The Flaw in "Mom's World"

My mom used to talk about "Mom's World." There was the world outside our apartment, and there was "Mom's World" inside it. In Mom's World, you could have three parents and it was fine. In Mom's World, you could say curse words that you were never allowed to use in school. In Mom's World, you could occasionally make yourself sick on pink elephant shaped cake. In Mom's World, even as a child, you could speak your mind and have your thoughts and feelings respected, even if she had to point out when you were done that you were factually wrong. In Mom's World, you were the master of your own body and sexuality and nobody would judge you for that as long as no one got hurt or pregnant or diseased. In Mom's World, you could lambast the adults who were not deserving of respect. In Mom's World, you could rail against all of the ways that the world was imperfect and idiotic and disappointing. In Mom's World, Mom was deserving of respect. Mom's World was an act of will by this amazing person whom I love so dearly.

But the trouble is that the world outside exists. And it crushed Mom's World. 

I still deal with the bureaucratic repercussions of having three parents. We three whom she raised got in trouble when we slipped up and cursed at school. We got fat from pink elephant cake. No one wants to hear what we think. We are slut shamed. We must perform respectfulness for people in authority over us, regardless of their unworthiness. The world continues to be stupid and imperfect and wrong. And mothers get no respect. 

I feel very close to my mother right now, which is especially painful now that she's gone. 

She "quit working" when I was ten, when my father got a professional job for the first time after college. She never went back to "working." Don't get me wrong. She was busy literally until the day she died. She took care of me, my brother, my father, and eventually my sister-in-law and my nephew. She went out of her way to do absolutely everything she could to make everyone else's lives easier and happier, even as her body was failing her. 

And it counts for nothing but a fond memory in the minds of the five people who benefited from her ceaseless toil. You see, she didn't have a job, or at least not one that came with humanity validating paycheck. 

Seemingly incapable of learning from other's mistakes, I "quit working" when my first child was born. I spent seventeen years "not working," and now, it will be impossible to pick up my career. I could do the work, but no one will believe that. At the very least, whichever "Human Resources"—a truly vile, ironically dehumanizing phrase—flak responsible for sorting through way too many resumes will look at mine for a few seconds and discard it...because I "didn't work" or because it doesn't fit the soulless AI generated idea of what it "should" say.

But more than that, I feel close to my mom for sharing the utter delusion that my own values, my own convictions that drove my actions could carry me through a world to which they are not suited. I am no more fit to exist in the world than she was. She thought that she could enforce her little corner of the world, and so did I. 

But I can't. 

The world is a stupid, fucked up, irrational place run by the worst people imaginable, and my choices are to try to adjust, or to drown. And I don't think I can adjust.