You’re Not Alone Anymore

Mum, I want to tell you a secret.

Today, I came across a journal entry I wrote a few years ago. It began… “I’m starting to resent her”.

I was talking about you.

Reading that entry transported me to a different place, a different time, a different me.

Back to a girl in a storm of emotion that was squeezing her so tight, it felt like she was going to die.

I was being choked by words that wouldn’t unstick from my throat, so I wrote.

I wrote about our relationship, and how increasingly strained it had become. I was being crushed under the weight of your expectations, drowning in tears from the harshness of your critique, being squeezed on all sides by the pressure to be, and stay, perfect. Who was I, if I wasn’t perfect? I had gotten accustomed to trying to communicate to a brick wall, and, all my pleas to be heard came ricocheting back, from your silver tongue, as bullets tearing through me.

I never doubted that you loved me, neither did I doubt that I loved you. But, I no longer could confidently say that I liked you, and it made life feel unbearable.

I vividly remember the girl that wrote that journal entry, fighting to see through the sea of tears in her eyes. I remember, just how exhausted and broken she felt. Sometimes, I wonder if you ever really saw her…saw me.

I wonder if all of this was breaking you, as much as it was me.

It’s funny, at the time, I never considered that option…that you might be hurting too? I was so blinded by my own hurt that it never occurred to me that you might be in pain.

Looking back, I realise that there isn’t much of your life that has been without pain. An immigrant mother, travelling halfway across the world to build a better life for herself and her two children. Staying strong for them, even when she had nothing to her name. Carrying them on her back, as she worked 3 jobs, morning and night and weekends, to keep them fed. An orphan at that point…no family with her, no friends to confide in. Alone.

I never considered the magnitude of the life you were forced to live. You were in pain. So much pain.

Especially, because of him.

I’m sorry.

I didn’t intend to talk about him. This was supposed to be about you and I. But, how can my honesty heal us, if I don’t address the cause of the wounds?

On reflection, I now understand that it wasn’t that easy to leave. It seems so easy in theory, but, in the small wisdom, I have gained with adulthood, I know it’s the complete opposite. The reality of domestic violence is nothing like what it’s idealised to be. Nobody talks about how the suffering doesn’t displace the love, or, how it strips away your personal identity, until you’re disillusioned, left with only scraps of memories of what you used to be like. They don’t talk about how you become accustomed to the abuse, how it contorts and morphs itself into caricatures of love, rewiring your brain, until you associate that pain with love.

To tell a victim to “just leave”, is to disregard the inherent complexity of the human psyche, and, to ignore the flaws of a system that isn’t built to free women. In my naïveté, I failed to understand this. I regret that.

I had grown up in a battlefield. Existing in no man’s land, my soul floated in the treacherous space between living and surviving. I ducked and dived, dodging the attacks that came from all sides. I never found peace. Constantly contorting my body in an attempt to stay alive, I sacrificed so many parts of myself, wounded what I felt was disposable to protect the essentials. I gave up my confidence, to make myself smaller. It was easier to fit through the gaps that way. I gave up peace so I could attune myself to the sound of war. It made it easier to sense the attacks. I gave up my soul, that way I couldn’t feel it disintegrating, along with my personality.

I lost myself, and, I resented you for it, because then I couldn’t understand why you didn’t just leave? After the relentless screaming, the hospital visits, the police calls, crawling through windows at night into our own home, being scared to turn the lights on, being afraid to speak up. Why did you allow me to live in an environment where I couldn’t make friends, for the fear that they find out the truth?

I was a child, fighting for her life, trying to put you back together, to protect her little brother, and, to not rock the boat.

In the storm that was his existence, you made me the lifeboat for you and my brother, but you didn’t see that with every attack, the holes in my exterior were widening. I was sinking, and, in your panic, you didn’t even notice.

I needed you. I needed more.

I never got more. And it broke us. All of us. You don’t live in a war zone, and come out unscathed. Before we knew it, our bodies couldn’t maintain survival mode anymore, and, the true extent of the damage that had been done became apparent.

I spiralled. Honestly, I think I’m still spiralling now. But, the only good thing about hitting rock bottom is that you have endless time to think about how you got there.

As I stand here in this abyss, staring into the darkness that surrounds me, I feel so alone.

I think about you a lot.

I think about us.

How much was stolen from us.

I wasn’t the only one scarred in the battlefield. You gave your life, so I could escape. Your dreams, your hopes, your ambition, all sacrificed for our lives. I don’t know how I didn’t see it.

I see it now. You did your best. You gave everything you could, but how much could you give, if there was a cancer ravishing you? Sucking you of your time, energy, peace. He was the cancer. I didn’t realise how much strength it took you to get up everyday. To hold us, and work for us. Despite the bruises, and the pain.

I didn’t realise how alone you were. How you needed friends too. You pushed me to be the best, so I could get out. You didn’t want me to suffer what you did. You wanted me to study hard, and, be the best that I could, so that I would never have to be under the financial control of any man. You made me strong, so I could survive the harshness of life.

I needed softness, and I wish I had that. But, in the thickness of war, you didn’t have the luxury of just being my mum, you had no choice, but, to also be my captain. You wanted me to survive. You needed me to survive.

It’s only now I remember you bundling us up in the middle of the night, telling us to stay quiet. I remember you trying to escape. I remember the coldness of the shelter, I remember being scared, how unsafe it was. I remember us wondering through the streets, having nowhere to turn to, until eventually our feet took us back to the trenches. It was the only place we knew.

You did try. You tried so hard. But, he had all the money, all the power, and, he was great at pretending. You were alone, being abused, raising 2 children with a man that would step on our corpses to maintain his reputation.

I understand now.

Mum, I want to tell you a secret. Something I’ve never told you before.

I’m proud of you. So immensely proud of how far you’ve come. The day you changed the locks was a day that I never would have imagined would come.

I’m proud of you, just because you exist. I’m proud of you, because you are beautiful and smart and worthy of all the love this world has to offer. I’m sorry that life has been so cold to you, I’m so sorry that this was the hand you were dealt. But, your fierceness and your resilience blows me away. I wish I had understood it sooner. I grant myself grace, because I was just a child, and, I didn’t deserve any of that either.

Some may never understand why you made the decisions you did, and I pray they never have to. But, I want you to know that I understand. He was a broken, broken man. As he took and took, you gave up the little life you had, so you could pour more into us. I wish it had been enough for us to stop us from being wounded. I wish it was enough to stop us from being scarred. It wasn’t. But, it was enough to keep us alive. You kept us alive. We came out limping, but still breathing. And I know as long as there’s life, there’s still hope for us all.

Mum, I want to tell you a secret. Something I’ve never told you before.

You’re not alone anymore.