Resignation

I’ve been watching my 13-year-old daughter transition from a pre-teen confused about the world and anxious to begin new things to a young adult with a plan. She wakes up every morning at 7:30—even though school doesn’t start until 9:30—and brushes her teeth, washes her face, gets dressed, eats breakfast, and makes her way to her desk for virtual school. She does all of this while I sleep. Somewhere, in the middle of a pandemic, she found a way to be accountable and not let her isolation and days that never seem to end change the course of the path she would have been on otherwise.

I’ve been watching this from the sidelines—from my desk while working 16-hour days. I didn’t realize it until this morning, but I envy her. She has something that I lost these past few years. She has motivation. I might not know what that motivation is, but it’s there. She has recently started getting herself ready for bed well before she needs to because she has found through extensive observation and experiment that she feels “terrible” when she goes to bed late and wakes up late.

I, on the other hand, find myself crawling into bed around 2 a.m. after working nonstop (I call myself the machine, but I need a cleverer name), cooking dinner when my husband can’t, loading the dishwasher, folding the laundry, answering emails, making appointments, watching a tiny bit of TV with my husband, and trying to find a few minutes in the middle of all of it to make house and yard repairs. (We bought a time capsule house—virgin everything from 1969 except a few appliances that were upgraded in the early ‘80s. It’s exhausting but thrilling.)

In that list I just made, I didn’t mention anything that I do for my well-being. Aside from the occasional TV show, I really just check off boxes and make sure everyone has made it through the day with minimal inconvenience—all while being terribly inconvenienced. Motherhood is a selfless state of being. But it doesn’t have to be every single fucking day.

This morning, I finally identified the word that describes the state in which I’ve been living: resignation. I have resigned myself to bloodletting my empathic state like an 18th-century cure-all for disease.

I’m a naturalist—a humanist who sees the value in what the planet has given us—and my sole purpose for living is to ensure my children’s footprint is light and gentle but inspires the human race to endure. But I’m also cursed with a strong tendency to internalize my loved ones’ feelings and make them my own. Some would label me an empath, which sounds like something you claim when you’re 15 and you’ve just discovered astrology and swear that your sign dictates your future and completely defines you. But my therapist and I have broken it down into scientific terms to normalize my general state of being. I am what some would call “a highly sensitive individual.” Somehow, I manage to focus on others’ needs and feelings and can completely set aside my own.

I’ve considered it a strength, especially given where my choices have taken me. I cared for my dying mother for years, rescued every animal I could, nurtured a man returning from war, birthed and raised two children, and remarried, this time to a man who needed my support just as much as everyone before him.

The past 20 years have felt like a day on a 1980s playground. I climbed the tall steps of the slide, bitching all the way up about how hard and steep it was, and slid down the solar-ignited metal, burning my skin but screaming about the thrill all the way down. I did this over and over, and usually the climb up wasn’t a choice but a necessity to propel all of us away from poverty and depression.

I look back on my time on the actual playground of my childhood with fond memories. It was a wild and dangerous place back then with few safety measures in place. It gave me the freedom to test the limits, which sometimes ended in a sprained ankle or getting the wind knocked out of me after dropping from the monkey bars. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been able to carry on as long as I have without losing my shit.

Well, I’ve lost my shit.

My therapist has been going through my cognitive distortions with me, and we have located many sources of anxiety that I really wasn’t aware I actually had. I mean, do you—the one reading this—realize I have an anxiety disorder? I suppose it’s typical for highly sensitive individuals to suffer from anxiety as we don’t really know what to do with the weight we carry as there’s nowhere to dump it without perpetuating the litter.

I’ve eaten too much food, drank too much wine, stayed up entirely too late—all things most of us have been doing while trying to survive this pandemic. But I didn’t do them by choice. At least that’s what I told myself. I felt like a victim of circumstance and a product of generations of hardworking descendants of immigrants who never became successful enough to pass on anything but recipes and love. Living with resentment has been my albatross most of my adult life. I have tried to demolish any thoughts of self-pity with a gratitude approach—grateful that I don’t have to suffer racism like so many of my friends, grateful that I have a college degree and can sit at my cozy desk for work, grateful that I’ve never lost a child…the list goes on.

