A ‘Two-Headed Monster’

During the holiday period, when I feel stranded at home with my sick mother, it really starts to hit home how we are perceived, not as individuals but as a ‘two headed monster’. It starts when we get sent Christmas cards addressed to the both of us, and it continues when those ‘well meaning’ friends of my mum’s from church or the local vicinity get me highly inappropriate and embarrassing gifts. As they do not know me at all, and wrongly assume I am June 2.0 it’s not unusual to get things like writing paper and envelopes decorated with floral designs, Yardley soaps (I despise soap at the best of times, brings me out in a rash) and make-up cases from Poundland or cheap bags you might get as a free gift with a magazine subscription, or with your Avon order. One of the worst things I was ever given was a baby pink mohair sweater, (I guess it wasn’t cheap) which I was expected to wear, or forever feel guilty and unappreciative. They are the sort of generic gifts you’d give to an old lady, but when they are given to me it’s hard for me to smile and think ‘it’s the thought that counts’, because no thought has gone into this whatsoever. If they could even be bothered to get to know me they’d know, firstly that I’m allergic to soap, and secondly that I’d much rather have a Star Trek book, a My Little Pony Pop Vinyl, a Groot T-Shirt or a Grinch ‘Build-a-Bear’ teddy than any of this crap, which will get donated to charity as soon as Christmas has passed by and they’ve forgotten all about it. Not one to sound ungrateful, but getting me something that I like and will make me smile on Christmas morning wouldn’t cost a bomb, but it would mean you seeing me as an individual, not an extension of my mother. That would mean a lot to me.

I try my best to extricate myself from my mother, as being treated as simply an extension of her with the same personality, tastes and goals is extremely stifling. The truth is, if we were not related, I very much doubt that we would even be friends. She is much more conservative than me, much more mainstream and traditionally feminine. She never had any life’s goals except to marry a well-off man and have kids, and to this end, didn’t ever put the effort into her own education or self-improvement. As a result, she has no interests of her own, and has no skills or creativity, which is something I do not understand. I would have liked my mother to be a role-model, someone inspiring and imaginative, someone I could look up to for strength and leadership. When I needed that the most, as a child and as a teenager, she became all the more downtrodden, and presented me with much less a role-model than a cross between Dobby the House Elf and Madge Allsop when really she wanted to be a mollycoddled ‘trophy wife’. However, her tempestuous and abusive marriage to Jack reduced her to basically an unpaid servant which put paid to that pipe-dream of hypergamy. He certainly had narcissistic tendencies, and she served as a source of ‘supply’. It’s hard to actually respect her when she had such an immature way of dealing with the way she was treated, and just seemed to succumb to Stockholm Syndrome and allow herself to become a doormat for the sake of keeping the peace. I do not know what her motives were further than the old fashioned idea that she was expected to get herself a man to keep and clothe her, and give her a roof over her head, and that she should be grateful for what she got, however awful and demeaning it was.

Getting Chrismas cards addressed to the both of us, and presents like candy or chocolate biscuits for us to share isn’t anything to get upset about, per se, but it serves as an emblem that we are not treated as individuals, but as a singular entity joined at the hip, ie a two-headed monster. My mother is not my Siamese-twin, and I object to being treated as if she is. It gets more trying when we are out and about together, I rarely get called ‘lady’ when I’m on my own, but when we eat in a restaurant together, we get called ‘ladies’, i.e. ‘everything OK with your meal, ladies?’ It shouldn’t make me wince but it does. I tend to walk ahead of her when we go into town instead of holding onto her arm and leading her along. I get criticised for that, but she really doesn’t need me to do that for her. I’m not her nurse. Likewise, I sit upstairs on the bus, instead of sitting next to her, because I don’t want to talk, I want to listen to my iPod in peace and look at the view. My mother and I often end up having rows about things that happened decades ago, like when she used to hide me in the outhouse when I was playing hooky from school in case my dad came home and found me and went nuts, ending up with him taking it out on her. She used to have his cup of tea and egg on toast ready for him every lunchtime when he came in from work, just like the well-trained servant she had become, and that behaviour disgusts me. He had a subsidised cafe at work where he could have had his lunch without having to come home and put it on her, but it was more about control than it was convenience. I would never wish anyone to have to live like this, but her only answer is, ‘it was different back then’, which somehow excuses and legitimises it. What it actually was was what we would now call ‘codependency’, or ‘learned helplessness’.

