Liberation

Growing up in a home with mentally ill parents, where substance abuse, emotional abuse, and domestic abuse were present, you learn that the best way to stay out of the line of fire is to blend into the background. To meld with the habitat around you like a moth, matching it's stony, cold, unforgiving environment. Watching and waiting for the right time to move about, careful not to get snatched up in a frenzy.

My Mother suffering from depression, was asleep every night by 6 or 7. The house was kept dark, in the isolation of our home my brother, sister and I, were left to our own devices. To provide ourselves with comfort and entertainment, expected to put ourselves to bed by 9 O'clock every night. Lacking maternal connection, in these dark evenings, with the TV playing old re-runs of the Brady Bunch and I Dream of Genie in the background, I felt loneliness. As an adult in the midst of a dark house, I still feel loneliness creep over me, like the fiery red blooms of Bougainvillea, creeping across a lattice in the heat of summer. Withstanding shared trauma, bolstered the bond between my siblings and I, in a way that only pain and sacrifice can breed. Up until I was 13(when we were separated into foster homes) my 11-year-old sister would climb into my twin bed with me every night. My 11-year-old brother would sneak into the room and make his bed on the floor beside us. Though irritated, as a teenager I never turned them away, this was our nightly ritual.

As a grown adult, the survival skills cultivated in my childhood, remained intact. The hole where my innocence once inhabited stood empty, leaving me susceptible to the threat of loneliness at every turn. Intimacy could not be cultivated with the demand to remain invisible still pulsing through my veins.  The need to be invisible, enticed me into the shadows like a drug, away from relationships and from my passions. Harboring my success and confidence.  Conflict brought feelings of panic. I would find myself looking for the nearest escape at the smallest gesture of disagreement.  Shame infused into these emotional scars, filling every crack and crease, the way lava seeps into the densest pores of the earth.  Sealing and hardening them into place, until they were hidden deep below the surface.

The truth about the sexual abuse I endured as a child was not unearthed until I was 18. The only motivation that could possibly guide me to digging up my darkest shame and exposing it, in the face of confrontation, was the news of my brother’s emotional suffering. The threat to one of the children that I had spent most of my childhood protecting, was the only condition that could have sparked the uprising of fire in my belly. Like an electrical current, this threat, built strength and jumped from one cell to the next until my being was surging with fight. My heart pounding, my breath and body shaky, I picked up the phone and called my mother. I confided in her about the sexual abuse we had endured as children. The unspeakable acts we were made to perform, in hopes that my brother, who I loved so dearly, would get the help that he needed.

Unconditional love and acceptance are supposed to be fostered in the home of the earthy nurturing energy of the mother.  The mother energy in my life, instead, forged fortitude and self-reliance. My vulnerability was met with burning, fervent scorn, shame, and slander.  Her words tore into me like the teeth of a shark, tearing into flesh, leaving gashes in my soul. “Liar”, “drama queen”, and “whore”; these labels were burned into me like a cattle brand. The sickness I carried inside, was amplified by my mother’s degradation. I limped away from the conversation like an injured animal in shock. These words reinforced my need to stay hidden, my need to remain a wallflower. The confliction of needing to be seen and not wanting to be seen remained in constant opposition. Sliding from one polar opposite to the other with echoing momentum, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

These labels remained engrained in my head, though the events that led to them, over the years faded. Like a vintage photograph, submissive only to the hands of time. I rebuilt the relationship with my mother, never quite fully trusting her, myself, or other people. For years I held my tongue so fiercely, I lost track of my own wants and needs, and along with them my voice. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to hear the words “liar”, “whore”, or “drama queen”, slip from the lips of another.  Habitually in a constant state of anxiety. I thought this conversation had been long forgotten until my mother raised it from its crypt, where it had been resting for the last 10 years.

Submerged in the warmth of a spring evening, I sipped some wine, while dead heading the blooms in my small back garden, when my mother called. I could hear the lingering drunkenness in her voice, the delayed slur, but the conversation was lite, as we discussed my garden and the vegetables my grandmother had been growing. The unearthing of the past for inspection caught me so off guard, my faced flushed with heat, the wine glass I held so delicately in my hand shattered. In shock, I didn’t even react to the blood pouring from my hand. The warm, dense, droplets forming in my palm, ran down my wrist, leaving me stained, much like my past. I felt as though I had left my body, floating just above the surface, my soul sat and watched the conversation play out as if I was watching it happen to someone else. It was a complicated discussion, I did the best to explain what had happened while she listened. Suddenly a switch flipped, so abruptly that I stood in silence for a moment trying to process what was happening. The label “liar” had reappeared, the way the sun always finds its way back to summer every year. Just like that wine glass had shattered 30 minutes before, so did my heart, in the company of these verbal attacks once again.  I tried to reason with her, explaining that I had nothing to gain. That it brought me shame to admit to the sick, stomach curdling truth I had lived. I quickly realized there was no reasoning with her and got off the phone in hopes of remedying the direction of the conversation.

