When you make your own mother cry you know you've fucked up

I've done this only once and it had the most profound effect on me ever. I started working harder then ever before. My school grades resembled a trashcan. My parents tried yelling and punishing me but it never worked. When my mom cryed though, the shit hit the fan.

It was then I knew that I had screwed up royally. Your mother and I guess your father have the potential to love you more than anyone in life. My mom is going to be with me until she dies unless I fuck up royally. She keeps me from going nuts just by talking to me every day. Mothers tend to put off an aura of goodnes that can cheer their kids up very quickly.

If you ever make your mother cry you better do something to fix it. That's all I can say.

If you don't have a mother then I can't help but feel bad for you. I'm lucky enough to still have mine and when she does die I'm not sure what I'm goin to do.

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{hojita} has a good point. I've seen my mom do that too when my brother said he was going to join the peace corps and my dad got really pissed off. I don't tink my brother did a bad thing, he doesn't think so either. At the time however both my parents thought it was a horrible idea because he had just been accepted to medical school. Now my parents don't even talk about it and they've definetly forgiven him. My mom cried about something she didn't really approve of but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

It is not always the case that your mom cries when you've done something wrong. I don't mean to squash anybody's ideal of what a mom or a parent should, could, or can be. In the ideal world certainly, where your mom is perfect and exists only to make you happy (in the long term, Aristotelean sense), then when your mom cries as a result of your actions, then you have done something wrong. However, in the real world, I think it gets a lot murkier.

When a person and their parent(s) are in agreement about what needs to happen, then there are no problems. If you have the same ideas about what you need to do to be happy, or be succesful, or whatever those goals may be, even if you don't want to do it, you can at least agree that your parent is in the right, becuase you share those goals. But, not everybody believes that the same thing is the "right" thing to do in a given situation. Perhaps this is just my moral relativism speaking here, but at the very least, no two people can totally agree on what is right in a given situation. Therefore, in many senses, if you have done something your parents think is wrong but you think it is right, there is no clear cut solution. Just becuase your parents are your parents do not make them arbiters of all moral reason. (Cheesy Example: If your parents perhaps have something against people of a different race, but you disagree with them, is it wrong to disagree with them? Or do children have a right to their own moral opinions?) I won't try to voice my opinion on when people are allowed to have their own moral judgement, but at some point, people can decide for themselves what is right and wrong for them.

I've made my mom cry. A lot. I'm not ashamed about my actions that have caused her to cry. I don't mean to say that I haven't done anything wrong, or that I'm somehow morally superior to my mom, it's more along the lines that I didn't find personal fault with my actions.

Personal Example: My mom cried when I decided to go out with my best friend, senior year in highschool. I knew my mom didn't like her. It didn't stop me from saying yes when my best friend asked me out. Why didn't my mom like her? She thought she was weird. Not anything like "Oh, she's a bad person." or "I don't like her becuase she's mean." or "I've heard bad things about her." None of that. Just..."I think she's weird." Four or five years later now, and my mom now knows her a little more, and really likes her. (Communication issues, aside, here...) At the time, however, my mom was really upset about the fact that I was dating her. Her being upset hurt me really deeply. I knew there was absolutely nothing wrong in the world with me going out with my best friend, who was and still is the most devoted and caring person I have ever met. Yet, seeing my mom cry and how much I hurt her made me cry, and gave me a short fit of depression and a stomachache so violent that I couldn't deal with the situation any more. It was one of those evil holes in the pit of your stomach when you get really upset that eats away at your insides and leaves you crawling with a sense of fear and despair. Then, like the emotionally immature highschool senior I was at the time, I ran away from the problem, and told my best friend how I was feeling and broke up with her, and my mom never spoke of it again. My best friend (who still is my best friend and still very close) got very upset about the whole thing because I had acted like a fool. For a while afterwards, she developed what I took as a complex about people she was going out with shortly running away from her. Just like I did. So, in the space of a week, becuase of how upset I got becuase of my mom crying, I threw away a chance at a relationship with somebody I cared deeply about and hurt the closest friend I'd ever had.

(Excuse the language, but it seems in the spirit of the title of the node.) And that is why I don't think I've fucked up when my mom cries. I think it's more fucked up to think, when people get upset becuase of something you've done, that it's necessarily you who has fucked up.

Lately I've been somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. I've been lost in my own thoughts, and online for about 7 hours straight. I sometimes even forget to eat. I can't sleep anymore. When I wake up I stare at the wall thinking, "What's the point?" My mom sees me and she starts worrying. One morning I woke up and stared at my wall for about 5 minutes. My mom walks by and sees me and keeps going. Five minutes later she walks by again and I'm still there looking at the wall. She walks into my room and tells me that I'm really starting to freak her out. I didn't think what I was doing was "freaky," I just stare at the wall when I need to think about things.

