Something I haven’t brought up to my therapist is the difficulty I have looking into my children’s eyes or watching them sleep peacefully. While they are the most beautiful humans I’ve laid eyes on, the intensity of the love I have for them feels foreign and almost incongruent. I feel my eyes lingering on their own; I feel the warmth of adoration encapsulate me, and the intensity and feral biology of motherhood stun me. Underneath the love is sadness and fear of rejection. Looking too long makes me fear they can use their agency to ask me to look away. I become afraid they’ll unload on me the hurt I’ve caused them or realize the “wrong” that I had been told was innate in me my entire life. Words were never spoken directly, but were implied through laughs, inside jokes about my character, and tiresome narratives that ultimately I would turn everyone away. In my eyes, my boys are truly perfect as they are. I am cautious in how I relay this to them, wanting to be careful not to put pressure on them to be the impossible. Rather, I want them to understand that their character and personhood are something that will always be exactly who they are supposed to be, and that, to me, they are humans whose love will never waver or be questioned.
Miles, my five-year-old, is the sweetest soul in the world. The quiet smile he has on his face when he looks at something that fascinates him pulls my own lips up unconsciously. It feels as if I’m witnessing the tenderness of a mother nursing for the first time. He looks at the world with the eyes of someone who has seen things the rest of us can’t imagine. He observes the actions, movements, and shifts in the voices of others in a way that feels as if everything is being recorded. Even as an infant, he’d lie on our knees and take everything in, silently and deeply investigating his surroundings with a stillness I had never associated with babies before.
By the time he was ten months old, certain milestones had not been attempted. While his cousin, a child a mere month older, had been using toys to pull himself up and attempt the cutest waddles, Miles was content lying on his stomach and staring into the invisible particles of space that surrounded us. He would scratch at the ground under his hands and familiarize himself with the texture, studying the way different environments felt beneath his exploring fingers. Miles was also familiar with shapes that I had to Google to remember from my days in grade school. He didn’t speak the names of the shapes but found a way to test our—and his—knowledge. He would quizzically hold a pentagon up to visitors, an “eh” begging them to relay the answer to what it was. If they answered “hexagon,” as they often did, he would then look at the shape, then at the person, and again at the shape. “Eh?” It was not until the answer was correct that he would put it down and move on to the other shape.
When he was nearing the end of his therapies at the Boyer Clinic, a place that served children from birth to three, there was finally a person who seemed to understand his tendencies as something other than neurotypical varieties of toddler behavior. He was being assessed to qualify for developmental preschool, and they had asked if he had been tested for autism. Because he had spent the last year under their guidance, we had the fortune of expediting a process that usually took three years in Seattle. A referral less than a month later confirmed his autism and confirmed our parental suspicions that there was something unique about the way he processed the world and social interactions.
While his dad had struggled more with the implications of what life could look like for him and us, I had accepted the diagnosis as confirmation of what we always knew. Rather, my worries surrounded the world that he was entering. Miles was a boy who personified lightness and joy. He loved hard and cuddled with gusto. He never turned down an invitation for a hug or kiss, even when you reminded him he could. Miles remains a soul to this day who feels too pure to be real. Anyone ever making him feel less than the amazing human he is hurts my heart more than I thought imaginable. He was who he was and is who he is. I loved every bit of him, and the only future that scared me was a future that didn’t celebrate the essence of who he is.
Finn, my wild child, my adventurous soul, my spirited boy. Finn was always the child I said would shotgun five beers and drive a motorcycle for the first time at fifteen. The fearlessness and strength he was born with brought me endless joy. There were a quick few seconds after he was born when he didn’t cry. Those who performed my cesarean were rubbing his back and warming him up as they encouraged him with a, “Come on, buddy,” so we could hear that first cry. The two seconds he remained silent felt like a lifetime, and I felt a hollowness in my chest that echoed like a blast in silence; I was completely open and powerless, waiting for confirmation that my boy was okay.
His cries were the most beautiful sound I heard, and I felt a higher sense of completeness. My boys, Miles and Finn, had both been brought earth-side and were beautiful and perfect. I had always known that two would be the number for me. Something about having a middle child didn’t sit well; something about being outnumbered by children terrified me. Finn quickly became Finn, and those lucky enough to be familiar with him personally know exactly what I mean. Finn is too big for this world, too enormous in personality to be written down. The contrasts between my boys and their friendship are the best things that I’ve been able to witness, and being their mom? Nothing is more humbling.
