Obligatory Love
Dear PK,
One of the hardest things I’ve had to accept over the years is that you will never be the mother I want and I’ll never be the daughter you want.
Growing up, I was told by you that it was my childhood trauma that prevented me from genuinely bonding with you.
Years after years of therapy, I’ve realized you manipulated me into thinking I was the issue. To your friends, my therapists, anyone who asked you, you painted me out to be an angry, jealous, attention seeking, child who couldn’t form an attachment to you. And it left you in a position where you could only, of course, treat me vastly different then any of your other kids. Even to this very day, you continue to treat me differently than the others.
Recently, I found out that you had your hysterectomy surgery a year after I was adopted. An unfortunate result of having this procedure left you with no estrogen in your system. You became rageful and took it out on your kids. Dad literally told us in front of you,
“she was a monster and would be screaming at you guys all the time. I’d have to sit you guys down and say, you know what mom’s not herself right now, but don’t worry that’ll change soon. Things will get better.”
You even agreed! Responding to him with a “seriously honey, we don’t need to go into that time of my life!”
It all seemed to just click in that moment as memories flooded my head. Especially the time you grabbed me by my hair and dragged me to the mud room closet in front of my friends and shut me in there because I said no to giving up some of my Halloween candy. But sure, maybe I instigated some of the arguments we got into but the lack of respect and love in our relationship wasn’t just a ramification of my childhood trauma. This question dawned on me —
Did you ever stop to ask yourself that maybe our relationship is in shambles because I responded negatively to you lashing out on me after your vasectomy which paved the way to our now superficial shitty relationship?
I doubt it.
The confusing part for me is that there are photos of us, right after I’d been adopted. Where I’m sitting in your lap, I’m hugging you, I’m holding your hand, and I’m smiling. I look happy, which is the opposite of what you’d think a child with attachment issues would look like. To be frank, it looked like I did attach to you.In hindsight, I think about how traumatic it must’ve been to be adopted at a later age and feeling abandoned by my biological mother. Yet, given another chance to have a loving and present mom when you and dad decided to adopt me. To then, a year later, experience you screaming at me and the others on a regular basis and dad having to console us.
Which is why I’m now wondering if that was the reason I attached to Dad — because he was the only one who was willing to stick up for me. Anyway, that’s for another letter.
I’m not saying it’s all your fault — because it wasn’t. I know I was difficult. I can only assume that I felt abandoned again and felt guilty for being an unwanted child. So, I began to feel unlovable and I acted out.
You told me to walk, I ran. You told me to whisper, I screamed at the top of my lungs. I only listened to you when you told me that I was the issue.
Here we are, years later, I’m 24; you’re 63. I feel obligated to love you and that’s about it. At the end of the day, you gave me a shelter over my head, you nourished me back to life, and then some. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a place where I love you because of who you are as a person… because unlike the others, I’ve experienced how manipulative, mean, and self-centered of a person you are.
For now, I’ll continue to bite my tongue when you make a terribly entitled elitist comment. I won’t bring up your alcoholic tendencies and the nasty words that spew out of your mouth when you are drunk. I’ll continue to ignore you when you tell me that’s it’s my fault for this and that, and this and that, and this and that.
The list goes on and on.
But most of all, I most definitely won’t give you the false sense of hope by telling you I love you. Please, stop wasting your breath by saying it to me, because I won’t tell you something I don’t mean.
Your oldest daughter,
Aria C.
