A Letter to My Mother,

There have been times in my life when I have felt that there were signs in the universe, as if God himself were hinting to me that it might be time to consider it, to consider whether it was time to forgive you. I never have felt it was time, not just yet. I guess I have felt that if I forgave you, once and for all, that would some how lessen what you put me through; that it would give you a message that it was all OK, that it wasn’t that big of a deal. And I know that is just how you would take it, because you want so badly to believe that it wasn’t that bad. But it was, mom, it was that bad.
Not too long ago, one phone call, you said something about that “really awful thing” you had done to me as a child, and I didn’t know what you were talking about. You took that to mean that I didn’t remember. You went on about how if I didn’t remember than you weren’t going to tell me, “because there were some things better left forgotten.” But my first thought was “Which awful thing?” After much prodding on my part I convinced you to tell me which thing it was that you considered '‘the one awful thing.'’ I did remember it, probably better than you.
I was seven and we were living in the little single-wide trailer in Fresno, all four of us. Jay had just put together the bike dad had bought for my birthday. You decided it was time that I learned to ride without training wheels. But you didn’t ask me if I wanted to learn, if I was ready. You never asked me anything.
Were you drinking that day? I don’t remember, but I assume you were. At that time you almost always were. No one else was around. April was probably off flirting with the boys from across the lake. That was the first summer she really got into boys. You probably didn’t know it then. Who knows where Jay was. He was probably off trying to score your next high. I should have known I was in trouble when I realized we were alone. We were almost never alone in those days, and I came to see that as a good thing. When other people were around I could slip under your radar; I could be invisible. I’ve used it in many forms over the years, my invisibility. It has saved me time and again. Then it hurt me time and again.
I couldn’t be invisible when we were alone. I’m not sure anymore how it started, but I know I was afraid. You were going to hold me up and I was going to pedal. You weren’t going to let go, you said. But you did, and I knew you were going to. I instantly put my feet down, probably even before you took your hand from the metal bar of my banana seat. I’ve always been a little overly cautious. I don’t know if it only took that one time for you to get angry with me, or if it happened a couple more times. But I do know you were furious. I’m sure you saw it as some kind of personal affront to you, everything was, still is. You just had no tolerance in those days. You were so angry. You were in a rage. The next part is a bit hazy, as all the beatings have become, but I know you used a belt that time. What I remember next was being curled up on the chair in the front yard crying while you went on raging in the trailer. I had no where to go, no place where I could hide away and be safe while I nursed my wounds. I knew that if I left, if I ran away and found a place just for me that would make things worse. So I sat there, hating you.
Yeah, I remember that day. But why did you pick that one as the ‘one awful thing’ when there were so many? Why not the time you skid the car to a stop in front of me and pulled me off the side walk where I was walking with a friend and beat me in the middle of the street without even stopping to ask why I was late coming home from school. And later when you found out that I was late because the neighbor girl that you had told me never to walk home without had forgotten to pick me up, you didn’t even apologize. You told me that I deserved it because I had lied about going to the bathroom when I had really gone looking for her. So you grounded me for a week to think about what I had done. I sat there for a week thinking about what you had done. But you probably don’t remember that one.
But, you know the truth is mom that I don’t think about those times much anymore. I’ve come to terms with a lot of what my childhood was. As a therapist I’ve heard a lot worse. Though I do remember the day, when sitting in a seminar on mandated reporting and how to identify child abuse, that I realized what you did was abuse, that had anyone seen and called you in, we would have been taken away from you. Did you know that? But still, when I sit here and think about what it is that I have such a hard time forgiving, it isn’t the beatings, it’s what you made me hold for you, the state you made me live in, all day, every day, day after day. I know very well how hard your life was, trust me. You never let us forget about all the abuse you had been put through or any of the terrible circumstances you had been put in or any of the losses that had happened to you. Your life was forged out of pain, too much pain for any one person to bear. And so you made us carry it for you. You let me know of every man that had ever hit you, hurt you, or left you. You told me about every friend that had ever betrayed you, every time your parents had abandoned you, and how many times God had let you down. So many people had failed you so many times, and you couldn’t carry it all. So you gave it to us.
