Positively Wrecked

Things with my mother are officially back to normal.

I know, because even though I'm a nervous wreck and stressed to the point of passing out about my MTEL on Friday, I was able to call mom.  We both said sorry and talked about our problems.  I sympathized with her recent illness and issues with her new doctor.  She listened and gave me good advice about my myriad woes - Some to do with finances, a lot to do with the MTEL, and more to do with the ridiculous social situations stressing me out and distracting me from studying.

So, I'm a total train wreck.  I'm sitting here, crying at my keyboard, in my pajamas.  Worried because in less than two days, I have to pass an English MTEL with nothing but a Theater degree, a personal driving interest in language and literature, and whatever flashcards I can come up with.  I am not prepared.  Over the last few weeks, I've managed to get into enough personal drama to make it impossible to concentrate on studying until these last few days.

On the other hand, I shouldn't worry.  I've never in my life had an issue with standardized tests.  I've never scored less than 80% equivalent on a bad day for any state-run standardized test.  English has always been my best and favorite subject. Theoretically, there is not a large chance of failure.

But I have a lot riding on this.  Something like the rest of my life and career of choice.
The MTEL costs one hundred and fifty dollars each time you take it, I have to pass the English MTEL to get accepted into grad school, and I have to take the standard Literacy & Communication MTEL as well.  I'm honestly not sure what I would do in the case of failure.  "Try, try again" is a lot easier said than done when the first try already puts you three hundred dollars in the hole on unemployment.

But I never really let much stop me before.  I really shouldn't start now.  So I'm going to finish my tea and take a shower.

Then I'm going to make some damn flash cards.

Follow up on Family

I exchanged some emails with my mom about the racism argument from last week.  I'd been considering posting them here, but I feel like that would be a breach of her privacy.

Basically, I sent her an email explaining why I said what I did, and why her arguments shocked me.  She's replied that she and my stepfather see my point and apologized.

But then I had to raise the issue on what she said about me, personally.  Her response was to take a day to think about it, and then reply that she didn't know what she meant by it at the time.  But that she would never intentionally hurt me and doesn't think badly of me.

So I guess it works out.

Except that I still feel betrayed, and there's guilt mixed in there too.  Because I feel that she might think I don't have a right to feel this way at this point, after she's apologized, or might hold it against me.  Maybe she doesn't.  Maybe she wouldn't.  But after last week, I can't just blindly trust in her anymore.

Part of the issue is that at the end of the argument, she treated me like a child.  Telling me that if I didn't want dinner, I could wait in the car.  We were ten minutes from my house.  My mom and I tried to talk about this on the phone last night, and she seemed angry.  As if she couldn't understand how I would leave in that situation when she was being nice enough to give me a ride home from central MA in the first place.

But I'd asked her to take me straight home after the argument.  She could have stopped for dinner after dropping me off - only ten minutes away.  But she'd rather I wait in the car like a stubborn child or a dog while they had dinner, because I'd disagreed with her.

That's humiliating.  And she doesn't understand why I don't find it acceptable.  Yes, it was very kind of her to drive me home.  But that doesn't mean I become less of a human or less of an adult.

Now it's on me to decide what happens to our relationship.  How I want this to go.  Mom doesn't want anything to change.  She got upset when I said that this might have changed our relationship - How?

I don't know.

Family and Racism

We were in the car, a few miles down the road from Friendly's, about to stop for dinner on the way to dropping me at home.  My stepfather in back as a courtesy to my motion sickness, my mom driving, and me in the passenger seat. It was the start of rush hour and we narrowly avoided a collision with two other vehicles.  My mother and I exclaimed on the terrible driving and relief of safety when I heard from the back seat: "Other diver must have been a niggro".
"Really?" Me, shocked.
"What do you mean?"
"Did... did you really just say that?  That was really racist."
"Negro isn't racist, they say it."
"I don't care if they say it.  It's still racist.  And what do you mean they?  As far as I've seen, most black people don't like that word."
"Well are you sure they're black?  Are they African American?" asked my mom.
"What does that even matter?"

I couldn't believe I was having this conversation with my parents of all people. It didn't end there, and it did get uglier.  Eventually it was my mom that decided to make it into a personal attack.
"Are you ever wrong?  And do you admit it when you are?"
It was the way she said it.  As if I was purposefully instigating a fight so I could arrogantly assert my "rightness" - instead of trying to speak up to my parents on something that makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

Somewhere in there, my stepfather apologized and asked us to stop arguing.  I said thank you, but I'm trying to discuss this with my mom.  She tried to turn it into me being ungrateful for her care, and I realized that she really must think I'm that stuck up to be able to say things that way.  I wondered how long she'd thought that, and I asked her to just take me home.  She said they were going to dinner, and I could either come in or wait.
I didn't say anything.  What could I say that wouldn't make it worse?
When she parked the car, I got out and walked out of the parking lot and to the plaza across the street, and started calling friends to find a ride home.

I've always been really close with my mom.  She's always had very liberal and democratic views.  Hell, that's how I ended up the way I am.  She's only been with my stepdad for about six years, and he's always been republican and a little off-color.  But it wasn't until the both of them started trying to justify using the word "negro" that I realized that they just refused to listen that times might have changed since back in the day.  I honestly don't know how to deal with this, especially since my mom seems to have been holding me in veiled contempt for who-knows-how-long.

A friend tells me that benign or ignorance based racism  is a problem with baby boomers.  I just have a problem of my own.  Is there a way for my relationship with my mother to be repaired?  Or will it just devolve to nominal communication and uncomfortable holidays?