Being viewed by all and sundry as June 2.0 makes me feel as if I would be expected to put up with domestic abuse, dealing with it by becoming childish and compliant instead of standing up for myself, just like she did back in the day. I do not want to be told that I am just like my mum was at her age, whoever thinks that is a compliment needs to rethink it. At my age, mum had me as a toddler, and had no help whatsoever from her family or my self-indulged and often violent father, many years her senior. She was not allowed such luxuries as a phone, or to drive a car, or new clothes, or even to bathe more than once a fortnight. She was a defeated and downtrodden woman who had engineered her own situation and could not get out of it. She created her own hell, and then expected me, as her child, to inhabit it with her. She was no a person I could look up to, aspire to emulate or identify with, she wasn’t than, and she sure as hell isn’t now. I would not wish anyone to be anything like my mum at all, in fact, she should be an object lesson in “how NOT to be a woman”. I may have ended up in this sorry situation, as an ‘only child’ cohabiting with my mother now she us crippled with Parkinson’s and needs a carer, because there was no-one else to do it, but that is where the relationship ends. I know that had I been perceived as a proper ‘son’, and not a obedient and homely ‘daughter’, I would not have ended up in this situation. People would have appreciated me more as an individual with my own interests, aspirations and ambitions, not expected me to drop everything to become a carer, because male children are rarely expected to be ‘nurturers’. I did not have any viable choice in that matter, besides losing the house and what little inheritance I have and putting her ‘in a home’, and I did not have the financial security to be able to do that, so here we are. We are not a two-headed monster, we are not some amalgam of the same person with the same personality traits, and we are not joined at the hip. And I would implore the medical profession, the social services, and even ‘friends’ to stop treating us as if we are.

On Being an “Only Child”

In recent years, the burden of being an “only child” has really become quite a struggle. Since my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2009, which forced me to move back into the “family home”, the sole responsibility has fallen on me to make sure she is fed, watered and washed. What makes it worse is that since I am perceived as the “daughter” I am expected to be caring and nurturing by nature, when really I find it so difficult, I have OCD over touching dirty things and the fear of my mother going out wearing dirty clothes or with greasy hair, gives me great anxiety, because it is me alone who will get the blame and be called negligent.

My father, Jack, died twenty years ago, but to be honest that is something of a blessing. He had a dodgy heart and bowel cancer, and was a burden on my mother. There is no way that he would have nursed her, when he expected her, as his “housewife” to do all the housework and he never so much as lifted a finger to help. I can only image how frustrated and angry he would have been seeing mum trembling and unable to stand, he’d have probably called her a lazy bitch and accused her of putting it on. How he would have coped without having her to wait on him hand and foot, I do not know, I sure as hell could not have coped with looking after both of them, and I am very glad I don’t have kids to worry about as well.

Having no brothers and sisters to share the load makes me feel very isolated and out on a limb. It’s hard to go on with my life, and do what’s right for me without the constant worry about my mum falling and injuring herself, or pissing her pants or losing her keys or something equally awful, and it makes me feel responsible for her, even tho I am not. There should be other family members around to shoulder the burden with me, but there is not. Other family members, such as my mum’s estranged brother are quite happy with this arrangement, and have never offered to help whatsoever.

As a child, I faced horrendous prejudice from teachers and even other children who thought that as an ‘only child’ I was spoilt and indulged. This is a persistent misconception about only children, which is rarely true. In my case, it was defiantly untrue. I was brought up in dire poverty, in a house so cold that my goldfish bowl froze solid INDOORS. My mum and I shared a bed, with a mattress you could put your leg right through to the springs. I only ever got new clothes for “special occasions” like when I won that TV show drawing competition, the rest of the time I only had clothes which came from jumble sales, and I used to look with envy at the clothes modelled in Nikki and Mizz magazines with envy, which would get me a clip around the ear if I asked for something ‘fashionable’ for a birthday or Christmas.

Even when my father conceded to “indulge” me by buying me computers or tape-recorders, these toys were for him and not me, and I was not allowed to use them without his permission. When DV situations kicked off, I was always expected to take a side, which I couldn’t, I didn’t want to fight. Whilst the other children used to show off their photos of family holidays with their parents and siblings in Tenerife, Algarve or even Disneyland, I was lucky if I got a weekend break at Pontin’s with my mum and deaf grandfather. I never considered these holidays, more a cheap respite for my mum away from Jack’s aggression and unreasonable demands. Holidays were just another way in which I felt isolated and lonely, and left out of what the other kid’s had on a silver plate.

Of course, the kids who went on family holidays abroad every summer, and dressed in Kaleidoscope mail order clothes, or even Top Shop, which was a status symbol back then, and lived in homes with hot and cold running water and central heating never got blamed for being ‘spoilt’ and ‘over indulged’, that was reserved for me and other ‘only children’. I dare say, in the case of a few others, this may have been true, I defiantly recall one girl being a ‘daddy’s little princess’ and being bought a pony, but her mother was an alcoholic. Another well-off girl’s family looked all fine and dandy until her dad got caught out molesting children in church. Another boy who was also an only child, lost his father in a tragic building site accident.

Even the so-called child psychologists of the time considered ‘only children’ to be spoilt little princes and princesses compared to the other kids from families with siblings, who had learned to share and play nice with others. Never once did they identify the cons of being an only child, not having brothers and sisters for support, having to closer identify with adult parents because of a lack of other children to bond with, being given the sole responsibility to bear grandchildren, or be seen as a ‘disappointment’ and the burden I now have to face, looking after a sick parent in her twilight years with no help from my siblings.

Being an ‘only child’ is hard. There are no benefits to it whatsoever. Only children need to be understood more by schools, colleges, and even social services and mental heath professionals. Ours is a unique position, especially when out parents reach their latter years, and we don’t want to have to bend and break under the weight of responsibility. We don’t want to give up our lives and ambitions to be carers. We don’t want to feel obliged to have children against our wishes just so we don’t deprive out parents of grandchildren. We need to be heard and understood, not just written off as spoilt and over-indulged brats, when that is seldom true.