I am, without question, the younger version of my mother. She laughs when I say this, claiming it’s not a fate I want to resign myself to, but I don’t mind.
I inherited her bright blue eyes, full figure, and straight teeth from her gene pool but inherited her penchant for you-can’t-NOT-buy-it deals and Impressionist art. She wears the jeans that I’ve become too tall for and I wear the scarves hidden in her dresser. When we go out together, it’s become expected that someone will ask if we’re sisters despite her graying hair and my baby face.
Being my mom has its downfalls. She and I are both all talk, little action: she says she’ll ask her husband, my father to start contributing more around the house or to spend more time with her but in the end she’ll resign to doing everything and spending her nights with the television set and the dog.
I say I’ll kick someone’s ass if they don’t leave me alone about an embarrassing hookup, but after they continue harassing me I wind up laughing along with the joke. Maybe we care about what other people think too much. Maybe if we didn’t we would have some follow-through on our threats.
If she and I were tragic heroines in a tragedy, our fatal flaw would be how easily we can trust other people. My mother always tells me stories to make me wary of opening up. She told her best friends in high school her deepest secret, only to be thrown—quite literally—in her face, in front of her family, at graduation. She lent a stick of eyeliner to her college roommate and ended up without any of her makeup and pink eye. Her boss promised her a raise, which she based her financial planning on, and then never ended up receiving one.
Despite every story I heard, my mom continues to misplace her trust, or keep counting on people that have disappointed her before. I always ask her why, and she always says that she just hopes something will change. I don’t understand why I ask her that, because I’m the same way.
When I was in seventh grade, my then-friend told our then-mutual friend that my then-crush would never work out…but she sent the instant messages to me by mistake. Oops. My senior year I dealt with a girl who loved drama so much that she broke hearts and friendships for fun: I was left to pick up fragments of tales I told her that she twisted to make me look like the manipulator.
This summer the guy (he definitely can’t be considered a man yet) I found myself in love with told me he loved me too, only to change his mind over the phone a week later.
The betrayals didn’t stop the friendships, though. I remained close with my middle school friend until graduated eighth grade, the senior year girl and I wrote “Oh my God I’ll miss you such much!” messages in each others’ yearbook, and I still find myself comparing every romantic connection with the guy who destroyed me. No matter what’s happened, I always find my heart taking control over my head to tell myself that it was the last time, they’ll change, everything will be alright.
My college experience thus far has only made the vicious battle of head against heart worse: as if what happened to me before Philadelphia wasn’t bad enough, it seems like day after day something happens in this dorm that cuts me deeper and makes it harder for me to forgive. My heart tells me to keep trying, to keep investing my time, but my head tells me that the only person I can trust now is myself. I knew higher education was going to be a mental workout, but spiritual? I got much more than I bargained for.
What’s more awkward: trusting your head and being uncomfortable with everyone around you or trusting your heart and being uncomfortable in your own skin?
I would ask my mom, but I guess now is the best time to find out for myself.
Libby Peck
Philadelphia, PA
elizabeth.peck@temple.edu
