The Price of Mother's Day

Trigger warning for self-harm, estranged mother-daughter relationships

I want to carve my pain into my arms, to watch the blood drip down onto this pristine white floor, mixing anger and grief, loss and love as if somehow it will cleanse my heart of the secrets it carries.

I played good daughter today. I called my mother, told her the truth, told her that I love her. I buried everything else inside through that stilted, brief phone call, voices of my siblings in the background. Siblings who were there, with her today.

I hid out in my apartment all day. Actually I hid in my bed, curled up with the man who loves me watching movies on a laptop. Periodically I checked Facebook, comforted and stifled by the words of others. Words of acceptance for grief like mine. Words I wanted to like, to share to shout from the virtual rooftops.

Instead, I sat silent, withdrawn, pulled away. Immobilized by fear. Fear  of it getting back to my mother, of causing more pain for her than I’ve already caused. Fear of further estrangement from those who believe my family to be supportive and loving. Fear of fucking it all one more time.

Today I choked on my own truth. The truth that my Mother is a complicated woman who I have a complicated relationship with. The truth that I am not a mother, may very well never be a mother because I don’t want a child who will bear the scars of my mistakes. A child who may very well thirty years from now fight tooth and nail to call me, to reach a hand across a divide that cannot be bridged. A phone call that costs her everything, that leaves her wrung out. Too many emotions, not enough words.

I don’t want to pass down this legacy to my daughter. Each year I’m reminded on Mother’s Day of the cost my heart pays for that choice. Each year I question if the cost is too high. Each year I work to remember that even though she never protected me, never bonded with me, my Mother loved me as best as she could. Each year I hide my truth from myself and everyone else in the name of love that tastes of guilt and obligation.

Ugly Truths: Fear Runs Through My Veins

All the words are chasing each other through my brain. I'm discovering that I'm still good, too good, at hiding myself. I'm overly selective about what I will allow people to see in my life. Yes I get to choose what I share, where, when, how and there is wisdom in learning those things. Too often I justify not sharing in the name of wisdom and "Keeping myself safe". Because yes, safety and control as the Holy Grail in my world. Growing up without either, it's easy to turn them into my idol, my god, this dream I continue to chase, that leaves me exhausted and lonely. 

In the spirit of making a different choice here are some things I haven't been sharing in the way that I need to share:

1) My parents fly in late this Friday. They will be staying in town at a motel for 10 days. I haven't seen them in person for three years. I have not spent this much time with them since I moved out of their home, against their wishes 8 years ago. I am terrified to see them. I am more terrified to kick them out of my life for good. I am secretly hoping that he will be denied at the border or that he will decide to disown me for the third time (and this time I'm going to take him up on it!) 

2) I've been hitting every meeting in town for the last week and a half because I've never dealt with my parents when I was sober from all of my addictions/compulsive behaviours. I'm afraid that my sobriety won't hold up to having to deal with them. The last time they visited, I was still drinking. I have 18 months and 1 day today without alcohol in my life. All I want to do is drink. (or smoke or take pills). What I really want is to go back to self-injury. It's my primary addiction and the one that I'm still in love with even though it's been 4 years, 3 months, and 24 days since I last cut. 

3) I can't write at the moment. Not even for myself. It brings up all the lies and feelings about how writing is just one more flight of fancy that I'm too lazy to actually finish or do something with. 

4) My husband's abandonment of what was once our shared faith has caused me to shut down in my own exploration of what healthy spirituality is for me. I seem to be frozen in my own search for what this looks like for me. 

I hear the fear in my words, the fear that is driving my panic and it makes me sick. For those of you who are praying people, I would appreciate prayers on my behalf. 

Stories From the Past: A Beginning

I'm linking up with Marvia Davidson's Real Talk Tuesday talking about truth. This is my truth. 

I couldn't settle to sleep, so I stayed up all night reading Every Shattered Thing by Elora Ramirez. If you haven't read this book, you need to. It wrecked me. Because while I've never been a victim of human trafficking, I have a good friend who is. This shit is real. It happens. And the lucky ones escape.

