Mother, May I?

Mother, May I?

July 12, 2010

I would like to believe that every child has at least one happy memory of their mother. Yet in a world such as ours, that is not always the case. Mothers are—as they have always been but are especially now—something precious to cherish. Not all of us, however, can agree with that statement now, if ever.

When I was about four years old I loved my mother as any happy child should. My mother was someone who was fun, silly, attentive, joyful, trustworthy, and caring. I have many memories of her playing, laughing, joking, and simply being with me. Memories of her and I singing together into the tape recorder, of her and I playing dolls and cars together. I cherish every young memory I have of her, because those once happy memories turned into frightening nightmares after I matured into adolescence.

Now, most mothers and daughters struggle when the girl starts to become a young lady. I wish that the troubles between my mother and I were that simple. Being Italian has long known to be synonymous with having a large family. Large families can often mean a lot of joy intermingled with a lot of sorrows. My set of sorrows started when I was eight. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that my sorrows were my mother's second wave of sorrows. Perhaps if I had understood that as a child, things would have been different, but I doubt it.

My Grandfather passed away when I was eight. I was a little sad, but I don't think I fully understood the issue. I knew Grandpa was dead and in heaven. So? I didn't comprehend everyone's sadness. A few years later, when I was eleven, my Grandmother passed away one week before my birthday. I was very upset. Unlike my Grandfather, I was able to mourn my Grandmother. My mom, her, and I spent a lot of time together. I was able to get to know my Grandmother a bit before she passed, and so I was much more aware of the emotion tied to death. I enjoyed her, and was sad to see her go. Yet my sorrow didn't have half the effect on me as it did on my mother.

Having lost both of her parents in the course of only a few years, I noticed my mom starting to change. The stress of mourning in addition to the stress of having my oldest brother join the Marines in a time of war, I imagine, were simply too much for her. My mother became colder and colder as the years passed. She became nothing short of a monster.

My mother and father's marriage has been rocky since I can remember. After my Grandparents died, everything escalated. My parents would scream at each other every night. I heard every word, and wished I could magically go deaf. For a while, I was haunted by a reoccurring nightmare. In the dream I would see my mother raise a knife high with both hands, and then swiftly plunge it between my father's shoulder blades. He would fall to his knees, and consequently, to his death. She would turn, the knife dripping with my father's blood, and with gun in hand, I shot her. The dream kept reoccurring and every time I would wake up drenched in a cold sweat, my face and pillow soaked with tears. It wasn't until I wrote out the dream in the form of poetry that it finally went away. I wanted to tell someone, but I didn't want to be taken away or thrown into a psychiatric hospital. My family may have been unstable, but I didn't want to be taken away and forced to live with strangers. I stayed silent in fear, but these types of dreams kept happening.

I prayed every night that each fight would be the last, that this would be it and that they would get a divorce. My prayer was never answered like I'd hoped it would be. They stayed together [somehow], and it never stopped. The worst part about it—hearing the words my mother said to my father.

Everyone has their fair share of faults. Everyone has room to grow. My father was definitely not a perfect man and not even a perfect father. He was a good father, but far from perfect. Yet even with those imperfections, I latched onto him when he and my mother would fight. Her words were cunning, spiteful, vindictive, demeaning, hurtful, and cold. They were bitter from her past, and of their past together. I've never heard words that wounded so deeply until or since then. What she didn't understand was that the wounds she gave to him pierced me too, and left life-long scars. I began to resent my mother for what she did to him, for the awful, terrible things that she said, and for those wounds she gave. After a while, I hated my mother. My life had become a very dark place.

My mother's hatred towards my father had a very large effect on me. Having my own share of struggles with friends and school as a child, I became extremely self-conscious. I became defensive and threatening with my words so that people would not hurt me emotionally. I used words in place of violence. I was depressed, and took it out on the ones who teased me. I was rough on the outside, tough on the inside, but I was forever broken and searching. I tried anorexia, but after a couple days I stopped. I had almost fallen down three flights of stairs at school from the weakness of not eating. I became suicidal and violent. I wanted her dead. I wanted to die. I started cutting and then cold-burning the wound using salt and ice so that it would scar. I had only cut three times by the grace of God, after which I started writing. I was journaling at first, which turned to poetry. After only a few instances of writing I learned how beneficial it was to write out my feelings. So, I wrote constantly. I hated my life, I hated my mother, and I hated myself. But I loved my father, and I sought to protect him.

I can't explain the sorrow felt in hating someone. I forever remembered the mother of my early childhood. I forever wanted that mother to come back. Year after year, she stayed the same. I got good grades in school and stayed out of trouble. I wanted to impress my parents in hopes that they would be better with each other, and in hopes that one day I could go to college, make something of myself, and escape. I was in band as a flute player and worked hard to rise to the top. Not only was I trying to impress my parents in academics and music, I was desperately trying to validate my value through something. I was really bad at sports, but music and school I was very good at. I got attention for it. So I pushed harder and harder. I stayed out of trouble, but I secretly rebelled against my parents' rules. I never did anything really serious, but I got very good at lying, at stretching and omitting the truth. I wanted them to be liberal like my friends' parents were, so I did things my way behind their back.

At school I found a lot of my friends talked about how their mothers and them were best friends. I'd hear their stories, and rush home and end up crying myself to sleep, not even comprehending what it was like to like my mother, let alone trust and love her. I would pray and talk to my grandmother in my prayers, telling her I wanted her back. I wanted it to be like it used to be when I was little and we were happy. My mother was someone I didn't think could ever change.