My therapist told me last week to consider reinstating my gratitude practices. When I lived in South Carolina in 2012, I began writing weekly gratitude emails to a handful of friends. I picked something I was grateful for that week, even if it was just a good night’s sleep, and elaborated on it. It really put me in a positive place where I could focus more on what I could do with my day, rather than what my day would do to me. It was a nice place to be. Maybe I’ll do it again. Any takers?

I keep my private life pretty private, despite everything else about me being an open book. My kids are now disgusted by my exhibitionist tendencies, even though I taught them to love their bodies and to be comfortable in their skin. Now I realize they don’t have to be comfortable looking at my skin. I used to walk around the house with no clothes on after a shower, preaching about how all the women in my family peed with the bathroom door open and didn’t care who saw them do what with their bodies. It’s a liberating way to live, but I realize not everyone has the ability to feel so free. I nurture my gray hairs and regularly inspect the wrinkles on my face, wondering which intense day of sunshine and glory caused each one.

How can I love myself—my body—so fiercely and not love my mind with the same vigor? This is the challenge I am tackling in therapy. She asked me last week if I felt shame about anything in my past or present. I struggled to find something and couldn’t. Every choice I made contributed to each positive thing in my life right now. But that doesn’t mean that I’m stable and healthy.

I don’t know why more people don’t seek therapy. The things I’ve learned in the past 3 months have completely changed me. They have tested my romantic relationship, changing the rules of that game and illuminating the cracks that need mending. Now I try to steer myself away from codependence and needing to fix everything and everyone so badly. My therapist said, “If something happens in any of your relationships that drives them to end, will you be okay on the other side of it?” “Yes—yes, I would,” I said. Strangely, that makes it easier to sit in complications and let them work themselves out.

My progress has also helped me take a step back from my children and let them fail, make bad decisions, struggle, and slowly transition to a new way of living with a parent who doesn’t rely on her empathic weight to carry them across paths of burning rocks anymore.

Sometimes all of this self-discovery happens a little too quickly. I become overwhelmed or step too far away from responsibility so that I require very little accountability, especially from my romantic partner. I’m learning to balance my strengths with my weaknesses. And I’m handing over my resignation, trading it in for a bit of accountability for my own happiness. I might fail, and that’s okay.

I have a deep fear of death because I do not believe in an afterlife or anything remotely resembling any form of consciousness or soul after my heart stops. Can you imagine nothing? No, you can’t. And that’s terrifying. I thought I was living like each day could end that way, so I was making the best of it. But I wasn’t. So here I go.

Our First Five Seconds

A predictable phenomenon expelled you from the womb, and you were placed on my chest before I could bring my arms up to catch you. The universe had done the math and solved the equation to fit your round head into my cubital fossa. I already knew what you looked like—as if we had done this before in another time or dimension. The fluorescent assault kept your eyes closed but I waited for them to open. Will they be blue? Brown? Your face, a deflated purple balloon, slowly pinkened and grew to suit gravity. Around me machines shrieked, jubilantly shouting, “You’re alive!” The feminine gushes of enthusiasm poured out from all over the room while beneath my legs the business of restoring my fertility began.

It wasn’t like they said it would be, the other mothers. I was told a feeling—one they couldn’t quite explain—would overwhelm me once you were brought to me. But it didn’t happen that way. I should have known it would be like this for me. The off switch my trauma impregnated at age four was triggered. The signals were always delayed, held hostage by the invisible anxiety that my gut flora delivered to my brain in its own time.

But your smell was familiar. Your cells called out to my cells—a warning signal that soon they would be severed. I looked away from your eyes to observe the fantastic execution of the process and wondered why you didn’t scream in response to this violent kidnapping from your dwelling. Maybe your inherited trauma package included an off switch, too. I looked up to your father and saw his strong, sobbing face and, still, I didn’t feel the jolt I had been told would declare me a mother. I asked my body to bypass the off switch just this once.

Somewhere in the chasm of the hospital room I heard an instruction: “Place her on your breast and see if she will latch.” My elbow dropping slowly, your head slid down to where you had already been targeting, and you latched. Somehow it all functioned exactly as it was supposed to despite my indifference. The parallel reservoirs of my lips accepted the salty influx, and I licked away the proof that I did love you.

