I think it exposes a psychological complexity: that I can visualize my mother as a child abandoned more easily than I can visualize myself as a child equally damaged.
Even writing the word “equally” brings hesitation. While I find myself wanting to use the word, the acknowledgment of sustained trauma feels as if I’m committing a familial felony.
There is a disconnect when I try to picture myself as a child. I know logically that I was. I know that there was a time when I was innocent of crimes I was accused of committing by simply being.
My very conception—a violent and horrifying crime against a teenage girl—had burned my soul with the feeling of wrongness. My place had been established before I breathed air: that I was taking up space at the cost of another. My state of being as an autonomous being was the direct symbol of the ongoing theme of my mother being failed by the world around her.
Being allowed to exist, to live, and to speak came with the disclaimer that many didn’t receive the same gifts I had. Food and water were not promises but rewards, a self-indulgent act of kindness by a mother who decided her children were better served as lessons in vengeance for her own lack of childhood security. By merely claiming our livelihoods were a pendulum shift into adolescence of abundant splendor, she had shown those who failed her how immensely better she had been. Having needs, desires, wants, and emotions were the vices of those with privileges they couldn’t imagine. Even having sisters—siblings to ground us into survival—was a luxury that she was never awarded, a depravity that she had selflessly bestowed upon us as an act of sacrifice.
What I find difficult about seeing my mother as an adult woman and seeing myself as a child is that it flips the roles we’ve carried from the beginning into chaos. Since being born as a floppy baby with a note from the social worker to follow up on me and my sisters’ well-being, I have been hyperaware of two things: I had to be here for my sister, and I had to love my mom into healing.
Without being aware of what I was doing, I settled into the space of earning my mother’s forgiveness for existing, and I had to love her into a state where she could love herself. My mother’s love was a hidden desire, something not to be spoken out loud. I yearned for the warmth of maternal nurturing. When I was sad, I wanted my mother to be someone who offered safety. I wanted to feel that I was a person she was happy to be in the company of. While love was something I was familiar with in the sense that media depicted it as existing, I had early been taught that the world did not owe me a single thing—including love from a parent.
My mom’s absence always came with the building of hope that her return would bring warmth and tenderness. When she returned, avoiding looking into our eyes, I was met with the familiarity that my excitement was short-lived. If you are familiar with the upbringing of neglect and deprivation of emotional connection, you are probably also hyperaware of the intricacies of people’s subtleties: a smile that isn’t really a smile, a sigh before starting to respond to a question that reveals irritation at needing to acknowledge you, the way a person will mutter a nonverbal cue-card response so they can move on to their turn to talk. You become so familiar with avoiding danger where you can that it is hard not to apply this survival technique your entire life. Sometimes there are attempts to make this applicable to those you’re not as familiar with—a similar intake of breath triggering you into thinking you’re going to be verbally assaulted. When you live in an environment of instability, you try to anchor yourself to reliability where you can find it. Assessing your ability to control anything in an environment of chaos at least offers a whisper of a promise of safety. The issue is that your body starts to fatigue from constantly looking at the emblematic exit signs. An upbringing where the baseline is tension means that a lack of tension is not trustworthy.
Sitting in silence, having moments of peace or isolation, brings me discomfort I cannot yet explain. In the rare moments that I am without my children or husband, in the times when I have the ability to sit in silence and feel, I actively work to rectify my space into familiar noise and movement. I will spend an obscene amount of time finding the perfect television program that will allow me to noncommittally follow as I scroll my phone. I anxiously text anyone I feel will respond, not so subtly begging any willing participant to become physical company. I look toward the time on my phone, counting down the minutes until I can expect the return of companionship.
Breathing work has only been effective during labor with my boys.
I once had a therapist who was big on affirmations and breath work. Meditation was his calling, his greatest goal for me to find solace in. Our first (and only) in-person session pre-COVID had him tell me our work together would have the ultimate destination of being able to look in the mirror and say, “I love myself.”
Spoiler alert: It never happened.
