A Business Agreement

There's a part of me which wistfully longs to be like others who are whole and unfractured. I wonder at random moments what that must be like. 

To sail through childhood with one whole self and personality intact, oh what deliciousness! I can't even imagine it. To grow up loved and valued, cherished even, seems like a tale told out of school. How does one stumble across such good fortune anyway?

Every day is a battle for survival. I try to pretend otherwise but there it is. I am never to be free from the contamination of my childhood. Yesterday I remembered that when one of my mother's hubbies was put into a home (because he had Alzheimer's) and she began dating someone, her justification was, "Our marriage was really only a business agreement."

A business agreement.

I wonder what her hubby would have said to that had someone asked, and if he'd had the presence of mind to understand the question with all of its ramifications.

This sent me down another line of thinking, going back in time to the worst season of my life:  the year that she left my dad and brought my abuser into our lives.

What that just a business deal as well? I'm wondering, see, because I recall how idiotic my mother acted during the first few short months of their unholy union. Baby talk, kissy kissy, the whole nine yards. She was acting the role expected of her in case anyone happened to be watching, in case her audience (which would be everyone who knew she'd broken up two marriages to be with this man) wondered why she'd go to all that trouble for someone she didn't even love. That all went by the wayside really fast. I never saw them kiss after that. Never saw the least bit of affection between them, not in word or deed. And yet she was very meticulous in waiting on him hand and foot. Well, don't arouse the anger of the beast and all that.

She wasn't fearful of him. She chose to treat him like royalty even though he made life miserable in every possible way for everyone around him. The worst he acted the more she fawned over him.

A business deal? Maybe something along the lines of, "I'll provide you with material security for the rest of your life as long as I get to be King of the Mountain.Oh, and let's add your firstborn daughter into the mix just for good measure."

A business deal would imply she knew exactly what she was getting herself (and her kids) into. I'm not saying that the agreement was ever articulated in so many words. Most likely it wasn't. But did he make the terms of their union clear from the beginning in ways she could understand? I think so. I think she hasn't the capacity to truly love any man, and so to a certain degree any marriage of hers would in essence be nothing more than a handy business agreement.

When he bribed me with money in front of her to say nasty words, was that him letting her know exactly how things would go? When he made sexually inappropriate remarks to me, again in her presence, wasn't that him demonstrating to her that he was going to run the show his way? After all he could have said these things in secret, behind her back. I think it's telling that he chose to say them in front of her, brazen as any hussy.

How convenient of my mother to claim "business agreement" once her hubby was safely out of the way and she was free to find herself a new man. I never heard anything about this so-called agreement while he was still in his right mind. 

Business agreement, indeed. In her warped mind, maybe.

These are my thoughts as I begin this new day, preparing to begin packing again. I suppose I'm experiencing these thoughts because my mother's Christmas appearance is hanging over me like a dark storm cloud.

Comments

[Enola]

Hmm. I think your mom shared the contract with mine. She and Toilet were also very affectionate at first. And he was SO kind to us - probably to stop the comments of people who were convinced (and partly true) that he was the reason my parents divorced. Then later it all changed. I have no idea why they stay together now. He can't (or doesn't) work. He doesn't contribute around the house. He doesn't talk to her. He doesn't do anything. If she hadn't been divorced already I'd think it was the whole "death do us part" thing. But that's not the case either.

[beautifuldreamer]

Enola,

My mother stayed with my abuser until his death from bone cancer. I don't know about your mother, but in my mother's case I believe she stayed with him out of a stubborn concern for how it would look if, after breaking up two marriages to be together, her marriage to him failed. I think she felt a certain smugness in being with him until the end.

She certainly never had any feelings for him, and in fact suffered greatly from bleeding ulcers (from stress) the last few years they were together.

And then there's the habit thing: it's sometimes easier simply to stay with someone than attempt to break out on one's own.

Beauty

[Austin]

"it's just business" that gets me, it really does. It stings because this type of mentality lowers everyone and everything to expendable property. This is the mindset of a sociopath.

Austin