I'm Not Saying Me Too

Composed in 2019 and sat on until 2021.

Trigger warning: This contains material about sexual abuse, childhood trauma, and the Me Too movement.

Last night at his bedtime, I kissed my 13-year-old son on the head, holding myself there for about 5 seconds so I could smell his scent. It took me back to when he was six months old and clung to me to nurse, and all I could smell was his head.

When I backed away, I saw a look of annoyance on his face and asked, "Does it annoy you when I kiss your forehead like that?"

He nodded.

I said, "Please tell me if you don't want my affection. I know you're getting older and might start asking me to not dwell on my goodnight kisses...or even give them at all. And that's okay. Always tell people when you don't want them to touch you."

We transitioned to an age where he might not want me to show him as much affection, especially since he already struggles with affection due to his Asperger's diagnosis. It was a turning point for me. But it also triggered my trauma.

The Me Too movement is necessary. It has changed the landscape for individuals who have been sexually abused. There's a website, a hashtag, a support system, and a public voice in the media. People who have held in their pain for years have finally come forward.

When I first heard about Me Too, I thought, Finally, someone has said something. It was only after reading articles and hearing stories that it hit me—I am also part of this group. The delay didn't come because of denial or because I had blocked out my abuse...but because I had never considered it something I needed to confess or seek retribution for as an adult. It was something that happened to me. I told someone. I processed it. I moved on. I definitely acted in ways that weren't beneficial to me as a result, but I learned and am still learning. I was one of the lucky ones.

Sometime around 1991, my secret came out and it was "handled." Decisions were made. I grew up. I write all of that in the passive voice purposely—to protect my family.

I was sexually abused as a child. Before I turned 13, I experienced that abuse at the hands of an adult male family member, not related by blood, who was sick and didn't realize—even after the fact—that he did something wrong. It likely began when I was about 4 years old, but that's as far back as I can remember. He was an adult with his own family, and for the sake of that family, he was not charged with a crime. This decision was made by adults at a time when this type of activity was kept quiet for the sake of reputation or because a handful of lives would fall apart if we pursued legal action. I also agreed to it because I just wanted to move on. I didn't want the attention, no matter how much justice would be achieved. As a compromise, he received psychological treatment (I don't remember how much or for how long), and I never visited his home again until my grandmother was dying and then again after he died. At least I don't remember if I did. Maybe that's something I did block out. He had done this to others, too, even adults. The general consensus was that he was "creepy."

I lost part of my family. At least the connection with them. I lost family dinners, holiday visits, and a bond with those I held dearest to me. I managed to squeeze in a few visits with some by having them visit me, but that didn't last long. I don't know what happened in the years following my exodus, aside from what I heard secondhand and learned through letters. I never rekindled those formative relationships that could have contributed to a life replete with family dinners and spending time with people who just knew me.

I could have pressed charges, put him in jail, and watched his family struggle financially and forever hold me "at fault" for disrupting the family dynamic. Twelve-year-old me preferred to quietly walk away because at least they all knew. They knew what he was. His children were grown. It was their decision whether they would maintain a relationship with him and whether their children would as well. Perhaps their Christian virtue of forgiveness helped them to do so. Who knows—maybe his treatment reformed him.

Some of my family members had also suffered similar traumas when they were young and had triumphed over them as best they could. I had examples of how to process and move on. Looking back, I think I might have done things differently to protect anyone else he might encounter. But he was a homebody, and everyone else in our family knew what he did. I will forever feel guilty about not being brave enough to speak up for justice back then. But I've accepted that what I did was brave, and that's all I could do at the time.

After the talk with Social Services and the subsequent loneliness I experienced, I started smoking cigarettes, having sex at a younger-than-normal age, and seeking attention wherever I could get it (the latter part I know in hindsight). I bet that explains things for a lot of you who knew me then. I started relationships in high school with extreme passion and then extinguished them carefully out of guilt. I apologize to anyone I took advantage of or who was hurt by my actions.

Who knows if I would have done all of those things anyway as a way to explore my individuality and sexuality during a time when our culture told us to be different, be creative, and be strong. After all, high school girls were wearing baggy T-shirts with flannels and baggy jeans, and boys thought that was attractive. My friends and I were so far removed from the need to use our bodies to attract men. We used our words, our actions, and our connections to explore new feelings. I often took that a step further when allowed because I considered myself a passionate person. I guess I still do.