I was six when I realized that I didn’t know where the money came from, only that there was never enough. And not much older when it was my money bailing you out. I was eight when I put my drunken mother to bed for the first time. I knew that there wasn’t a man alive who could be trusted and that no man could love me enough to stay long before my first boyfriend. I figured out really early that the end of the month was always the hardest, not as much due to the bare cabinets, but because the booze and the drug stash was gone. And it was really bad when you were drying the leaves that Jay grew in the kitchen pantry in the oven. I used to get really excited when the thought occurred to you. You were almost fun when you were high.
By the time I left your house I knew that there was no one I would ever be able to depend on, no one to trust. I lived in a constant state of expectation, expecting you to get angry with Jay, with dad, with April, with me, with the cats, with life. It didn’t really matter the impetus; the result was always the same. Your rages were terrifying. I remember clearly, lying in bed at night listening to you and Jay fight. I would stare wide-eyed at the ceiling wondering what each crashing sound was. Was it the bookcase? Was it falling on you? Was that the sound of your bed going up in flames? I never knew what I would find when I woke up; What would be broken; Who would be hurt. There was the time I was the first up to find a big red splash down the wall. You laughed when you told us that Jay had thrown his glass of Slow Gin. It probably never occurred to you that my first thought was that it was blood. But then again, I was never your first thought.
No mom, no woman should ever have to live through what you have lived through. But did you ever think about what a seven-year-old would have to go through in order to carry that for you.
When I was 13 or 14, I was doing the dishes. You came in and complained about the job I was doing. I was never good enough. I made an awfully disrespectful comment; something like, “but I’m doing it exactly the way you taught me.” And you backhanded me. It was hard and you hadn’t hit me in a while. I finished the dishes in silence, though April and some friends were in the room. Then I went to my room. You came up a little while later and did just what you always did. No matter what you had done, you would always come later and say, “I’m sorry, but…” I was supposed to agree with you and hug you, and all would be forgiven. You should have been Catholic with how readily you move on after confession. But on this particular occasion, I decided to respond differently. Maybe I was hoping that would force the story to have a different end. I decided to tell you the truth about how I felt. “I’m not ready to forgive you.” You were furious. You told me that maybe I should just stay in my room then. You stormed out and slammed the door behind you. When I finally had the guts to sneak out of my room, you didn’t speak to me for such a long time. You didn’t even look at me.
I learned to always give you what you wanted; it just made things so much easier in the long run. Though I admit, there were times when I felt it was my job to teach you, to be the one to show you that there was more to the world than the part that revolved around you. But that was just me, again, taking more responsibility for you than you would take for yourself. I did eventually come to see that you weren’t going to learn anything that way and that it wasn’t my job to teach you. You know that I’ve taken a lot of shit over the years of my adult life for the stance I’ve taken with you, from more than just you. Even from April and Dad, who should have know better. I was an awful daughter, never giving you what you needed. I was too cold, too distant, a bitch. Dad said maybe I should’ve been more understanding. I understood all too well. April said I should’ve been softer, more accepting. I accepted far more than I should have. And you wanted me to feel guilty for not being there for you. But I’ve come to the belief that we are given a finite amount of guilt in this lifetime, and you used up mine long ago.
My therapist was the first to tell me that it wasn’t written in stone or in any rule book that I had to have a relationship with my mother. She said you were toxic to me. I was shocked. Thought it felt really good to hear that, and to know that it was my choice to leave, I was not ready to not have a mother. What I had, toxic as it may have been, was better than no mother. Wasn’t it?
I feel as though I may have finally come to terms with the person you are today. You’ve traded in the drugs and liquor for God, (and Vicadin). And after years of battles, you’ve finally started to respond to all the boundaries I set up. You haven’t asked for money in a long time, and you have gotten almost good at keeping me out of your issues with April. You still get upset when I refuse to listen to your problems, but you get over it faster.
In fact, I do remember some happy times as a child, too. But I have to admit that I fight those far more than I have the less than happy times. For much the same reason as I’ve found it difficult to forgive you. If I reminisce in the good times it might negate the bad. It’s like I need to see you, at least the you from back then, as all bad. Any acknowledgment of the good in you would lessen the bad and I need, for some reason, to remember the bad.
