Dear Sweetness,
If I was asked to describe the challenges I have had being a mother I would use just one word. Separation. We have been separating since you were just 3 years old. Struggling through transitions, you traveling back and forth between two homes that were in constant conflict. First every other weekend and holidays, then a full week each month, every school break, and summers. Always coming and going, never staying. So much time spent waiting, the date on the calendar marked with our next separation always breathing down our necks. Trying when we were reunited again to seal any cracks that had formed while we were apart.
Maybe the word separation is so fitting for us because our mother daughter relationship did not start with us joined in one body. We started out separate. We were put together by a choice, our union created by separating you from the body you grew in. And now we are separate again, more permanently now. Repairing our cracks is not the goal anymore.
I thought I was doing a good job of moving forward, separating what remained, to build a new life from the old one. Like carefully separating an egg, balancing the two halves of its shell, pouring the contents back and forth until only the yolk was left, its translucent goopy counterpart left in the bowl below. The shells then thrown away, the yolk and white meant to exist on their own.
I thought I was ok with all of this. And by ok I mean no longer being driven completely fucking insane every moment by my obsessive thoughts about how we ended up here. There are still frequent moments when my grief catches me off guard. Similar to walking through our kitchen unaware that our dog, R.B.G., has taken a drink of water from her bowl, her slobbery jowls dripping onto the white tile floor creating invisible pools of water waiting for me to step in. And like the thousand times before, I walk through the kitchen confidently, zoned out, completely unaware of the hazards, my body remembering the path. Then my footing is gone, my feet no longer planted to the earth. A reminder that when on autopilot shit can still happen.
The water, much like grief, always wins. Memories still stab at the heart. Reminders of a you long gone. It can be a very natural progression, that a child grows up and parents aren’t needed in the same ways anymore. Parents that hold onto images of a child that no longer exists.
But I grapple with the present you. A you that has moved away at thirteen and does not text or call for various reasons your step dad and I still argue about. My wanting to forever believe that it is a blend of the consequence of surviving in a house full of narcissists mixed with you being a teenager. Your step dad, wanting to save my fragile heart from completely shattering, wants me to give up the ghost. Assume total assimilation. Accept there is nothing to hold out hope for.
I think I know better because I am your mother, programmed from your birth to suss out the truth. I believe it is hard for you to call me because you know that I know you are pretending for them. You might feel shame about how you have to operate to survive, putting us all in the background to gain their affection. You fear looking at my face, a face that can read through the bubbly perfection you have claimed as the new you, as thriving. I know this because I have been there.
Just yesterday on my therapist’s couch I tried to explain the differences between you and I. How you would look to her if she met you and didn’t know you vs. how I would have looked to her when I was thirteen. Both of us surviving narcissist fathers but you doing such a shinier job of it. I got straight A’s, I practiced my violin four hours a day, I broke a record in track for triple jump, but I didn’t look like you. I wasn’t popular. I was an outcast, a weirdo, a freak. You do everything I did and more. You wear the right clothes, you have the right hair, you have friends dripping off you in every direction. So maybe this is a tell. Maybe you aren’t actually pretending?
First my therapist told me not to gaslight myself. Then she had me repeat my accomplishments at thirteen so I could connect the dots from what I did to what you are doing now. She had to flash the obvious to me like a neon sign. When a child uses perfectionism to please a narcissist parent, they tailor the perfectionism to that parent. And you my dear have two of them. Each with their own flavor.
Seeing that popularity and image hold the most value for your other parents, you have added it to the top of your list. Beauty over books, sports over grades, friends over family, likeability above individuality. In my house growing up, popularity, clothes and fitting in equated to vanity which was an obvious sin. So instead I shaved my head making sure I would never become a sinner. At least in that way.
I know why you don’t call me. I wouldn’t call me either. It’s hard to keep up the charade when you have someone always watching who can see right through the bullshit. But when you call, I am not judging you, I am in awe of you. You are doing what you need to do to survive. I believe you. I trust you. I just hope you are able to remove the hard candy shell sooner than I did and don’t end up spending twenty years of your adult life keeping up appearances.