I was raised to respect people, even though it was hard to do so for my mother. One day my parents' fighting got really bad, and I decided I had had enough. I came downstairs with tears streaming down my face and screamed at her to stop it. I told her how much it was affecting me, how I wanted to kill myself because of her and that she was tearing me apart. With my face two inches away from hers, I broke down all the sorrow she had caused me.

She mocked me.

She made fun of my crying.

I had never hated her more in my life.

I wanted to beat her bloody. Maybe not kill her, but I wanted to beat her bloody and broken so that she knew what it felt like. It is a hard fact to admit, but I wanted to hurt my mother. Never have I been filled with so much rage that I literally wanted to hurt someone. I wanted to hit her until I couldn't feel my hands anymore. But, out of respect for her title, I clenched my fists, stormed out of the house and went for a walk to cool down. As I started out, I stumbled and fell. My knees had given out. Huffing, heart racing, and frustrated, I got back up. A few paces later, I stumbled again. Something was not right, so I started back home, annoyed. As I walked home I started to feel very sleepy and distant, like the world was fading. I got into my house and tried to tell my parents that something was wrong. My dad acknowledged me after my second plea, and my mother finally came to see what was wrong after he had yelled at her that I wasn't kidding. My hands and fingers started to cramp and clenched up, eventually freezing in an awkward clawed position. I couldn't move any part of my arms except at the shoulder. I got very frightened and started to feel faint. We called the ambulance as I went to lye down. The paramedics came. Apparently I was having an anxiety attack and was hyperventilating. They kept me talking to keep me awake. They said if I fainted during it, my body wouldn't breathe like it would normally when someone faints. After they had calmed me down, I was fine.

I had never been so angry in my life and haven't been since. I learned the hard way that not hitting anything or anyone kept the anger inside me and caused ambulance calls. It was a wake up call to keep up writing out my feelings. Writing was a healthy way to de-stress. It was the only way to stay sane.

I continued to rebel against my parents' wishes, until my ultimate rebellion when I had turned 19. I finally had had enough of their rules and their protectiveness. I was sick of their unreasonable limitations and I was not going to put up with it any longer. For three years before that until then I had wanted a tattoo. I told my parents multiple times during those few years that one day I wanted to get a tattoo. They shrugged it off and told me it was a faze. Three years later, I still wanted one. My best friend and I decided we wanted to get matching tattoos before she left for Afghanistan. My dad told me no. I said OK, and went out. It was common for me to go out for a drive when I was bored. So later that afternoon I decided to leave. He asked me where I was going. I said “out”. He asked when I'd be back. I told him I didn't know. I came home with a tattoo on my foot, smiling at him as I walked in. He looked at me and simply stated, “You got a tattoo, didn't you?” I replied, “Yep!” with a prideful grin on my face. “Does it hurt?” “Uh,” (eyes roll) “yeah, it's a tattoo!” He nodded his head and smirked, and replied with a pleased, “GOOD!”. That was pretty much the extent of what he said about it. He didn't kill me, however, like I thought he would. After that I told them that I was going to make my own curfew. I told them I would do what I wanted, go out when I wanted, come back when I wanted, but that I would respect them enough to tell them where I was going and how late/if I would be back. I found a lot of freedom that summer. My parents started to respect me as an adult, and I started to respect them. It wasn't long after that I started to actually like my parents. My mom and I didn't fight as much. We actually started to get along. But I still wasn't healed, and neither was she.

My mother started to open up as I got older. She shared with me some of the many awful things that happened in her past. I started to understand her brokenness, but it didn't change how I felt. Though she read her Bible every day diligently, I felt like she never followed it in her actions. I pointed out her flaws mentally and couldn't take her seriously because she was a total hypocrite. She eventually started seeing a counselor at our church. Couples from the church volunteered to be counselors, and she decided to go see them. Her and my father, though mostly just she, went to them to help get rid of their past hurts, which they had enough of for a whole room full of people. They both hated going, and eventually stopped. I was disappointed because I knew it was what she (and I for that matter) needed. But even though she stopped going, I began to notice a change in her. After some time went by, she became more and more like the Mom I had cherished from my childhood and the Mom I always hoped would come back. She became softer, kinder, more understanding. She started to be nice and actually care for me. Her and I started to become friends. Something I never thought could happen started to happen. She changed, and our relationship slowly started to heal.

One day we went on a drive and just talked. It became regular for us since we started our friendship. Even though we were doing well, I had been hiding my emotional scars I received from her away from her because I knew it would devastate her. But, I knew that we couldn't progress until I was fully open and honest. I asked her to pull over, and proceeded to tell her how she had hurt me through her words to my father. I told her how I felt neglected and ignored because of her anger and brokenness. I told her that I had cut and had wanted to kill myself in part because of her. She was in disbelief. She didn't even realize what she had done and couldn't remember most of it. She broke down in tears and mourned in how sorry she was and how she prayed I could forgive her someday.

I did.

Since then, my mother and I have become very close. My parents' marriage is still fighting between rocky and disastrous, but it's better than it used to be. I love my parents very dearly and count them among my closest friends. The best thing is that I finally know what it is like to have my mother be one of my best friends. I know now how beautiful the name “Mother” is. Though it took great sorrow to unleash that beauty, I cannot do anything but cherish the struggle, because if we would never had struggled, we would never know the joy that comes in the morning after the darkest of nights. If I had never been in sorrow, I would never have learned God's ultimate plans, power, and deliverance that He holds for my life. I would never have become friends with my mother. I would never have had something to smile at with honor when people say, “You're just like your mother!”. Now I can thankfully say, “Thank you,” as I smile and pridefully respond, “yes, I am!”.

To You, Momma, With Love,

Serenity.