I love my mom. I really do. We’ve been getting along better than usual lately, and I like talking to her and getting advice on certain things from her. But there are just some things that we don’t do well together. Mainly, talk about what we believe. My mom has serious issues with most of the things that I hold dear: the church I choose to go to, the things I choose to study, the food that I eat, and of course, the politicians that I vote for. I don’t really care about the politics so much, but the other stuff makes everything a lot harder. Most of the time, if she doesn’t get it, she’ll say she doesn’t comprehend my choices, she worries about tme, and sometimes she’ll even borderline-ridicule me. It’s pretty annoying.
Last night I was talking to my mom on the phone, and she mentioned that there’s a picnic we could go to when I’m home at the place where she works. She said there was going to be barbeque chicken, and I asked her if they would have anything else.
Mom: “Oh yeah, you don’t eat meat. That’s just so RIDICULOUS. I don’t understand.”
She basically threw a little hissy fit about me being a vegetarian. Why does she care so much? I’m not a hippie, I bathe daily, and I don’t wear birkenstocks. I just choose not to eat meat. Apparently this is a problem. So I told her some reasons why and then she was just kind of quiet. So then I wrote a big thing on facebook about why I’m a vegetarian, and this offended her.
Mom: “I just can’t even talk to you about anything without you going into a tirade about it.”
All I have to say to that is, well, you do into tirades when I tell you what I believe, and you don’t understand, and so I feel like I need to make you understand. How do you think it makes me feel when you attack my person for what I believe? I don’t attack you for your beliefs.
Alas. Sometimes I think the only way my mom and I can get along is if I conceal who I really am from her. And it’s not even that bad. I go to church for crying out loud, I don’t do drugs, I’m not pregnant, and the beliefs I have are a result of reflection and self-improvement. What’s so bad about that?
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