life she acknowledged my point of view and understood it. On to the annoying parts:
She was an adopted child, with Jewish and Sicilian parents. As such, she had curly hair and darkish skin. Born in 1936, and adopted by a German/ Hungarian couple. They were Lutheran and took her to Trinity Lutheran Church on Livingston in Orlando. The church treated her second best because of her looks, and she literally spent her life overcompensating to fit in there. To the point that she became a teacher and spent 50 years teaching there. My youth was spent 6 to 7 days a week at the godforesaken church. From 7:00 am- 4:00 pm. I was allowed no after school activities that didn't happen at the church, because that would mean my mother had to take me to them. So while everybody else was going to little league, music or other interests, I sat at the school, reading books, and waiting to go home.
Because she so desperately wanted to start teaching after my birth, she put me into classes as soon as I was able to enroll by age. Hence, I was always the youngest in my class, and due to less cognitive development, always lagged behind in math. I just couldn't take it in, yet the next year it would slowly make sense as to what the previous year had taught. To make it worse, a know it all asshole named Carl Moser was hired to be principle while I was there. He endlessly monkeyed with what he expected teachers to do based on his degree in admin, while lacking a fraction of the actual teaching experience the teachers had. His sixth grade class ruined my life. His math "program" was a chart on the wall with a bunch of boxes to check off and numbered worksheets to hand out. He never once taught a math class, he gave out the sheets and insisted you figure them out for yourselves. He ignored that some people are great at math and can't do literature, while others can't do math easily. Our class was held to the standard of a math geek who was so inept he slammed his finger in a class door and took the end of his finger off. Then once healed he sat on his other hand and broke his fingers. But he could do math. Moser's answer to my math questions was to tell me to ask this idiot, who didn't like me and then denigrated me for not being able to do math. What a fucking useless teacher, much less admin.
Once clear of the school, I was endlessly signed up for church based activities, as my mother had decided I was going to be a preacher. That said, by the time I got out of sixth grade, I had read the bible 12 times already. The problem was that brought theological questions with it...which none of the preachers would answer. The ONLY answer I ever got was, " YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT ON FAITH". You know what? FUCK THEM ALL. While everyone else was enjoying growing up, sneaking around being kids, I was locked in my room trying to learn yet another trumpet part to play in church. Go to Pep Band on a Thursday night? Nope, aren't you playing Sunday? Is it any wonder I dropped Trumpet right after school, who wants to spend their life playing fifth place to fat women singers, choirs, flute players and organists?
Through all this, my mother was an outstanding teacher to everyone else. They LOVED her. The evidence was at least four huge garbage cans full of tacky gifts that had to be tossed after her passing. Her funeral had over a hundred people attending, many students who saw her name in the obit. None of them realized she had put all of them ahead of me my entire life. Once she felt I was too old for some toy, she took it to her classroom or other classroom "for the kids". Because at an expensive private school they couldn't afford their own at home? I later found many of my prized possessions scattered around classrooms, and her defense was "You weren't using it anymore.". I replied with, "No, because it disappeared and you said you hadn't seen it.". Self-fulfilling BS it was.
Worse, once I hit 8 I started to be required to mow the yard and do all the gardening. By 10 I started mowing neighbors yards, having 9 to maintain by the time I was 12. When was there supposed to be time for my interests? NEVER, that's when. I also mowed both my grandparent's yards, one of which was a rental property of about three acres. I was PROMISED that someday the rental property would be mine for my old age.
My father's family had for centuries bought tiny pieces of land, sold a number, and bought larger pieces. I know of 13 lots when I was 16, but by the time I was 40, my mother had sold all those lots....and given 95% of the money from them to the god damned church! MY future got given away, as well as my past. So the financial stability my father and his family worked so hard for was literally given to a fucking church. I honestly hope the damn place burns down, including the only thing I like there, the pipe organ. They don't deserve it.
So don't tell me I have to believe in your god, or I should go to your church "because its different", or all the other things you think the bible says I should do. While you were enjoying life and growing up, I was "serving god". Now it's YOUR turn.
I will never cease to be angry at this whole fucking mess.