Two nights ago I walk into the kitchen and see my mom making dinner. How I wish I could just help her, but she would just say some remark like, "Oh, after all these years now you help me." I've fucked up too much. and now can't think of a way to make things right.

I see her and I say, "Mom, I'm shaving my head, joining the nuclear program in the Navy, and quiting college. And it doesn't have to be in that order." She looks at me and begins to cry. I don't know why I even said it that way. She speaks up. "I don't care what you do anymore Xochitl. I lost all hope for you a long time ago."

I begin to cry and just walk away into my room. Instead of thinking things over I get online and start reading on ocelots. Ehh. I think I've chosen not to care over the years and it's finally come back to me. I do love my mom and wish she could just help me out with choices that I have to be making soon. What my mom said to me really hurt me, but I figure that things I've been saying to her over the years must have hurt her even more. I'm not a very nice person. I'm cold at heart, and I wish I wasn't. I try to be a happy person but I just can't. I just hate seeing her cry. I cause her so much pain. I'm just so confused.

The one time I made my mother cry, meaning something I told her about myself caused her to shed tears, was a time where I was not there to witness it; I had been told by my father what happened.

After I moved to New Orleans, my mother used to send me care packages with candy, socks, soap, and teddy bears. Now I often liked or needed what she sent me, but I have never, since I was 6, liked teddy bears. To me, she was not only seeing me as a perpetual 12 year old, but she wasn't paying attention to the fact that my interests and hobbies have changed since then.

All through college, my personal life was a mystery to my parents. Being 8 hours away and seldom able to visit, I chose to keep home visits calm by not going into details the areas of my personal choices that would have made them, in the very least, uneasy. So then, when I moved even 16 more hours South, it was no longer a desire of mine to keep them filled in on anything more than what they asked for in the form of updates: how is work, how's your apt, have you met anyone new.

In a combination of wanting to respond to my mother's inability to treat me like an adult and wanting to share my life with her that for so long had been undiscovered, I wrote her a letter about a year ago. I told her everything: being a daily pothead in college, being addicted to cocaine in New Orleans once I moved here, my promiscuity, my drinking, everything. I added that I was free of these things now, as far as they were detrimental to my life, and that I was writing to her as one who had been delivered from a couple variations of hell.

My mother, having been so long willfully and even longer with my help in the dark about my struggles, cried heavily. Her response letter, despite my warnings beforehand included in my letter, contained expressions of guilt, as though my bout with drugs, drinking, and sex had been her fault. She also lamented how sad she was for me, even though I did not write her out of sadness but out a desire to be open and honest about my life.

I do not feel like a horrible daughter for doing what I did, because I feel in doing it I opened a door of communication with her that, for others in my situation, may have taken years more to pry apart. I needed her to see how I really was, what I have been through and where I want to go from here, so that she could grow as much as she could in my direction. I grew quickly tired of what contact we had being so focused on how I was as a child, so much that it made me feel that she did so only because there was nothing in my life now worth noting, since I am not yet married with children and haven't picked a career suitable to my education and ability.

Her tears expressed alot, and I can only guess here what they may have been. She may have felt duped because what she believed about me was obviously not true, or she may have felt like a failure because I had to not only go through all this but that I did it without any help from her. She may have also been angry or disappointed with me but had no better way to show it, and she knows better than me that tears are often the simplest, most socially acceptable way to express a gamut of emotions.

I am glad I've done what I have. Our talks are much improved and have gotten to be more refreshing and informative, further proving my theory that most healing doesn't happen unless a wound opens up.

I make my mother cry often. I was adopted and my adoptive mother (my real mom) and I have always been at odds. My beliefs, social life, sexuality, success were always issues of contention. Even now with my 29th birthday upon me she still critiques everything. When I go to see her I see the disappointment in her eyes. At this point strangers would ask the reason for her dismay. Granted I never finished college, married against their wishes, had a daughter too soon, divorced and now remarried with a newborn. But I have a good job and family (both of my daughters live with me and are happy) and still the dismay. I hide much about my life from her rarely talking to her because of the pain and hurt it causes. She would not understand my struggles with my sexuality or the lifestyle I have chosen.

I have been through several episodes of counseling attempting to solve the problems and the conclusion was that my mother was unable to accept certain things about her life and was trying to use me to fulfill her perceived shortcomings. The strain on me caused me to have several nervous breakdowns.

I make my mother cry often. I am a great disappointment to her. I almost never followed the path that she had laid out for me and to this day cannot see me for who I am but for who I never became. This was a great heartache for me and I still struggle with it. But do I sacrifice my sanity for hers? Do I even expend the energy fighting a battle that only ends in anger?

When I became a father I assumed that I would understand the disappointment and sadness my mother feels. But instead the issue has clouded even more. My children will never be as much as I want them to be but the will always be more than I will ever be. That is what I must accept and live with or be in turmoil forever like my mother.