I’ve been frustrated in trying to work the ACA steps because I have difficulty emotionally connecting to much of my past. I know that to heal old wounds I need to be able to feel them. I have asked to be shown and guided through receiving emotional input from within. I have received, basically, no answer.
I have talked about my mother here in the past. About her, but I don’t think, *to* her. I wonder if I have anything to say to her. I wonder if it could help me open up to healing. I am willing to try.
Mother,
That’s how I think of you, even though that is not what I called you. You were Mama or Mommy Dearest — a joke you started and seemed to find funny because it was, in your estimation, so far from the truth. I suppose you were Mom, too. Mum, in the early years, and when the accent lag caught up. I don’t really think of you as any of those things. You aren’t a noun the way a name is a noun. You are a noun the way a thing is a noun. I think of you as mother, the same way I label things I see in my surroundings. Light. Floor. Television. There is no affectionate name for you, really, though I have used many. There is just the dry descriptor of what you are.
Because I really don’t know anything about you.
Here’s what I know.
I know you don’t like me. I know you gave up on me and regretted having me. I know you were frustrated that I lived past the age of eleven because that was when you decided you were done being a parent. I know your family of origin hurt you. I know you are a child who never grew up and you think that is justification for all that you have ever done. I know you have always been annoyed by me, have never really wanted to spend time with me, even when I was a baby. I know you are sadistic. I know you begrudged me the love from my extended family and took me far, far away from them so I had no one. I know you don’t want to know anything about me or my adult life, that you could happily go the rest of your life without contact from me.
I know you wish I’d never been born. I know you don’t love me. I know you have thought about killing me.
I know you blame me for everything that went wrong in our family.
I don’t feel anger about these things. Am I supposed to? You feel a lot of anger about your own childhood. I just feel like it can’t be helped. What happened, happened. So what if you don’t love me? I can live with that. I didn’t used to think I could, but I can. I’m not really sure you’re even capable of love, so it would be asking a lot to demand it. I have loved and lost people who meant much more to me than you.
I honestly don’t know what to say to you. There’s nothing you care to hear. There’s nothing I care to share.
You genuinely don’t care about me. Why would I even bother?
What, am I supposed to cry and wail, “You fucked me up and now I’m having to put the pieces back together!” I don’t feel that way. I don’t care. I’m doing what I’m doing, this is my path, this is the way things worked out and this is the way I’m handling it. Why would I give power back to you by saying you had a hand in this? Why would I write to you (even in a mock letter) in the first place, knowing how little you care? I wouldn’t. This is so stupid.
You’re mean and you laugh at people when they are vulnerable. You say hurtful things with a grin. You like to hurt me. You enjoy it. Why in the hell would I write you a meaningful letter, knowing you would just shred it with your caustic remarks and shame me for my feelings?
I spent so much of my life being sensitive to your feelings and needs. I feel like the last thing I need now is to be sensitive in your direction. I am numb to it. You can’t hurt me anymore. I’ve already spent so many years feeling what it means to be unloved, abused, and hated by you, why in the great holy land of fuck would I do that again? That sounds like masochism to me.
I don’t understand what’s supposed to happen. Aren’t people supposed to burst into tears when they say this stuff? I don’t feel anything. I feel like it’s old news. I feel like I’ve known all this, at a deep cellular level, for a very long time. None of this is transformative for me to reconsider. I’ve accepted it.
I guess if I’m honest, I am starting to feel angry.
Jaime never liked you. I know you never liked him either, but at least he gave you hell. I respect that he did that. At the time I didn’t appreciate the extra grief. Now I look back and remember that he thought you were shitty from the first moment he met you, and he made a point of sharing that sentiment. Sometimes I do wish I’d been more outspoken and stood up for myself — it gives me a little warmth in my heart to remember that Jaime did that for me.
Don’t ever call me Bunny again. Don’t call me any of the names that you gave to me. I am not yours, I never belonged to you, I am a person with a soul and I am no one’s property.
I can’t fathom why you had children since you never seemed to want us, but it doesn’t matter, because now that I’m here this life is mine. I care about my life, I love myself, I am here for a reason — maybe lots of reasons. What you think about me, what you feel or don’t feel for me, it’s not important anymore.
Thank you for giving me the gift of life. I will use the gift however I want to, maybe in ways you don’t like, but that’s my right. It’s mine now, you gave it to me. It isn’t yours at all and you don’t dictate how I use it. You have your own, and you have the same right I do, to use your own life however you want. I used to think that my preoccupation with suicide was my own choice about how I wanted to spend my life — now I realize it was how *you* wanted me to spend my life. You wanted me miserable and you wanted me dead. Now I see the truth of it, I have stopped living my life the way you wanted me to. I am not going to kill myself, I am going to live without fear and shame, and I’m going to love so much, share so much, learn so much, feel so much, and be so much.
Mother I will always love you, but the love between us is not binding or manipulative anymore. I am not tied to you. I love you as I love all suffering creatures, all who have hurt me, all who do not experience the light of true love. I love you as a practice in kindness and acceptance and purifying myself. I send love to you, sufferer, and compassion. I expect nothing in return, I want nothing in return. I am whole without you. Be at peace.
