Mom's "Morales"

My mother has this incredible power to irritate the piss out of me.  I posted a status on my Facebook about how New York just made gay marriage legal.  Because, y’know, people should get to marry whoever they want, saying marriage is between one man and one woman is a little biblical for my taste when it comes to my government.  I mean, don’t marry your dog, that’s just weird, but love shouldn’t be restricted by a bunch of arbitrary rules made by people who are too puritanical to see that love comes in many forms.

Anyway.  I posted about being happy that gay marriage will soon be legal in New York.  My mother decided this meant I was a lesbian.  And since she does this to me occasionally, whenever I post about anything outside the “norm” that I happen to approve of, I toyed with her a bit.  She had the nerve to tell me that she hopes I’m not planning on marrying a woman (I’m not), and that she still wants grandchildren from me and hopes I marry a man.

My problems with this involve the fact that she assumes that I have to get married to reproduce and that she has a problem with the concept of me being a lesbian.  Of course, she first thought I was in New York (all my status said was basically “yay New York!”), but once I corrected that and explained what my status was about, she just had to say that she hoped I wouldn’t get into a relationship with a same sex partner, due to the desire for grandchildren.  Not that she’d see them all that often, due to her often having CRAZY TIME.  But anyway, this comment thread degenerated into an argument about how if I get pregnant out of wedlock, we’re having a shotgun wedding and how my “morales” are wrong.

No.  No no no no no.  See, if my morals were a problem, I wouldn’t care about anyone but myself.  I would steal, murder, and do... other things.  (Apparently, I’ve gotten so good at being a good person that I can’t even think of things that would be horrible.)  Also, I informed her that she can’t legally make me do anything, and that includes getting married if I choose not to be, and that marriage is not necessary for a stable, loving relationship, nor is it necessary for the purpose of raising a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child.  Her idea of “proper” and mine are apparently completely different, though it’s not like I particularly care about “proper” so much.

Then she accused me of being the anti-christ.  Well, she said she didn’t raise me to be anti-Christ, which is what I think she meant.  And now I will quote myself:

“I do not believe in your dear and fluffy lord. God is a myth. God has no bearing on how I live my life. I live my life for me, and do my best to be a good person to the people in my life. I do my best to be kind and supportive to those around me. I do not murder people, do drugs, commit genocide, or anything horrible. I believe everyone deserves to live with equality, whether they're transgender, gay, straight, bi, black, white, or purple.

And it's not like you exactly raised me, so you can't pull that card here. If I want to become a mother without being saddled with a man who will want to change me, there is nothing wrong with that. I will not be hurting anyone.

I will not live my life by an arbitrary set of rules dictated by people who have nothing better to do than orchestrate other peoples' lives for them. Your god's rules do not apply to me. I will make my own rules, my own moral code, with which to live by, because I am not going to go through life feeling guilty for every damn thing I do.”

It is my choice how I live my life.  Fortunately, I want to be a good person, not even necessarily do some good in the world, I’m only one person, but I care about more than just me.  This is just one in a series of incidents with my mother that makes me angry.  She has blamed me for every problem she’s had for years: she couldn’t have more kids, her marriage is falling apart, her husband’s health is failing, she can’t manage her own finances, her husband can’t manage to stop drinking, she lost her job, her husband lost his job, their house was foreclosed.  All of these are at least partly my fault, if you ask her.  I’m so fucking sick of that crap.  None of that was my fault.  I was only twelve years old when I moved in with them.  I didn’t force whiskey down his throat, I didn’t give her a medical problem that ended her ability to have children, I didn’t mess up their marriage, I didn’t force them to stop paying their bills.

This is the one area of my life that I am bitter about, and I am not happy to be bitter.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this anymore.