September 15, 2021:
Lately I've explored my anger.
She was habitually rude to me. Rude, or patronizing. She rejected my adult overtures as she'd rejected my childhood existence. She never visited, not once, in seventeen years, nor asked meaningful questions about my life or interests or identity.
I realize very well I was never what she wanted. I was not a "good kid". I was uniformly troublesome, and I rejected the family she loved. What I eventually came to realize, very late in life, is that these behaviors were responses to the abiding sense of rejection I'd experienced since early childhood.
She was unskilled, but it was wrong of her to behave toward me in those ways.
She was emotionally damaged, but she acted as though I were unimportant.
She loved me, but she was distant.
For most of my life I rejected my anger, focusing instead on confusion, and ambivalence. I hope the recent change is healthy.