Thirteen

           “Day three,” Melissa murmured.  Ed had asked her when she’d be done with writing ‘the’ letter to mom.  If only she knew.  It felt like peeling back layers of onion, this yucky walk down memory lane.  Memories from another time, another place, and what felt like another person.  At least yucky wasn’t as intimidating as depression. 

            She flipped through her journal taking note of important points to keep her focused on the process. The key was to identify the emotions that accompanied them.  To remember without falling into the trap of rehashing could get tricky.  Pain long buried, anger suppressed for a lifetime beckoned to resurface to help heal a broken heart. 

            A heart that had not been allowed to acknowledge its pain, in order to survive what she now understood to be a narcissistic mother.  She wrestled with giving herself permission.  In some ways it all seemed so petty to dredge up memories long since forgiven and forgotten.  But she desired to be whole, for the pieces of her shattered heart to be placed in the Father’s hand and restored by the love of Jesus. 

            “Okay girl you got this,” she took a deep breath as her fingers tapped on the keyboard and words flowed.

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on you mother for trying to put your guilt on me.  Shame on you for never admitting when you were wrong.  Your hypocrisies are monumental.  As Sarah said, you have a set of morals; you just choose to not live by them.

          I wonder when you emotionally abandoned me?  Did extended family fill in that gap until they were no longer present in my life?  Questions that will never be answered.  Because you will never see your culpability.  I get that you’re incapable of seeing, but I no longer have to be condoning of it.

          I spent years covering your literal and figurative nakedness with love that covers a multitude of sins.  And lo your sins are many.  That is between you and Jesus. You were supposed to be my safe place, and I don’t recall when I could trust you to be that.

          Sam and Jennifer can recall the moment they realized they could no longer feel safe, trust, or respect you to be a mother.  Ironically, they were both around thirteen.  As I think on it, I would have to say it was when I was eleven and the incident happened with Dad.

I had walked across town in the middle of the night hoping to find refuge with my mom.  You weren’t there, the apartment was locked.  I sat in the buildings open laundry room, crying.  Scared, confused and wounded beyond understanding. 

          The neighbor man heard me.  He came in to find me sobbing, I explained I was waiting for you to come home.  He offered for me to wait in his apartment. I was frightened to be left alone with a man.  I protested, he gently encouraged me and I went with him only after he promised he’d leave his apartment door open until you came home.

          I’m sure he sensed something horrendous had happened, and was trying to help.  As we sat at his table by a window overlooking the street, dad erratically pulled up to the apartment building.  Yelling at Sam to stay in the car. 

          I panicked, there was nowhere for me to run.  I begged the man not to make me go with dad.  It was obvious dad was still drunk.  The man let me hide in the bathroom and kept his apartment door open. 

          Dad pounded on the apartment door yelling for Betty.  The man stepped out and told dad no one was home.  Dad was frantic, wanting to know where I was.  The man calmed him down the best he could, telling him when mom come home, he’d tell her he’d come by.  Dad finally left, speeding and erratically driving the car.  I was so worried for Sam!

          I don’t know how long I waited for you in his apartment.  I do recall him offering me something to eat and drink.  Finally, a car pulled up and you got out with some man.  You were laughing as the two of you stumbled up the stairs.  As you came down the hall, I rushed out to you.

          As I look back, you put on a show of concern for what I was doing there.  Afterall you were trying to impress the man you’d brought home.  But I knew you were put out with my being there.  We went into the apartment. It had to be four or five in the morning, it was daylight. 

          You took me in the bedroom, told me to go to bed and be quiet.  When you asked what had happened, I said dad was drunk.  That’s all you needed to hear. You didn’t try to find out anymore. You were in a hurry to go back out to that man.

          I could hear you laughing and fixing breakfast.  I cracked the bedroom door and watched as you flirted and apologized for my being there.  It would be years later before I understood why.  It was a one-bedroom apartment and I was in it.  So, no sex.

          My entire world turned upside down that night.  Later that day rather than find out what happened to prompt me to flee across town in the middle of the night. You got mad at me for doing such a stupid thing and told me to never do it again! No matter how drunk dad was. 

          In a single night I lost the shelter of knowing I had a parent to turn to and take care of me.  I would no longer trust or feel secure with dad.  I knew that I knew confiding and counting on you to put my needs before yours was not going to happen.  I felt so devastatingly alone. 

To this day I’m not sure how I survived.  I told no one what had happened, with dad or you.  I retreated to my books.  I don’t remember playing with any friends.  There was no one to turn to.

I would protest that I didn’t want to go with dad when it was his weekend to have us.  You would have none of it and made me go.  I know now it’s because us kids were out of your hair and you could go off and party.  Heaven forbid you pay attention to the desperation your child felt, because it interfered with your life.

I never slept at night when with dad.  I had to be ready to escape in case he got drunk and confused me for being you again.  There was no safe place for me, no one to count on other than myself.  At eleven years old I had to become my own parent.  Although I suspect I had been that way for a while.  Once you were no longer living around family and divorced, Katie bar the doors there was nothing to stop you from living life as you wanted, not even your kids. 