 I awoke to her phone call at 6:20 the following morning. I could still hear the drunkenness in her voice, she stated that she was going to call my brother to get the story straight. I tried to tell her that it’s painful for him and that she should let him be, she hung up on me. I text my brother and explained the situation. His replies consisted of “I don’t dwell on the past” and “Who cares”. I let him be, just like my mother should have. I got out of bed, I pulled myself together, wiped away my tears, and locked away my anger, as I prepared to go into the office for the day. I wandered out to my car, the sun seemed unseemly bright that day, beating down on my face and shoulders. With each step I took, the urge to numb my pain grew. So badly I wanted to park myself at a bar, drink, and pretend like this wasn’t happening. But ignoring wounds like these, causes infection, and infection causes sickness, in this case sickness of the soul. I knew in that moment, that if I didn’t make a conscious choice, to care for my wounds, I would end up a reflection of my mother.

My brother ducked her calls most of the morning. With every call he didn’t answer, my mother taunted me through text, telling me that she was going to get the truth, and stating she was the “queen bitch”, whatever that meant…. I did my best to ignore her, holding faith that her drunken mania would come to an end. Then my cell rang, I gazed down at the caller ID and I felt my stomach drop, almost hearing it thud like a stone hitting water, sinking into the depths of the unknown. My baby sister was on the other line, I stepped outside and answered the call, tears already welling up inside of me. She said “Mom called me. She left an angry message saying that you were making accusations about sexual abuse and that you are a liar. What is she talking about?” All the strength that I had spent the morning gathering, dissipated into thin air. Tears cascaded down my face, I cried out in agony. The staining veracity that I had spent most of my life cloaking, had just materialized into reality. There was no more denial, or suppression. My body cringed with fear, guilt, and shame. I had spent the last twenty-three years protecting my baby sister from the ugliness that she was not fated to experience, and now she knew.

I spent forty-five minutes crying in my office parking lot, before packing it in and telling my staff members that I was going to work from home for the rest of the day.  My face swollen and puffy, no one asked questions. I left work, I stopped for cigarettes on the way home. I broke open the first pack I had bought in months on the drive, inhaling the earthy smokiness, allowing my head to rush and my heart to pound. When I got home I flopped down and let the weight of my body sink deep into the billowy softness of my bed. I let the day fade away into the background of my mind, and the creativity of my dreams run rampart.  When I woke up there were text messages from my mother informing me, that my older brother was now aware of the atrocities I was labeled with.  I felt a twinge of anxiety and pain flood my body, something inside of me either clicked or snapped.  Apathy began to blanket my being, like the ashes of ancient Pompeii. Thick and smothering, stopping time in its place. My mother’s tormenting words, no longer had power over me. The anguish that held my voice and identity for ransom, had come to light.  The debt of honesty coupled with much sacrifice had been paid, in return my voice was recovered.  Though broken and damaged, it was mine once again.

I told my mother that I didn’t care anymore who she told. That she could tell the world, all my siblings, my grandparents, my aunt’s and uncle’s. I unveiled the distasteful truths that lingered in the depths of my heart and my mind, in the midst of this exchange.  Never had I allowed them to peak in from behind the curtain, in fear of losing her favor and appeasement.  In the intoxicating depths of this newly found power, I declared that she was selfish, that she only cared about her own feelings. That somehow in her mind, the abuse and pain I had suffered, equated to her being a bad mother. That this miscalculation had propelled her into hurtful reaction, causing more damage.

The truth is she wasn’t a bad mother. My mother had been damaged in many of the ways I had. She had spent most of her life operating at half capacity, just trying to cope with day to day survival.  She was just too wrapped up in her own story to see what was happening. To see that she had a severely depressed thirteen-year-old. An 11-year old boy that was getting in fights all the time, and smoking weed. Children that were failing out of school. Children that would rather sleep with their older sister than with their own mother, when they were scared in the night. That she wasn’t there when we needed her. That even in my adulthood I’m still caring for her wants and needs and bending to her feelings. That I was done cleaning up her vomit and I was done cleaning up her messes. That we didn’t have a relationship, we had a perpetual cycle of toxicity and dysfunction, that I was no longer willing to participate in.

In suffering and sorrow, I was ripped from the background in which I had so firmly planted myself. Through sacrificial crisis I had been liberated. Sent on a journey to find, my voice, my strength, and my power.