Dramamine Queen

One of the things Ive been trying to process over the last year is the fact that my mother wanted to adopt my best friends baby when we were 17. My mother had been babysitting him while we went to school.  It was a great set up. My mom the hero babysitting her teenage daughters bestfriend infant son while we attended school across the street. Except my mom was caught calling herself Mom, something my best friend thought was odd but chalked it up to just a slip of the tongue.

I try to imagine what my mother was thinking. I try to imagine my best friends  son as my brother. How different he would be. Would she still be my best friend? Probably not, the pain of seeing her son so often surely would haved torn us apart.

The whole thing angers me. My mother barely raised my sister and I. My sister credits me for raising her. Im only 5 years older than her. Once we were old enough to fend for ourselves we did. Every once and a while she would crow about how independent we were to her friends, like we had a choice. My sister mainly remembers my mom sleeping all day on the sofa. When I finally moved out at the age of 18 my mother started abusing my sister, something I also only found out in the last year. The sad thing is she sees herself as the cool mom, she let us have boys sleep over, she let us drink in the house, she let us go out all night. When my friends were too drunk to go home from a party we all crashed at my house. She loved partying with young folk, she still does.

Why my mother thought that adopting my best friends son was something she wanted to do is beyond me. Another crack at the parenting thing? Another kid to let run wild and play “cool mom” with?

On top of everything though is the fact that she didn’t think of me at all. Her motives were purely selfish. No thought as to how her actions could change my life. By 17 we had already been best friends for 4 years. I’m lucky enough as it is that just my mother proposing such a thing didn’t make my best friend run for the hills from my family.  She did distance herself from me for a bit and I didn’t think anything too strange about it, she had a baby and there was a natural rotation between the 4 girls in my circle that happened from time to time. I only learned last year that it was due to my mother, my best friend had thought I knew about the adoption suggestion and which is what she thought up until last year when she brought it up.

A part of me wants to confront my mother with it. Ask her what the hell is wrong with her. Drag out all the things that she did and didnt do and point them out and make her answer for once. But I wont. I know I wont. Im afraid if I do she will pile on more lies, tell me my best friend made it up or was remembering it wrong. That is her M.O and if she did that I would just call it a day because I would know then that nothing she ever said would be the truth and she ends every conversation with I love you.