Yesterday: lackluster. Today: also shaping up to be lackluster.

I don�t know what else to say. Why is it so hard for me to stay positive, see the glass as half-full, appreciate what I have, look for the silver lining, and what-have-you?

Oh, wait a sec, I just thought of my mother. She didn�t raise me like that. You know, actually I�m doing pretty well, comparatively speaking! That is to say, compared to not only my mother, but to the Schmance of many years ago.

A couple of years after I moved to Chicago, I became very depressed. I started taking anti-depressants and eventually ended up in the hospital, and then a few months later I tried to kill myself and was hospitalized again. The anti-depressants worked for me, and then I got pregnant and stopped taking them. Since then, I have never felt like I needed to start taking them again. Even my worst moments are nothing like the depression I used to have. It was like the densest fog ever, obscuring everything�I have very few memories of that time.

And my mother . . . well, my mom has a lot of emotional difficulties. She plays a lot of head games with people�passive aggression being her favorite, with eternal grudges and martyrdom not far behind. She never lets go of an argument or a perceived slight. She will pretend like it�s all resolved, but nothing is ever resolved for her, and she�ll just go on being snippy indefinitely. Once someone has offended her, the relationship is over and she dons her look-how-wronged-I-am victim suit. She also has a well-loved martyr suit; she will do a lot of stuff that no one has asked her to or even wants her to do, and then put on the martyr act. She never asks anyone directly to do anything; you�re supposed to know somehow what she wants you do. If you don�t do it how or when she wants, she will huff around making a lot of noise until you just start doing stuff in the hope that you will eventually hit on the thing she has in mind. She had trouble with some people at her last job, so one day she just never came back from lunch. She doesn�t know how to say what she wants, tell you when you�ve pissed her off, have an argument, or work things out. She just walks out�if not physically, then emotionally.

The other thing about my mom is that nothing is ever her fault. She is everyone�s victim. I keep encouraging her to go out and try things, meet people, pursue an interest. Well, she says she can�t do that, because: (1) Where she lives, people will talk about you if you go, for instance, to a yoga class alone (i.e., without your husband). (2) My father doesn�t want her to have interests. (3) She�s too busy with the house and the lawn and the garden. If she doesn�t do everything, it won�t get done at all. My dad is no help. (4) My sister imposes on her by expecting her to watch my niece on a regular basis. These are all bullshit excuses. It�s just more comfortable for her to blame everyone else for her unhappiness.

I love my mom. It�s all the bullshit I can�t stand. What I really hate is that, growing up, I learned all the bullshit really well, and as an adult I spend a lot of my energy trying to handle things correctly in my relationships. For the longest time, I walked out at the first sign of conflict. Only in the last few years have I learned how to stay and just go ahead and have the conflict.

What was my point again? Oh, right, I was telling myself that I�m actually doing pretty well, considering. I joined a freakin� social club, fer cryin� out loud! (My mom, by the way, didn�t like that one bit. She didn�t say that, of course, but she used the trailing-off-faint-praise method to convey her feelings: �Oh, that sounds nice . . . I�m sure you�ll have fun . . . well, good, that sounds nice . . .� It�s the same way she talks about anything I decide to pursue: going to a new shul, keeping kosher, booking a walking tour in Italy, whatever.)

So, I�ve convinced myself. I�m going to be juuuuuuust fine.

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