Dear Mama

Dear Mama,

I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve agreed about anything important. I’ve felt your worry for me more than any other sentiment. More than judgment, more than pride, more than companionship. I’ve come to realize that worry, to you, is an instrument of love. Staying awake at night, waiting for me to get home. Texting and calling with frantic questions about my life choices. Demanding my sisters and friends to promise they will look out for me, the disobedient one.

This system of worry as a function of love worked for such a long time. I learned how to mutate those harsh, frenzied conversations into the hugs and warm words I so desperately craved.

But then, one day, your teenage troublemaker peed on a stick and everything changed.

I was about to leave the nest and attend college. The summer had seemed so bright and full of positive change. I had made several adult decisions pretending I was ready for the world, but it wasn’t until I saw those pink lines that I grew up.

I remember wanting to run away from my own body. I felt betrayed by my own flesh. I had been safe, I had considered this consequence, I had worried about this happening the way you taught me to worry.

I wanted to tell you. But in that moment, I didn’t need more worry. I needed support. The kind of raw empathy that makes you question whose life is whose. I dreamed about hearing you say “whatever you decide, I love you.” I fantasized about what it might feel like to have you listen to me. To hear me cry through the loss of my childhood. I wondered how it would feel for a conversation to be about me, and not about your anxieties.

But I couldn’t get that from you.

I knew almost immediately that I wanted an abortion. That shameful, horrifying deed that I had only ever heard you talk about in whispered disgust.

I made assumptions about what you would think about me if I ever told you. Would you ever speak to me again? Would you ever trust my decision making abilities? Would you ever be proud of me?

It cost me the 600 dollars that I had saved to buy cute dorm room accessories and a backpack to walk around campus with. The ripple effects of one decision, one risk, one accident.

I took the pills from a friendly red-cheeked nurse who reminded me of Grandma Jewel. She asked me over and over again if I was sure. If anyone was pressuring me. If I knew about my other options. Yes, no, yes. There was an ultrasound and I still have the printed picture of that small gray spec. I don’t know why I kept it.

The night was long. I was in so much pain and all I could eat were mashed potatoes. I pretended it was period cramps so you would plug in the tattered blue heating pad you kept in your closet.

It was a graphic, unpleasant experience, but I remember waking up the next morning relieved. And then guilty that I was so relieved. I also remember seeing you and wanting to cry.

I don’t blame you. The softness of being with someone in their pain is more difficult to manage than the simplicity of letting your anxiety run wild near their pain. In my three decades of life, I’ve learned how hard loving someone can be.

And I know that it comforts you, in some strange way, to spend your nights thinking through what-ifs and other unsolvable problems. To think through the questions that no one else is trying to answer.

So, I grew up without you. I left your concern behind and made the frightening decision to terminate a pregnancy. I was scared and lonely and your worry couldn’t comfort me. I was embarrassed and sick and your worry couldn’t heal me. I learned to hate myself, and your worry couldn’t soothe me.

I hated getting an abortion. I hated making that decision alone. I hated the politics and religion that swirled around the topic and haunted my sleep for months. I still hate those things. But I no longer hate myself.

The healing has happened over the last 12 years. It has been work. Therapy and late nights with friends and sharing experiences with other women. It’s not a secret anymore, but I’ve never told you.

I love you. But I’ve never told you.