My mother

My relationship with my mother

My mother's family is very conservative and to put it frankly, stiff. She considers her relatives "independent" but this is incredible denial of how lonely she feels and how disconnected they have always been. She has convinced herself that they don't need one another and that's why they don't connect much, as if it is strength, a lack of weakness that causes their distance. In truth, nobody in her family is happy. They may survive on their own, they may be independent by force of culture and lack of choice but they certainly are not thriving in their methods. 

Around the age of fourteen, when my mother was in her mid-forties, I noticed my mother behaving unpredictably. It wasn't until my early twenties that I understood she had likely slipped into some sort of mania, emotional illness and instability descending from long-term depression. It wasn't until her late fifties that she finally was diagnosed with depression, and had to take time off from work, which means it was really bad. She finally had broken down, but she was depressed long before. At least for twenty years, if not more. 

My mother's version of the story about how she met her husband and my biological father is that he met her, they briefly dated, and then he showed up one day outside her parents' house, drunk and rambling about how he would not leave until she agreed to marry him. As unideal as this was, her parents were keen to marry her off and get her out of the house simply because they believed that is what should happen. Their kids should grow up, accept the first offer of marriage, have children and raise them until death. Very conventional narrative, and this was the peak of their expectations I imagine. 

Despite her lack of interest, and abundant doubts, she followed the lack of faith her parents had for her by also dropping her standards for a brighter future or accomplishing anything more, and she married. She moved with him to a war-torn and oppressive country where he worked as an army general and they settled. 

Amidst the war, she had three children, two boys and lastly a girl. By this point she was surely already in depression. She raised them whilst working full time, with minimal assistance from her husband's family members until the third child was a few years old.

At this point, they moved to a western country where her eldest son would not be forced into army duty on the frontline of a country that is consistently in conflict. This was one good choice she made. 

Marrying into an unhappy life, she considered her children a burden, a reason she felt trapped and had to stay in the marriage which made her miserable and destroyed all chances of a better life. She considered her children, including me, to the result of a mistake. One made on a whim which she could not take back, could not walk away from and could only live with everyday looking at the reminder of constant regret. 

She may have always been sad for as long as I remember her, but once she began losing her mind further, she was also scary and lost. At age fourteen I felt I lost my mother, she was no longer the same. At least before this, she was docile and kind of nurturing despite her inability to show joy. She tried to show affected. She cared. After her mental decline she felt cold, dismissive, apathetic and increasingly cruel and punishing.

Between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, before I finally left, these two years leading up to my final escape were hell for me. The only person I had in the entire world who I felt connected to had disappeared and remaining was this shell of her who had a totally different look in her eyes. One which did not love me. One which felt empty. One which condemned me for existing and screamed at me daily to kill myself and unburden her of my existence. 

For these two years, almost daily she would yell at me telling me that she wishes she would walk into my bedroom one day and see me hanging from the ceiling. That she would feel relieved that she was free of the burden I am. She also cursed me and told me she wishes "God" would cut off my hands and legs in order to show me how much pain I cause her. I had no idea what she was talking about. I could not even comprehend the feelings. I could not process the degree of pain she was causing me. I could not figure out what I was doing to make her hate me so much. In fact, I was doing nothing at all. I was retreating further and further into a shell, into a hole, trying to hide and not be seen so that I would not awaken or trigger this sick part of her. 

Within minutes of her outbursts, after which I'd have run away to my bedroom to hide under my bed sheets, she would fling my bedroom door open without asking, walk in as if nothing had happened and invite me to go to lunch with her with a casual tone. I could not understand what was happening, but being desperate, feeling alone and being scared, I would simply submit to this "invitation" which felt more of a demand and threat that I had to answer "yes" to or else face more punishment and cruelty. 

I was subjected to this insanity and emotional abuse, which was the lighter side of the psychological torture I experienced from others, including my father, my brothers, and worst of all, the "mean girls" at my high-school, for two intensive years before I finally escaped this hell, only to enter a new one. One where I slept on the streets, my only friends were crack cocaine and heroin addicts and their dealers, and I continued to endure a masochistic programming in any relationship I tried to build whilst only capable of relating to narcissistic people reflecting my mother and father's personalities and retraumatizing me. 

To be continued...