My words are tumbling around in my brain, as I fight tears. Because this story, it reminded me of something I'd forgotten. It reminded me of how bad the abuse was. About how it really is a big deal. I forget that. I forget now that it isn't happening every day. Now that I don't live my life in terror. Now that I don't have to worry about my room being searched or being caught doing something that would dishonour the family.

I've buried my stories. The fear and terror. The shattering of my soul. I've told them, detached, clinical. Listing the details as though they were nothing. Because they were normal. But Stephanie's story, it reminds me that it's not normal. Her desperation, her tenuous grasp on hope, it reminds me of my own. I forget how far I've come. I minimize the healing that still needs to happen. It's easier that way. It's easier to shrug it off. It's easier to live my life half-connected, but that's no life at all. It's this washed out watercolour existence, that has more colour than my life ever contained so I think this is living.

I'm still surviving. In too many places and too many ways. I'm surviving. I'm still hiding. Hiding my words here, hiding my face, my passions, my dreams. I'm hiding the nightmares and sleepless nights. I'm hiding the daily pain, the constant reminders of medical treatment and care that I was denied.

I don't tell. I still don't tell. I feel like I've written this post a million times here already, and somehow I need to keep writing it. I need to keep telling myself the truth, because really that's what this is about. It's about truth. My truth. I forgot what it was like to find stolen moments of time. Time to myself, hidden away from the parents. The lies upon lies that I told praying that he wouldn't catch me in it, that he wouldn't take away the tiny pieces of freedom that I had earned.

I understand what it is to be property. My value was in the work I could do around the house, the free babysitting, the way that I bolstered his image as a good father - and when I didn't bolster his image then came the rages. The screaming words hurled at my soul - the ones that I don't have to hear ringing in my ears any more because I wear them, carry them in my bones. They weigh me down and keep me trapped.

fat, lazy, rebellious, witch, liar, bitch, slut, disappointment, demon-possessed, why can't you be better, why can't you be like so and so...on and on, his words defining me, shaping me. Demanding respect, demanding love, demanding affection, demanding unquestioning, unthinking obedience. Demanding, pushing, pulling, tearing at my skin.

And I feel the numb set back in, the fog settling back down, sinking deep into my bones. I feel myself start to float away from these memories, back into myself, back into the present because what's back there is too much, too hard, too painful.

It isn't enough though that I survived it, that I was given a place, a home to escape to. I owe it to myself to heal, to come alive, to be the person that he was desperate to destroy. I don't know how. I don't know how to unlock these stories. I still don't know how to tell. Yet I'm convinced and reminded yet again that I have to tell them, in halting words and imperfect details. I have to tell them so that maybe my soul will stop shattering with every anniversary, phone call, visit, sleepless night, flashback, memory, and trigger. I don't know how to heal from this. There isn't a manual. But I'm determined to try.

Embracing Silence

For this final week of Lent I am choosing to be silent here. This week coincides with the week of silence for Story 101 and for now I want to give my words the freedom to tumble out as they need to, without considering audience or having to edit them. I don't want to have to explain or find meaning. I'm embracing this week to simply be, to rest radically and get in touch with my own heart.

Reach and Release

Reach

unattainably far
striving, fighting, wanting

desperate

to go beyond
to be whole
to have hope

tip-toes
almost
inhale
stretch

eager, hopeful
budding in the sun

Release

open hands

no longer grasping

cleansing

from the past

the lies

the pain

arms wide

body arched

exhale

relax

dreamy contentment

grounded in the present

From a prompt for Story 101

Relishing Silence

Not everything is meant for all to hear  - Terry Tempest Williams

Much of today has been spent in my own silence.  I've read the words of others and walked away feeling heard and refreshed.  This day has been one of being introspective.  It's been life-giving.  It's been isolating. It's been everything I needed and it's left my needs completely unmet.

My voice has been for me alone to hear.  I forget what it's like to write only for myself. I seem to either be able to write publicly or privately. Never both at the same time.

I'm a person of extremes, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. The centre is only found when the movement stops, when I sit in the silence, my silence.