When you were here over the summer we had a talk about what the outcomes of our situation could be. Mostly it was a discussion about the fear you had that your brother wasn’t going to make it at your dad’s house because he has more will than the two of us combined. He continues to refuse to assimilate and twist himself into something he is not just for survival. Instead he fights.
The most unlikely ending to our situation is that you both move back. As you pointed out, that would put us right back where we started. Another possibility is that your brother could move back on his own. Also pretty unlikely. Narcissists do not like accepting defeat. Agreeing to let your brother move back here would mean they were wrong about something. Admission of wrongdoing is also not a narcissist thing. Then you brought up those little plastic dots that no one really pushes down on the top of fountain soda lids. The dots that are labeled Diet, Cola, Tea, RB, Other. You said, “Our situation probably ends with other.” I asked you, “What does other mean?” You replied “That’s just it, we don’t know yet.”
Last week I woke up and realized to truly let go I have to actually let you go and not just pretend to but then obsess on the inside where no one else can see. I need to cut all the strings that tie us to the past because they keep me from being the mother you might need me to be in the future. Other is where most of my hope lives now. The imaginary future that I try hard not to spend all my time imagining but instead wait for it to unfold.
When I don’t hear from you I get sucked right back in. I try to tell myself that I don’t really know the present you, but that’s ok because I might get to know the future you if I can keep letting go of the past. The gaslighting would like me to believe I have never really known you at all. That our separations made for a patchy quilt of understanding. That my version of you was only part of your whole self. There is probably some truth to this, but I am your mother. And mother’s have a witchy way of knowing more than anyone wants us to.
So my plan is to give you more space for the both of us to survive. Someday you will read this and be able to tell me if my plan was a stupid one. I am not going to badger you with texts that don't mean anything. I will reserve reaching out for the times I authentically feel like there is something I need to tell you or ask you or congratulate you on. I cannot be the away parent who feigns involvement because let’s be honest I have been completely cut out of your life. I could fight that point but there would be more punishments to dole out.
Let’s take for instance your brother's phone being taken away for “bad behavior”. I could fight it, take your dad to court, maybe win and get more access to your brother. But there would be a consequence. And that consequence would involve your other parents taking away the tiny sliver of comfort your brother gets when the magical window opens and he is given his phone. In that time he uses this phone to video call me and see the dog. Or to text your step dad about how big the pumpkins they grew are getting. Or ask what was in the truck this time when the mansion down the street had sports cars delivered. In order to punish me, they would certainly punish him.
So I don’t fight anymore, I wait for your brother to call. When his face appears on the screen and he tells me he hasn’t had his phone in weeks, I try to fill him up with as much love as possible to comfort him until the magical window opens up again.
Your other parents have been saying for years that I have so much anger about their affair. That I have never gotten over the divorce. They aren’t wrong about the anger, they are wrong about the source. I have spent most of your childhood, post divorce, in a defensive battle of me vs. them for you. I am not angry about their affair, I am still very grateful that it catapulted me out of a very toxic marriage. I am however angry that the two of them weaponized my kids in the bloodiest of custody battles that only ended because I walked away. Moving forward I’d like to remove them from the way I live my life. It’s no longer me vs. them for you, it’s just me for you.
This is going to be my last letter to you for now. Not because I won’t be thinking of you. Not because I won’t be knocking around this old house, still filled with our memories, still haunted by grief. But because this “other”, this me for you living without vs. them requires space. And you deserve to be free to survive without the constant mirror of shame staring back at you. Me being a constant reminder of what you are giving up to pretend to be shiny for them. It’s ok. I am not going anywhere. I will still be climbing over here, hoping to meet you at the top of the mountain someday when “other” has become our imaginary future.
I love you my Sweetness.
Love, Mama