I had spent the majority of the postpartum period on heavy antipsychotics. Lamotrigine and Vraylar muted me to the point that I was able to get through the process without daily meltdowns. While I was undeniably depressed, I was never comfortable talking about myself or my feelings in a way that took up space rather than letting any of it go. After three miscarriages, night shifts, full-time school, and unresolved trauma, I had been left completely at the whims of not taking the steps toward taking the pills. While my husband had held me when I shed tears, I made it my life’s mission to hide from him how bad things really were. Classes were skipped daily, my job collected more sick calls than it had, and showers were taken in exactly enough time to pretend that I had been active all day. The reality was that the majority of my day was spent in bed, dissociating to the point where even my phone wasn’t touched. As eleven rolled by, then noon, then one in the afternoon, I wondered about the purpose of getting up at all. While watching the clock move forward, I was already counting down the hours until it was acceptable to get ready for bed. My responsibilities overwhelmed me, so I refused all of them.
I yearned for my body to develop an embryo into a child who could breathe their own air. Instead, I received what I felt was coming before I could fully celebrate the pregnancy itself. I had not been able to bond with the burgeoning life within me because each time, I knew it wasn’t going to last. While I hoped that the primal instinct in me that cautioned against excitement was wrong, I desperately clung to the positive pregnancy tests like a lifeboat. When the third pregnancy ended in a loss, my will snapped into despondent relinquishment of optimism. I had felt in my bones that my time of becoming a mother was not to be. I remember vividly sitting on my psychiatrist’s couch for the first time, telling her with confidence that I would never be a mom. The idea of a child of my own, a soul so intricately tied to my own soul, seemed like too grand a hope to imagine as reality. I learned from quite an early age that I didn’t get to have or be loved like that.
Feeling defective as a person is an interesting feeling. Being begrudgingly agnostic has made me realize its weirdness. It doesn’t feel quite like familial vengeance. It doesn’t feel like divine intervention or some global sort of law written in the stars. It feels… off. Eventually, you sort of accept it. In a weird and comforting way. When you learn that nobody here actually loves you unconditionally, you learn how to navigate in order to survive.
Apparently, this survival was programmed in me from birth.
We were called “floppy babies.” Our mother struggled with something called tonic-clonic seizures. I’m not going to bullshit anyone by pretending I know exactly what that is, other than that when my mom relayed the story, she was having “grand mal” seizures throughout her pregnancy with us. It was reminded to us that our very presence in her organs almost caused her death repeatedly. Much like our very conception, the existence of me and my sisters in her body was against her will. But despite the adversity and hardship, she chose to let it go on. She was going to give us a better life than what she had.
If you were to ask her, she would probably say as much. If you were also to ask her if she succeeded, if she did the best job she could, she would probably give you various answers, from “Probably not, but whatever, I tried,” to “Nope, I’m the worst human ever to exist.”
There is no gray area, nor is there a victim more hurt than her. Her rejected love was because of the rejected love she received. The men she let hurt us were there because she wasn’t shown how to choose a man who wouldn’t hurt her. The drugs she took were because she was only shown self-medication through drugs and alcohol. When we asked why she avoided being around us, why she spent every night and every hour at work or on a date night with her husband, it was followed by a reminder that we were homeless when she didn’t work, so we should be grateful she was even there to work so we’d have a home. Did we want to be homeless again? I sometimes wonder if this thought process of annoyance came from her own difficult time associating love towards her as authentic. If she was too unfamiliar with others being drawn into her company made her uncomfortable. Despite everything, despite the ache of being a child that only felt as an obligation and nuisance, I wore that feeling as a personal flaw. My mother was not only the most beautiful woman in the world to me, but she represented the image of something I couldn’t quite place. Imagining her happy in our company felt like watching a comforting movie with a heartwarming resolution.
The reminder that we had lived with our grandmother before, that there had actually been a time when we were both loved and had a roof over our heads, would be followed by our turn to become her therapist for the fact that her own mother did not offer her love either.
I know this sounds angry, snide, maybe even crass or cynical.
I am only really being honest.
This is not an overblown narrative or a passive-aggressive exaggeration of events that happened once or twice. I have learned that I’ve never been dramatic or one for flair. I’m actually quite honest. My entire life has been met with resistance to my speaking the truth. I’ve earned all the words: bitch, cunt, stupid, difficult, asshole, evil, heartless, “never gives a fuck,” and the girl who would one day abandon her family. My entire aesthetic, as the kids call it, was telling people exactly how and what I felt.
