((TW:// Mentions of - Sexual Trauma, Substance Abuse, Mental Illness))
Have you ever had a purpose? Maybe it was something you excelled in, or in the very
least were passionate about. Maybe you always knew, and maybe you only discovered it after changing your major in college 5 times. Maybe you only knew what it was the moment you looked into your child’s eyes for the first time. Whatever the case, one’s purpose is the essence of a being. A reason to wake up in the morning, a reason to go on. And fundamentally, it should
be chosen for oneself.
I must’ve been under 10 years old the first time someone told me the reason I was put on
this earth was to take care of my mother. They were always someone my mother talked to with her arm around my shoulder and mother of the year act. A distant relative, a friend, a lot of times strangers she had hours long conversations with in public for no reason but to talk to another human being. And they always said it with a heartfelt smile and well intentions, as if they hadn’t
just told me the only thing I was good for was to drag my mother from the floor to the couch
every night just to do it again the next day. And after hearing it so many times, I believed it.
I had been separated from my mother since February 2017 by the time I spoke to her again. I had been through 2 long term places, and several temporary ones. It was January 2020,
and my life was beginning again… again. I had been living in a shelter as a ward of the state for a month at that point, and according to memory, she had been in jail for close to a year. I had meant to talk to her before then, but convincing both my guardians for permission and myself to go through with it proved too exhausting. I had more important things to do than wasting my time
trying to gain an apology out of her.
My first letter had been sent through my uncle (as I didn’t have the means to get stamps).
I told her how I had lost faith that she was still the person she was in my distant memories of
lullabies and yogurt cups in the morning. I told her how she had to get out of there, and make
something of herself, not just for my sake, but to prove to my little brother that she was someone
worth knowing. Of course, I told her I loved her. Because I did, despite everything.
It had been a month before I got my first response in the form of crumpled letters my
uncle slid to me during our visits. I had been sure to hide them in the side of my undershirt so they wouldn’t fall out during the after-visit pat down. Once dinner was eaten, and lights out was called, I rushed to open them once I was safely away in my room. As soon as I unfolded the sheets of thin lined paper, I could tell immediately that they were indeed written by her. One
could never mistake her scrawl of sloppy cursive. Was it my eyes playing tricks on me, or had it
gotten neater? I cringed at seeing my old name in her greeting, “Dear ____,” no one had called
me that in years. Not since I started going by my middle name because every time I had heard my first, I couldn’t help but hear it being screamed in her voice, and could never ease my racing heart once it started.
She sounded upbeat. She talked about life in jail, how she made friends with some people, and didn’t with others. She talked about how she gained “healthy” weight, hard to imagine for my mother. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her at a healthy weight before. She was always “before surgery ____” close to 300 lbs after my little brother was born, and “after surgery ____” emaciated and stick thin except for the excess skin that fell from her bones like shriveled rose petals.
It was like someone told me I could breathe again. Ever since I’d left her, I’d felt nothing
but guilt for doing so, despite logic telling me I had no reason to.
Who was going to make her
something to eat when she felt sick? Who was going to make sure she could breathe as she slept? And hearing she had gone to jail made it no better. If only I had been there, I could’ve kept her safe. I spent countless nights worrying if she was receiving proper medical care where she was. Was she lonely? Did she hate me?
But after reading her letters and hearing testimonies from my
aunt and uncle about how she almost seemed to be her old self again, I felt my heart settle back
into place after it had been lodged somewhere deep for longer than I knew.
Overjoyed, but trying not to get her hopes up for reunification, I sent a reply filling her in on the time she missed. It felt
intimate, I felt forgiven, and whole again.
In her letters that followed, she told me how she came to find out how I was kicked out of
my Abuelos' house, or as she and everyone else put it, “ran away”.
She talked about being
scared for me, and glad I “turned myself in”. While it stung knowing not even she seemed to be on my side, what came next broke me. She mentioned how I called the police on my step dad a year earlier for what was one of the worst days of my life, but instead of asking if I was okay, or
even asking what happened, she called me a liar. Then recanting, she said even if he did do what
I said, he was “only a man,” and I should forgive him because “men make mistakes.”
I’d expected this from my abuelos, and the rest of my family on my step dad’s side, I’d
tolerated it from my aunt and uncle, but not her.
Was I naive to think she’d choose me over my
step dad, whom she’d been divorced from since I was 8? Was it foolish of me to believe she’d choose me, who had tended to her hand and foot for nearly five tedious years?
Maybe so. I recalled how she always instilled in me “traditional values” of being a housewife and serving a
man because it was my duty as a woman to do everything men said. The line between hatred and love blurred.
In her final letters to come, she tried manipulating me into telling my uncle to send her
more money, which I ignored because I knew she was harassing him enough already.
She wrote me songs, and requested movies to me, making the 3 years of estrangement seem like I was only away at college, expected back come Christmastime.
She talked about getting back together with
my step dad and being reunited with me, and it slowly began to sink in.
I never understood what separated my mother from reality. I’d try to make myself believe she was just in denial, but I knew there was no way it was only an act.
She had been headed down a dark road for a while. Yet I believed in her still. I believed her issues were because of her illness like she always told everyone. I ignored the fact that she took more pills than I’d ever
seen in my life, they were prescribed, I thought, so they must’ve been good for her. But under the fluorescent lights of my 4 by 4 room, I began to realize just how blind my faith was.
While I spent these past 3 years feeling so guilty for leaving her I hated myself, she hadn’t even begun to acknowledge what she’d done.
Even though I hadn’t been taking care of her, even though I wasn’t fulfilling my purpose, I was still here.
I had gotten into college without her. I had had my first kiss, and read Shakespeare without her. I survived homelessness, and
heartbreak, and treachery. And no more could she claim it was all her doing.
She had never been there. She didn’t teach me how to cook, or help me with my homework even when I was living
with her.
I didn’t need her to be a person, and I didn’t need to live her life for her. She put herself
there, and she’d have to get herself out.
With this newfound realization, I began hastily writing my response. I wrote every hurtful word I could think of for every time she’d betrayed me. I told her how I thought she was
crazy, and needed help. That she was sick, and a horrible mother. I told her everything I’d made
of myself despite her. And when I was done, I read it back to myself.
I was satisfied for about a minute before I put the letter down, and thought. Even if she did read it, would it
change anything? I’d said all I’d wanted to say, so why didn’t I feel accomplished in doing so?
I remembered words my mother had said to me a long time ago.
“Don’t forgive others for
them, do it for yourself.”
Was this for me? Telling her how I hate her didn’t make me feel any better. All these years I sat conflicted about what I’d say to her if I had the chance, and now that I had my chance, it meant nothing.
No matter what I said, the past was still going to be what it
was, and my mother was still going to think the way she thought.
It struck me then, that just how I didn’t need my mother for advice, or hugs, I didn’t need her in order to forgive her either. So I said goodbye.
[Original words:// Not forever. Someday, when I feel the time is right, and I’m legally allowed to, I think
I’ll talk to her again. Just to know her, and to let her know me. I’ll show her what I’ve become,
not in spite, but out of pride and respect for the way I’ve handled the lessons she gave me. There
will always be the parts of me she can’t touch, the parts she can’t have back, but one day I’ll
have more than enough to give her, and freely so.]
So for the first time that night, I closed my
eyes, and took a deep breath before speaking out the most important words I’ve ever said.
“I forgive you.”
Now, nearly a year later, I realize the infinince of those words. They must be spoken,
with intention, and like a prayer every night.
A promise for growth, and a path for love to shine
brighter than the pain that has misplaced you.