The Letter

Recently I wrote a blog entry about a letter to my Mother. I was uhmming and ahhing over whether to send it or not. I got so much great feedback from a lot of people and I’m thankful to all of you who contributed, it helped me decide that I was in fact going to send this letter. For anyone who hasn’t read the post, I cut off contact with my family about 3 1/2 years ago as it was extremely toxic. My Mother let a lot of abuse occur while I was growing up, and since I’ve cut off contact I’ve heard a lot of bitching get back to me, basically my Mother and cousin blame me for everything and think i cut them off because I’m essentially crazy and they had no part to play in it.

I sat on the letter (not literally) for a few weeks, not entirely sure why I wasn’t sending it. I knew that I needed to send it, I knew that for my own piece of mind I had to say all these things to my Mother. It basically outlined all the things that happened in the past and how I feel she abandoned me in favour of my abuser, that she chose him over me and edged me out. She had three children to him in three years and essentially started a new family in which I had no place.

I spoke to my therapist about the letter on Tuesday and we discussed why it was still unsent. I figured out it was that it was too angry, as I wrote it I got more and more angry and it was laced with hostility. I don’t want to be mean for the sake of being mean, my reason for writing this is not to make her feel bad but for her to see my side of things and understand some of the damage she has done. I have asked her to stop bitching about me and that we both need closure. So, I wrote another letter. I feel much better about this one and after I write this blog I am going straight to the post office to send it.

This letter still addresses the sexual abuse at the hands of her first husband when I was aged 7-9, the craziness that went on in the student house we lived in after she abruptly left her first husband and how we went from being ‘besties’ to me being insignificant after she met her second husband, Mark. It addresses how she let him repeatedly abuse me and instead of protecting me or giving him a choice between quitting the drink or leaving, she edged me out instead of him.

It addresses how she made me unwelcome in my grandparents home, how when I’ve been at every low point in my life she’s not only not supported me but made me feel isolated and alienated. Because of my Mother making me unwelcome in my home I started moving around all over the place the moment I turned 18, every time I would return to Melbourne she would be more and more hostile to my presence. Her husband would still abuse me and she would claim the next day that he would get help or things would change, but ultimately she decided I was the problem, not him.

So i’ve written this letter, outlining all these things but I’ve done it in a more positive constructive way. I’ve found my voice and said what I have to say to finally take steps I need to take to have closure on my Mother. For so long I have had this gaping hole in my heart where her love should have been, she has been this almost mythical figure in my mind, the source of so much pain and shame and regret for me. In this letter, I removed a lot of the emotion from the first letter and was more factual, outlined things and asked how she could do that to her own child, why she didn’t protect me and what I did to warrant her being so hostile towards me. An example is, my Grandmother paid for her and my three half siblings to come visit in England 3 wees after I’d had my first child. I was only 22 and had a c section with some complications and was extremely sore. She wanted us to travel to northern ireland to see an old family friend so I went with her, she didn’t help me much while we were there so when we flew back to england i told her I wanted to go home so my husband could help me with the baby instead of flying onto paris with her and the kids. She was angry that I didn’t go to paris. When she got home to Australia she bitched to the family that my house was a mess and my kitchen floor wasn’t clean enough. That really hurt, I was 22 and could barely walk and had a newborn baby, of course my house was a mess! I’ll admit it was a mess but not dirty, just messy. Clothes and what not, dishes that didn’t get done immediately, as for the kitchen floor I have no idea what she was talking about. It really hurt that instead of being supportive or understanding that I had post natal depression and other medical issues, she came home and made me seem like a bad mother.

Another example is when we moved back to Australia. We didn’t have much money at the time and she agreed to loan me my the money my nan had left me before it came through and she would keep the money. On top of that money she loaned me about $1000 for airfares for myself my husband and my two children. Now, when I got to Australia and was staying with her, I started working full time within a couple of weeks. I paid her $3oo a week for four weeks, I also paid $200 for my half brother’s camp and nearly $200 for some netball shoes my sister needed. I also found out from my cousin that the money from my Nan was in fact more than my Mother had told me and she had kept more than she was meant to. So in my mind, I had more than paid her back, but it got back to me through my Aunt that my Mother had been going around telling people that I still owed her money. WHY? why did she feel the need to fabricate things like this to make me look bad? All i wanted was a mother who loved me, I’m not saying I’ve never done anything wrong, I’ve never claimed to be perfect, but she was making shit up to make me look bad and make her look like this patient saint. It just hurts so much that according to her, I have to be the bad guy. And even if I have done nothing wrong she’s perfectly willing to make things up to make me look like an arsehole.

