Enigmatic

I feel like I’m a normal, functioning teenage girl most of the time. But, when I sit in my child growth and development class and we review the risk factors for children, I’m reminded how miraculous my existence is. 

It’s hard not to feel paralyzed writing down that “maternal depression causes problems in childhood, it is not merely correlated to them”. As my professor discusses that as a mother’s depression waxes and wanes, their child’s mental state goes with it, I'm suddenly thirteen and experiencing my first major depressive episode. We learned about the Adverse Childhood Experiences test, and I remember being a sophomore in high school, breaking down while answering “yes” to 8/10 questions. 

Although I don’t think I’ve experienced much of a hindrance in my daily life without my mother being around, I do feel like you can’t miss what you never had. After the age of 7, I never knew my mom without her being under the influence. I don’t think it’s difficult for me to function with one less parent when I have one who is worth the entire world to me. I’ve never felt less loved or cared for because of her absence, because my dad loves me more than anything. 

Despite this, I remember the first time my mother betrayed me. I was five, and she locked me in a closet for twelve-ish hours when my dad worked overnight. I was terrified, with no food, water, or a bathroom. I was yelled at for trying to claw at the door or turn a light on.

I would go to school smelling of wine and cigarettes, and my friends asked why all of the spoons in my house were misshapen and burnt.

The physical altercations ended when I was around eight, and I learned how to barricade my door with my bed, and how to jump out the window without spraining something. My knees have never quite recovered from everytime I’d take a pink tote bag filled with water bottles and animal crackers and run to the local park with my dad’s flip phone and email him to come home.

It’s hard for me to notice when people treat me poorly, because after the physical abuse stopped, my mom tore me apart in every way possible. I ended up anorexic and hating every feature of my face and body. To this day, liking my physical features can feel like an act of defiance.

Anytime someone criticizes my personality, I feel like a pre-teen again. My mother’s insults still radiate in my brain. Perhaps it’s because she’s half of me. Learning to like myself when I hate half of what made me is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.

I still remember being fifteen and giving a presentation in my mother’s pantsuit for AP Seminar. I got a 4, and it was the highest AP grade I’d gotten at that time. I remember walking in the house after, and feeling so connected to her after wearing her clothes. I just wanted to tell her how well my presentation went. She had been in rehab for a month after a near-fatal overdose.

After being sexually assaulted, there was nothing I wanted more than the consolation of my mom. In my moments of weakness, I find myself internally craving the mother I never quite had in the first place.

I’d be lying if I said that prom dress shopping alone wasn’t humiliating. I walked past my entire grade with their mothers and cried in a dressing room. I couldn’t take a picture of my dress for the group chat in the store like everyone else, because it felt like the only thing I’d ever wanted was being thrown in my face.

I think I’ve spent more of my life missing my mother than actually having her. For the few years that I actually had her, my mom taught me to never give up on my dreams no matter how daunting. I’ve never quite understood how I gained the strength to give up on the biggest, least realistic dream I’ve ever had: a relationship with her. 

In current times, I don’t mention my mom much, if at all. Her name is synonymous as an explicative and she’s a running joke amongst my friends. Yet somehow, every time something good happens, I still go to call her until I realize that I can’t anymore. Her number is in my phone and I know where to reach her, but it’s not quite my mother.  I’ve mourned my mother premortem for years and I’m used to the hole in my life, but Mother’s Day has never gotten easier. 

I always wondered why my mom abandoned the person she used to be, even in fleeting moments of sobriety. I compartmentalize my feelings into that of grief. However, I always feel the need to excessively clarify that she is alive, but walked out of my life, but she’ll occasionally text me while evidently drunk, or she’ll say that no one could ever love me like her- which is a horrific notion to me. 

I know I can’t fix her. I wish someone told me at five, or seven, or fifteen, or even a year ago that no matter how many times I said “I love you”, her refusal to respond was clearly weaponized and malicious.

Speculation of Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome in combination with my mother recently exploring new substances has given me the ability to finally let her go. Even if my mother chose sobriety or therapy, she is medically irreparable and permanently stuck the way she is, a manipulative abuser.

I wonder if the mother I had would be proud of where I am today, but when I go to call her, I’m reminded why her number is blocked in my phone. I think I’ll always miss the person who shared my face and gave me life, but I know I can never let myself get to know her ever again.