Wallz

“Ugh, if walls could talk!” Gina exclaimed loudly looking around the small, suburban home. “Jeremy! Jeremy! Get my dolls from the attic and the ones in the garage! I don’t want to leave any of those!” She was seventy-two, but looked and moved like she was seventy-eight. She slowly pushed her walker up the ramp to the house, her eyes darting back and forth to ensure all that was important to her was there. Just stuff to everyone else.

Jeremy, already carrying two giant garbage bags filled with heavy, leather, winter coats, rolled his eyes towards his twin sister, Jessica, almost at the exact same time she was rolling her eyes at him. They were obviously fraternal twins and didn’t have that weird supernatural bond identical twins have, but every once in a while, you could tell they had a special connection. The twins were helping move their mom out of the house the family had lived in since 1986. They were only seven years old when I first met them and now they were middle-aged with their own careers, here to assist their mom in moving on to the next phase of her life. She had been diagnosed with dementia eight months before and her children finally convinced her it was best to give up her house in favor of moving into a memory care home. Gina was a working, single mother in her mid-thirties when I met her, and it does sadden me to watch the decline in her abilities as she was so independent then. Raising twins without the help of a live-in partner is not an easy job. I watched them grow into precocious adolescents, rebellious teens, and eventually adults successful in their own right. Jeremy may not have his dream career, nor Jessica the love life she imagined as a young girl daydreaming in her room, but their mother was proud of them. Being Jessica’s bedroom wall, I couldn’t begin to tell you how proud I was of these children and what they have survived to be here today.

While I admire Gina for her strength and convictions to raise her children to get an education and better themselves, not every mother is perfect, and she certainly was not. She had some severe mental illness that she did not care to get treated or diagnosed. Instead, it was her children’s responsibility to manage her anxiety, her tantrums, her anger, and her sadness. She never learned to manage her emotions herself, so the job fell to the people closest to her. Unfortunately, for her dependent children, they didn’t have a choice. Forced to live under her roof, they were her emotional and physical punching bags, as well as her therapists. Especially, the girl. Jessica could sense her mom’s resentment and hate for her from a young age, but her mom would tell her that obviously she loved her, she had a roof over her head, right? And for a long time, Jessica thought that’s what love consisted of. The relationship was always transactional, you did something for that person, and in turn, they loved you. She never understood why her boyfriends would repeatedly say they could not connect with her like they could with previous girlfriends. Why her fiancé, Alan, just told her last week he was leaving her to be with some new coworker who “gets him more.” They had been together for three years.

Jessica knew Alan and her previous boyfriends were correct. She didn’t feel a connection with them in the same way she saw her friends’ healthy relationships. Oh, she loved them in the only way she knew how. She provided for them in the form of gifts, vacations, expensive meals, sex, and her time, but there always one more step she could never take. She could never open her heart and be vulnerable with them. And what is love without vulnerability? She had learned as a child that vulnerability meant you were weak and would be a target of verbal or emotional abuse if seen by others. Even those who said they loved you. So she thought of me in those weak times. She thought of me and how strong and supportive I was for her to lean on as a little girl when she was upset and crying about something that happened at school or with her mother. She thought of my strength and support, and she rebuilt me around her heart, making sure no one would ever be able to get in and hurt her like that original pain.

She was always safe in the four walls of her bedroom. The bedroom she had proudly chosen to be Pepto-Bismol pink as that happy go lucky seven-year-old. She was so excited to get her own room away from her twin brother for the first time in her life. I was and always will be a safe place for her. Here in the house, she became a young woman in, or in her heart where she recreated me to keep her safe out in the real world.

She comes into the room to gather even more garbage bags filled with clothes bought and never worn by her mother or worn once and meant to be returned. For a moment I feel like she can sense me and my love for her. She looks around the room and smiles. I know she’s thinking of the happy times she had in this room with me. Safe and free to be herself; listening to New Edition, drawing Garfield cartoons on lined paper, making up songs on her Casio keyboard. I always allowed her to be herself and loved her for it. I want one day for her to tear me down in her heart, be open to someone and let them love her the way I do. I know when it does happen, she will have overcome the emotional damage she suffered as a child and receive the love that should’ve been there from the beginning.