So i’ve written all these things to my Mother, I also wished her well. I said it’s clear that our versions of events are so different that we will never be able to have a healthy relationship, that every time I’ve tried to be open and honest with her she has shut me down, every time i’ve asked for details about my real father she has lied to me about him. It’s all in there, but it’s not attacking her, it’s just asking her why and pointing out that I’m not in fact this bad guy. I think because of all the abuse and trauma and shit that’s happened in our history there has to be a bad guy, and for my mother it can’t be her, she’d break into pieces if it was her, so she has to make it me. But I’m hoping that telling her the truth, putting the truth out there and being as positive about it as i can will afford me the healing i so desperately seek.

I know that I wont get instant closure once it’s sent, but i believe it’s a step along the way. An important step. For so long I’ve felt angry that they have been sitting around claiming me to be the bad guy, claiming to be perfectly innocent. But I told her she has to see how toxic the family is, I pointed out why it’s toxic and it’s all true, she will have to face a lot of truths and that makes me feel really good. My Mother lives deep in denial but when she reads this letter, that small part of her that knows what she’s done to me, I know there’s that small part in her i’ve seen it in her eyes now and again, that small part will know the truth.

Thanks to all who have been a part of this journey with me, this blog has meant so much to me and finding people who have been through similar things has made me feel so much more sane than i’ve ever felt. And there’s many people who haven’t been through similar things but still show they care and I’m so thankful for all of you, you truly make such a difference in my life and it’s the first time I’ve ever been strong enough to face all of this. To address the sexual abuse at all, to talk openly about the abuse and neglect and abandonment.

Holding onto pain from the past

In a previous blog I speculated that I am holding onto the pain of my past because it is the last tie I have to my family, the last thing that I have that connects me to my Mother. Since starting my blog I have dug up repressed memories of sexual abuse that occurred when I was aged between 7-9, I have written about the physical mental and emotional abuse that went on from age 11-25, I have written about the feelings of betrayal and abandonment I have towards my Mother because not only did she let these things happen to me but she chose the abuser over me and edged me out of her family, she had three children with him within three years and effectively started a new family in which I had no place, I was too difficult and didn’t fit her picture perfect family unit anymore.

My Mother and I were very close before she met her two husbands, we lived on and off with my Grandparents but she treated me very much like a best friend. She married a man out of the blue when I was 7, it wasn’t a happy household and he took great advantage of me when my Mother was working long hours. Somehow she met a much younger man and we moved in with him, she didn’t explain anything to me, we just left one day after a ballet class. I’m still not sure what she knows of the abuse that happened in that house, but I’ve assumed she knows something…based on how she left, but it’s entirely possible she has no idea and she left because she was unhappy in the marriage and had found a new boyfriend.

After her boyfriend left for a job on an island off the north coast of australia, she and I became best friends again. There was a revolving door of men she would date but no one stuck around too long. It was she and I, she would often pull me out of school and we would go on little adventures, staying at beach side cabins mainly.

She left her well paying high stress job for a part time job at the local video store, I think her depression had gotten out of hand and she needed less responsibility. She met a tradesman who was working on the video store and within a few months they were practically living together. He had a penchant for excessive drinking, and she started to ignore me in favour of her new man.

Within six months of meeting she fell pregnant to this man, and he was actively abusing me. I was a chubby teen and he would call me a fat fuck and throw me around, then things got more intense and the verbal and physical abuse escalated. She would yell at him to stop and then tell me the next day things would change, but they never did, and I ended up moving in with my grandparents. They followed a little while after as he would piss all their money up a wall, he drank a great deal and they just didn’t have the money to pay for rent and expenses.

When I started writing my blog I started healing, facing these issues head on was incredibly liberating, but I fear I went too far too quickly, I think I delved too far down.