But I do remember you taking me to ice cream after I got my shots. I remember what you told me when grandpa died. You said that we may miss him, but that wouldn’t last forever. You said he was putting the windows in my mansion in heaven, and it was going to be beautiful when I met him there. That was maybe the single greatest thing you ever said to me, and it has stuck with me the twenty years since. And there was you and me, singing Cher at the top of our lungs as we sped through the Redwood Forest, bonding as we both escaped the same thing, your mother. No, mom, you weren’t all bad. It’s just that the pain is harder to let go of. Pain defined your life, and that was what I learned from. I needed to separate myself from you in any and all ways that I could in order to make my own definition; one based on the life I was choosing to live. It’s only recently that I have seen how much of that was based in fear, fear of your pain, fear of you, fear of ending up like you.
My single greatest fear in life is of waking up someday and realizing that the last ten years never happened, that I’m still in your house. I usually see the house on Burchell St., the one that was condemned, and we had to go to the corner gas station to use the bathroom. The family of mice living under the sink, Jay drinking on the floor in front of Jeopardy (answering all the questions right of course), you and April fighting bitterly over something. That’s my greatest fear, that I never really made it out.
It wasn’t too long ago that you told me that after all these years you are still waiting for your knight in shining armor to come and rescue you from all the pain that was your past and ride you into your future, made of all the things you have ever dreamed of. And knowing you as I do, he’s got to be rich. You’ve always believed that money would change everything, and that someday you’d get it all, everything that you so rightly deserved. But mom, face it. You’re 50 and maybe this life, the one you’re living right now, is exactly what you deserve. And this life that I’m living right now is exactly what I deserve; it’s exactly what I’ve made it.
I’ve always said that since the year I turned 17 and took control of my life, that every year has gotten better. And it’s mostly true. Sure my life may have just been thrown up in the air, and many of the pieces have yet to fall into their places; and life is hard right now. It’s still better; it’s still getting better.

The thing is that I had started living my life like I was waiting, waiting for the perfect relationship and waiting for the perfect job and waiting for the perfect friends and all the while clinging tightly, waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath me. I was barely living at all, again. I get sucked into these comfortable, but not quite perfect, expectancies. And then I hold on . . . because things could be better, but they could be so much worse. And then I become sort of paralyzed. What if I make the wrong turn and lose everything?

And then . . . God steps in, and pulls the rug out. Everything falls apart. But I can’t tell you that, or show you how scared I’ve been. Because I’m the successful one; I’m the levelheaded one; I’m the one who has it all figured out. I’m still trying to live up to your expectations. You have always needed one person who could save you; one person who had everything figured out and could pull you out of any mess you had gotten yourself into. First there was grandpa, and then dad, and then you really tried to make Jay be that, though he was always failing you. And then one day, I’m not sure when, it became me. Well I’m sorry to finally disappoint you, mom, but I don’t have it all figured out. In fact, the older I get, the less I know. But there are still a few things that I’m pretty sure of. One of which is that everything happens for a reason, even when I don’t know or pre-approve of the reason. And sometimes you have to lose everything in order to find out that you haven’t really lost anything.
Maybe I needed to write this in order to finish losing everything I never had.
Maybe I can’t forgive you, can’t let go of the pain, because that would mean I would have to finally let go of the mother I never had. I have built my identity around the ‘look how great I am doing despite . . .’ It’s easy never to appear to be a failure when compared against where I came from. My greatest fear is also my excuse for not being more. If I wear the past you made for me as a badge of honor, than being average is quite a triumph. No one will ever ask more of me, because in comparison, I’ve done so much. You are my excuse for being mediocre. If I forgive you and let go of that past, then I have to stand on my own. I’ve always seen myself as independent because I have taken care of myself for so long, but I’ve used you as a chain around my ankle, always halting my growth, weighing on my potential. With all that, how could the expectations of me be all that high? Anything I did would be amazing. And with that, I have been amazing. If I untethered myself from you now, stood on my own without excuse, would I still be amazing? I don’t know who I am without your pain and your past, my past.
You know everyone is going to want a neat little package, with all the strings tied up. But that’s not what’s going to happen here. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing. My strings are all unstrung. But I know that I can’t rely on you to be my shackles anymore. Those signs in the universe, God has finally pulled the rug out once and for all. Whether I fail or succeed is going to be based on this life that I’m living, not where I came from. And it’s time I start living that way.
The reason I have never been able to forgive you mom, as it turns out has nothing to do with you. This time it’s about me. This is my story, and this is my happy little beginning . . .