Self care wasn’t always at the forefront of my mind. I was too busy just trying to survive on my own. I suppose you could say that everything I did was an act of self care, because there certainly wasn’t anyone else caring about me and my well-being. This is a sad place to begin this essay but it’s the truth.
The greatest and most profound act of self care I ever performed was the decision to stop engaging with my mother. She had never been a good mother for reasons I’ve never understood but most agree that it just wasn’t in her DNA. The maternal instinct gene just wasn’t, and still isn’t, present within her.
Once, about five years ago, when I was 57 years old, she made an off-the-cuff comment that completely changed the narrative of my entire traumatic childhood. She said that I had chosen to move away from her and my home, at age 11, to go live with my dad. This was absolutely not true on any level at all. She chose to have me move away and go live with my dad and his wife. My mother abandoned me and I was only 11 years old. I was on the cusp of adolescence and my parents were recently divorced and I was at the beginning of the very destructive years of utter depression and anxiety. She chose to abandon me at this time and some 45+ years later, tried to tell me that it was my decision, by my request, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
I was so appalled by her total lack of understanding of what really happened on that day when she sent me away that I simply cut off the conversation at that very moment and didn’t speak to her again for over four years. Literally no contact whatsoever. She tried to reengage with me over the years but I flat out refused. I don’t even know if she knew what she’d done to cause this estrangement and I never spoke to her about it.
After she made that casual comment, I spiraled into a very deep depression, to the point of attempting suicide by overdose of medication. The attempt was unsuccessful, and I remained very depressed and despondent over the next few months. I felt like my whole life had been invalidated and I truly did not want to live. Following a stint in a psychiatric hospital and starting a new cocktail of medications, I pulled myself out of that very dark hole but I continued the estrangement from my mother. I spent the next four years trying to heal and found it very cathartic to not be in touch with her. It was so freeing, such a weight lifted off my shoulders, and I overcame my deep depression even though I remained very sad about the entirety of my life. But I realized that not having my mother in my life was a lifesaving act of self care. I learned that time does not always heal certain wounds and I’ve reconciled to that fact. I know that I will live with the pain caused in my childhood until I die and I’ve peacefully accepted that.
I reached out to my mother after four years because I knew that I was going to see her at my daughter’s wedding and I wanted to break the ice before the actual day. It was awkward and not well received. Naturally she wanted to delve into four years of “why” and what had changed, as she has always been wont to do. I’m not one to do that; I don’t want to relive the past ad nauseam, and I refused to engage with her on that level. Now, after a year of tenuous relations, we still don’t speak often and I find myself still very much not wanting her in my life. She doesn’t like that-she would like a relationship but I just can’t conjure of the feelings necessary to have an ongoing relationship with her. I’m dead inside towards feeling any obligation towards her and I still feel that I was cheated out of a mother in my life. I don’t have the bandwidth to work on repairing the situation. I just continue not engaging with her as much as possible. It’s so sad, but I’ve always been sad so I’m hardened to these feelings and accept that this is just the way it is.
You Just Can’t Make This Shit Up 