I cut my family off a few years ago, they are incredibly passive aggressive, always nasty behind each others backs and bitching about each other but then nice to each others faces, my Mother and I always had a strained relationship and my cousin who i grew up with more as a sister always turned our past pain into a competition, discounting my trauma as an exaggeration. I’ve heard through mutual friends and what not, that they all think I’m in the wrong and they did nothing wrong, that I simply went ‘off my head’ and stopped seeing them all. This has bothered me greatly for the few years it’s been since I have seen them. So I decided to write a letter to my Mother, outlining the facts of the past and what i felt actually happened, my mother is a perpetual victim, nothing that ever happens is her fault, it’s always someone or something happening TO her, she never accepts blame or fault. So i wrote this four page letter telling her how it harmed me that not only did she let me be abused for years but she let me down whenever i needed her. that every time in my life when i hit rock bottom and needed her, not only was she not there but she made me feel unwelcome and crazy. An example is when I was in an abusive relationship in new zealand and i managed to sell a painting and get my fare back to australia, i turned up on the doorstep of my grandparents home, my grandparents had always made me welcome there, but the look on her face when she saw me, oh my. She made it clear that i wasn’t welcome there, that i could only stay briefly and had to find somewhere else. I mean, it wasn’t even her house, I had just been through a really traumatic experience and instead of offering me any form of comfort, she made me feel like an absolute piece of shit. Due to this, I kept moving around, relationship after relationship, i would hang onto my partner and often live with them prematurely because i couldn’t live in the family home without causing my mother grief because she knew her husband would get drunk and abuse me, and she’d let it happen, instead of holding him accountable for this she forced me out.

I thought writing this letter would be cathartic, but it’s been over a week and it remains unsent. I want to send it, I want to send it and have her know what she’s done and move on. But after I wrote it i spiraled into a depression that caused me to not write or blog for a week. I’ve barely seen friends, i’ve just been ‘functioning’ not interacting or really living or creating, just being.

Now i wonder if the letter is a mistake, or if it was just traumatic to face and write down all the things she’d done and let happen to me. Will i find peace in sending it to her and closing the chapter? Will it in fact close the chapter? I’m so unsure.

I know that i will never have a relationship with this woman if she doesn’t change dramatically, and honestly i can’t see it happening. So it’s not like i’m holding out hope of a reconciliation. She contacted me just before christmas via facebook and told me she missed her family and wanted to put things back together, we sent a few messages back and forth, I said that i had made some mistakes and there were things i would do differently, and instead of saying sorry or admitting any fault of her own, she said ‘yes you have, i guess i could have been a better role model’. I told her it wasn’t the role model factor that was the issue, and that if we were to have a relationship it had to be positive, that i couldn’t handle the backstabbing and the toxicity of the way the family interacted. She ignored this, and on christmas day sent a message saying ‘merry christmas, your sister will drop some presents by for the girls’ – that was it. It broke my heart all over again.

So, if anyone has had a similar experience with moving past things then let me know. A lot of people say just let go, and believe me i’ve tried, but i need her to know my side of the story, i need her to feel some kind of responsibility, or at least read the letter and know that I think she should feel some kind of responsibility. I’m a grown woman who can barely function most of the time and it’s because of the broken way i grew up. I take responsibility for my mistakes, of which i’ve made many, but now i’m just trying to find some peace.

Bruised and Broken

You felt me grow inside you and when they pulled me from your womb

There was a clap of thunder and all the light left the room

You said that it was destined, that it was meant to be

Who knew the thorn wedged in your side would turn out to be me

With short blonde hair and big brown eyes you showed me as your prize

But your pretty doll was broken when seen through others eyes

Never paused for too long you had a need to run

Towards any distraction, towards the newest kind of fun

One day you picked your toy up from the shelf on which it sat

But found it bruised and broken so you chose to put it back

On that shelf I sat, and waited all those years

And slowly watched unravel all my nightmares, all my fears

For you had found a brand new toy to show off as your prize

Shiny new and beautiful through anybody’s eyes

Moving on and loving the new life that you’d begun

I wish I could have been enough to always be your one

Black and bruised upon the shelf, forgotten in some time

That I was ever yours, and you were ever mine