Finding a male practitioner in the first place came from the goal of being comfortable being vulnerable and trusting of a man. While the bulk of my memories is not quite accessible, I have always felt an unsettling discomfort when alone with men. Accessing my CPS records revealed a previous sexual abuse investigation against one of my mother’s boyfriends involving me at the age of five. I cannot assert knowledge I don’t have of what transpired, but I can comfortably acknowledge that my body and soul were quick to associate men with danger. My stepdad, a hurting alcoholic and later abuser of drugs, saw me as the physical manifestation of disobedience early on. Moving back in with my mother after all the years with my grandmother and great-grandmother also meant occupying the space of a man I barely knew. Transitioning from the warmth and reliability of my grandmother’s love and encouragement to the return of feelings of obligation and annoyance brought me back to a state of survival in a hostile environment. My sister, the only constant in my life, had been brought into the experience with me yet again—desired for our presence for aesthetic purposes alone. My sister’s ability to survive our environment relied on keeping the peace and allowing emotional abuse without so much as a rebuttal. Kathleen found seclusion within herself, realizing that the less space she took up, the less the focus of rage would be on her. In the moments where her despondence didn’t offer safety, when verbal or physical assaults were wrecked on her despite it, I found the realization that I could at least attempt to transition the assaults onto myself instead by resisting and debating.
Quickly, seven-year-old Tasha was standing toe to toe with a grown man as he screamed epithets in an attempt to scare me into submission—still fresh in my head. There is a weird derealization when looking back on those moments. I am aware they happened. I can see the image of the bulging vein on my previous stepfather’s red forehead; I can feel myself standing in front of him, relaying some rebuttals that were only met with more anger. The words I exchanged are unclear though, like watching a foreign film without subtitles. I know the emotions that are there; I can feel the context of disagreement and the adrenaline that kept me standing. It feels familiar though, a common enough occurrence where I know my place in the family dynamic existed as someone who spoke up and the one who was the villain for doing so. It was through this that I also learned my ability to speak against perceived wrongs against myself or others was an actionable ability I had. Silence ensured compliance; it felt to me as if I had kissed the ring of an unjust king that had never been challenged. Matching the energy of those that affronted me earned me many names quite young. Throughout the tumultuous standoffs with my stepdad, I learned that I could carry the skill of challenging smug belittlement into school. Being known as a bitch, lacking any sort of potential adolescent partnerships, whispers of being a lesbian, and not being well-liked by many outside of my friend group at least curbed bullying into covert whispers behind my back. I had owned the stigmatizations of others proudly. I didn’t bother correcting assumptions about my queerness, as being thought of as queer was a triviality in the grander sense of my world. Being left alone was my ultimate goal, preferring the small group of friends I had retained over any aspirations of popularity. Attention and being noticed usually meant being in a place of mockery, so I allowed perceptions of me to be made without argument as long as I was allowed to disappear into the crowd.
I’m not sure why it is so hard for me to see myself as having been a child, why I feel that child was worth more than what she received. It is difficult to untangle who I am from who I was told I was. While I write this, I even have difficulty realizing I have made the move toward cutting contact off with my mom. I have succumbed to changing my mind before, allowed her proximity to me again for the sake of my children who could potentially have the grandmother I did. I feel that I’m letting go of the little girl that my mom’s soul once occupied. That little girl had once navigated a childhood where she suffered wrongs that no person should ever face in their lifetime. I have always desperately held onto her hand, begging her to come with me and leave her environment of trauma. What I have failed to recognize was that the girl had become a woman. That woman had rooted herself into the hurt, laying a foundation of cement and immovable earth.
This is the same woman who never let me love her the way I wanted to show was a possibility. The feelings my mother leaves with me are an identity I desperately want to move forward from. Having children of my own has forced me to let go of the hand of the little girl I never actually knew. It has made me open my eyes to the woman she became who chose survival over living. The Tasha that my mom has allowed me to be cannot be the mother I strive to be. She cannot be the kind, loving, passionate, nonjudgmental, and driven woman that I believe I can be. As long as her presence is allowed to take space, I will always hope that the little girl I’ve tried saving will also become my mother. I will always feel the pangs that her presence will make me feel loved, worthy, and good enough. I will hope that she finds peace within herself, that she finds passion in creativity again, that she learns how to be vulnerable and trust those who have learned to love her and who she is capable of being. My love for my mother will always take precedence over my love for myself—over my own ability to see myself as anything other than a deeply flawed human. The hurt she causes has come to the point where I can no longer excuse it; I can no longer ignore how it affects those who have learned to love me. My children are worth finding out who I can potentially be outside the lens of hurt. Maybe I am too.
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