I get the feeling people think there’s a statute of limitations for parental responsibility regarding choices and actions as a parent. Because you are the way you are, never going to change and old. There’s no need or too late for accountability of your culpability. Friends and family contribute to you thinking the same way. You’re known for justifying your choices with “I did the best I could with what I had.”  A true statement, but that still doesn’t make your life choices right.

I think there is a statute of limitations when there has been regret and repentance.  Dad did that, it’s why my relationship with him was redeemed and restored.  He apologized for all the crap. You don’t think there’s any crap to apologize for. Even now, telling people I shoved you to the floor and fractured your back.  Once again, your need to justify your choices requires that you make someone else the villain and now it’s me. 

I’m not covering your sin, this time, with love mom.  I choose to take responsibility only for that which I’m accountable. Which is I should have stepped away from you, but I didn’t. But I also did not shove you to the floor. I regret you lost your balance and fell. I wish it hadn’t happened, yet it did, but regret does not equate guilt.

You know what I wish mother. More than anything else in this world, I wish you had been there for me, had been a mommy when I desperately needed one. That you would have taken me into consideration.  Even though I know that’s an impossibility, that’s what I wish. Therein lies the rub, my wish never did nor will ever come true.  I have been left alone to fend for myself without a mother the majority of my life.  That will never change!

So now, according to you, I’m the bad guy, I’m the one who screwed up.  I guess that’s just the way it’ll have to be.  I don’t see any way or chance of that changing.  You are who you are.  But more importantly I am who I am, I like me even though you don’t.  Sometimes being liked is far more important than being loved. 

I know you tried to be a parent, but you have a rather bizarre love/hate relationship with being a mother. I’m empty and have nothing left for you, I have to be done with you mother. I’m finding my way through accepting being done with you. I’m worn out and tired of living in this wounded place.

Your shame is not mine; you have to live with your shame.  Even though you will never admit to it.  But I’m choosing to no longer wait, just in case, you come to that realization.  Because just because dad did doesn’t mean you will.

My emotional well-being depends on my cutting that mother cord in my life.  I struggle with knowing I need to grieve, but not knowing how with you.  I found my way through grieving the loss of dad as a father.  Bottom line is I don’t want to grieve you.  I can’t find the emotion for it.  I can describe what the emotions should be but I can’ necessarily feel them, to my detriment. 

I want to get well, as the counselor puts it.  I’m struggling with the how of it.  Perhaps it will come to me as I continue to peel back the layers of our story through the writing of this letter.  I prayerfully chose to, regardless of the time it takes.  I must give myself permission to take whatever time to do so.  For now, it’s okay to be done with you mother. I will continue to list the whys as this letter progresses.

            Melissa’s fingers floated over the keyboard as she let sink in what had flowed out of her.  Some would say, how could she hold her mother accountable for something she hadn’t been told.  But that’s where she had to remind herself, those people would never understand because it didn’t fit their life paradigm.  Instinctively she and her siblings knew that they knew their mother could not be trusted for their emotional well-being. 

            Forgiveness was the very air they’d breathed when it came to their mother.  Time and again it had been unconditional, the very essence of forgiveness.  Seventy times seven was a number they had long surpassed.  But forgiveness wasn’t the issue this time.  Therein lay the rub because there were those who confused the evidence of forgiveness as being reconciliation. 

            Fortunately, Melissa understood the power of combining the two.  She’d experienced it with her dad. The years of inner healing she’d walked through and unconditional forgiveness she’d extended to her dad, because of the grace her heavenly Father had modeled through His son Jesus. 

            Reconciliation had not been possible until certain conditions were met.  First and foremost, feeling safe with him.  Listening to his guttural grief when he learned what he’d done to her while drunk and his remorse that led to repentance made her realize she could be safe again. Their relationship was never restored to what it had been as a child, daddy’s little girl.  But they had found their way back through common interests, such as a shared love of history.  Melissa smiled as she remembered their Monday phone visits.  Her Dad always had a joke for her, he loved to hear her laugh.

            Unfortunately, Melissa knew that in all likelihood reconciliation wasn’t possible with her mother, which greatly saddened her.  Love may have covered her mother’s multitude of sins, and contributed to her narcissistic need to be the hero or victim, never the villain. But sadly, love and forgiveness weren’t the key to reconciliation anymore. Over the years Sam had tried, to no avail, to see if mother could admit to her culpability in anything.  She never would or could admit to not being a good mother. 

            She read her letter. Her heart grieved for that little girl who was forced to grow up so quickly in order to survive.  Protected, she suspected, by the grace of God because of her childlike prayer underneath that huge old tree, asking for wisdom like Solomon.  She was humbled to think of how He’d answered that prayer through the years.  Wisdom had sustained and guided her from an early age.  Wisdom beyond human understanding, foolish to those who thought themselves wise.