Thank goodness for the 1990s. If I had come out of my abuse into a generation of women who wore mini skirts and tube tops to attract men and took nude selfies that sometimes were maliciously distributed elsewhere, I might have gone down a different path. But I was supported by good friends and a community that emphasized inclusiveness and individuality. I know I told some of my friends about my abuse, and that's probably what helped me process things so early and provided a foundation for acceptance.

Then my grandmother died. My mom died shortly after, and I married pretty much right away. I had children and watched them grow without ever letting a man come close to them that I didn't extremely trust. I taught them to speak up and say what they feel—and to never accept affection when they didn't want it. Hopefully, I'm raising two individuals who will never experience what I experienced and will never have to consider themselves part of a movement that vocalizes their trauma. But when my son didn't push my affection away last night, I wondered how good of a job I'm doing. Have I become so complacent to where my confidence and expression have given them the impression that anything is okay? Or did he just simply not want to hurt his mom's feelings?

When I was a teenager, I used to change clothes in front of my friends (even males) with the blinds open in the dark and my lights on. I'm sure people could see me from the street, but I didn't care. Most of my friends were male and they rarely looked when I did those things. Who knows—maybe I made them uncomfortable. I wasn't embarrassed about my body, although I did have the normal teenage self-esteem issues regarding my acne and small breasts. My husband jokingly calls me an exhibitionist because I wouldn't wear clothes if I didn't have to. I've had to adapt my habits to fit my children's level of comfort because, unlike me, they both became uncomfortable with me changing in front of them as they got older. My mom, sister, niece, and I regularly changed in front of each other and other people. It was just how I grew up.

Looking back, I can now see where my identity drastically changed. Before I told my family about my sexual abuse, I was insecure, I tried everything to fit in, I got contacts at 12 so I wasn't "four eyes," and I fell in love with every boy at the playground. A while after I came clean, I faced the world with intense spirit and felt free of the burden—the secret—that put me in the shadows without any reason to feel like I belonged there. Why did I feel like I needed to come clean? What did I do? Nothing. It's like my secret was this blockage in my brain that wouldn't let me evolve. Once the secret wasn't a secret anymore, I felt free. I didn't have to choose a different room to sit in to avoid abuse. I didn't have to experience mixed feelings about spending time with family.

I've been learning over the years to love myself in spite of my flaws and to disregard anyone's views of me that aren't supportive of that approach. Now, at 40, I'm watching women unleash a lifetime of darkness and learning how to heal through being outspoken about their trauma. Those women are admirable, and it took a few brave souls to inspire the thousands (millions?) who have come forward so far. I'm proud of them. I'm happy that they're finally seeking their justice and that they've found a platform to do so.

But I'm not going to say "me too" on social media. It's my choice to openly condemn my abuser by name or to keep it to myself. After all, he's dead. Perhaps some of that is guilt for what my family might endure—or pity, really. My "me too" moment happened when my family member intuitively asked if I was being sexually abused...because she was too. I told her yes. We told our families. Our lives changed forever. We grieved. I grew. And here I am, telling you my story because I had written it a hundred times and never shared it with anyone other than a select few and one day at a college poetry reading.

I want my children to one day see this and know that it's okay to deal with trauma—no matter what kind—in the way they feel comfortable handling it. They don't have to join a movement. They can tell a few close friends and heal over time, like I did, if they want to. (Or they can write a blog post about not following a movement while actively participating in one while doing so. 😳 ) What's most important is that they learn from me how to be strong and advocate for themselves so they never have to decide whether to say "Me too."

Returning

In 2013, I started this blog. God, I was so young, naïve, and full of hope. Since then, I've raised my children to teens, got divorced, got married again, bought a house, relocated back to my home state of Maryland, and worked my ass off to the point that I stopped having time for writing. I found myself writing long-winded Facebook posts about this or that political/social/nostalgic moment, and I figured I should put it all in one place, even if it's only for my kids to see. So forget everything you read here back in 2013 because it's most likely not applicable to who I am now. But it built me. And it's a bit funny that I mentioned a hypothetical plague to provide perspective about material things. I promise, I didn't jinx us. Or maybe I did?