I consciously choose not to use name-calling in this respect, though. I don’t put titles to people’s behavior in a way that consciously makes them feel less than. I will not call you a bitch. I will not say you’re a cunt, or stupid, or difficult, or any of the things I was called from the age of seven by angry men.
If you hurt me, I will tell you that you caused hurt. If you say something cruel to me with a forked tongue and malicious intent, I will call that out.
Has this always been done nicely?
No.
Absolutely not.
I will own when I fuck up, when I hurt, when I say something out of line, or when I become unhinged. Being direct and honest does not always mean you have to be an asshole and make someone feel bad about themselves. We can tell people, “That didn’t feel good,” without saying, “You’re always such a bitch.” While one might sound good on the tongue, the effects serve neither you nor the person to whom they’re said.
Turning to edgy quips when communicating with someone does not have to be an accusation or greater declaration. It can be candor and a way to understand. What do you mean by that? Why do you feel like that? Can you explain? Okay. Heard.
But standing aside while abuse occurs is not, and never will be, okay.
I will match the energy of the person I am standing toe-to-toe with, but personal values have mandated that I never resort to calling names. In my eyes, as I witnessed during my adolescence within the raging fury of my stepfather at the time, titling a person as a whole only exposes anger and desperation to regain perceived control.
Control is an odd thing we try to convince ourselves we have in order to starve anxiety of substance.
Another lesson I learned early in my youth was that, while I couldn’t yet control my surroundings or those who had custody of me, I could control the mechanics of ensuring survival and moving forward.
While my husband and I considered a move outside the city we had called home for the past decade, the unending moving parts required to make such a move built endlessly. Being in an upside-down house due to a mortgage crisis that has gone unnamed didn’t help matters. While my husband, Aaron, bemoaned the struggles of paying for two places, being in a job he wasn’t familiar with, and the endless checks he had to write, he remained steadfast in keeping his composure. Often, he would look at me inquisitively and wonder out loud, “How are you not worried?”
I couldn’t really explain why the scope of change and unknowns didn’t bother me in a way that stilled me for even a second. Questions about how I was doing with it all often brought up more perplexed feelings for me that I couldn’t place. Upending our life and moving back to the town I escaped didn’t scare me. I felt a sense of adventure about it, excitement at the prospect of change and stilling the pace of a life of knowns and predictability.
Worry?
No.
The ease of being confident in our future was something I never hesitated over. Were things going to be tough? Sure. Would we get tired? Of course. Would it be an adjustment for our boys? Naturally. But there was never a moment when I feared we wouldn’t be okay and flourish in the end.
My husband’s career in Port Townsend wouldn’t have the same trajectory as it had in the tech field in Seattle. While he had worked his way into higher management fields at a company as mainstream as Band-Aid, the toxicity of using others to build your portfolio of success was daunting in its never-ending path of taking on only more and pointing out the sacrificial lamb as the weakest link in a way that treated their personhood as an outdated machine rather than someone trying to make ends meet. The drive toward “more” was not Aaron’s purpose. He instead felt compelled to help out the community, to build an equitable system that settled into a collectivist approach to success rather than lauding a singular person at the top as the beneficiary of the majority of the wealth. Aaron’s perfectionist ideals were at odds with a company that never thought of a job as done or a person as settled in their career. The only upward approach was to make stockholders and top executives more money, and it didn’t make him feel the purpose he wanted to feel in his career.
I told anyone who would listen that Aaron had a soul. The company he worked for did not. So when I was implored by him to explain why I didn’t worry, it wasn’t hard to describe because I was naïve about the struggles we’d face in the transition. It was difficult to answer because I couldn’t envision how it wouldn’t work out in the end.
Life, somewhat amusingly, has been that way for me.
While I have faced trauma on a level that I have realized was not normal (with CPS records to back it up), I had always realized the only way was forward. Looking back was an impossible because I had not been ready to remember said past. I had survived every curveball and setback life had thrown at me. I had been a survivor since an adolescent child living in a trap house asking neighbors for food to stave off starvation. Wallowing in everything that is wrong, could be wrong, or uknown, is only an inhibitor of progress. Because so much of my life was survival, I had not learned to pause to assess the damage. I had only learned to pull myself up upon the raft I created on my own.
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