I am far from blind, far from indifferent, but I will not indulge in impotent, passive despair - Anaïs Nin

T,

First things first: you wish things didn’t have to be this way. Your 28th year is starting on a very painful note, and you have been restless many nights leading to it; you have cried way too much; you have curled yourself up in bed and gripped your head in your hands, willing the voices to fade away, wishing everything would just stop. But you come to find that it isn’t that easy, and you can’t turn away from it because it is inside you, under your skin, right there in your swollen eyes, itching at the back of your throat. It is deep within your blood and clinging to your bones. You seem to be made of the stuff. And it is devastating, terrifying stuff. The kind that maddens you, sends you breaking down on the floor and losing yourself, the kind that makes you sick, has you asking how how how. How is any of this possible? How is this so difficult? How can I make it stop? How can I look this one person in the eye and say, “When will I be enough for you?”

What are we doing to each other? Do you see this dance that’s been going on for years? What has it brought us if not more misery? We spin around each other, sometimes in silence, a few times with words—both are harsh. To think that the boundary I draw to protect myself is its own weapon. To pull away, to raise a wall, to keep myself so small under your surveillance with the hope that I can get away; I can finally achieve some kind of normalcy where my life isn’t constantly scrutinized, where my decisions are not a springboard to launch a witnessing of all the ways I get it wrong, all the ways I fail. All the ways I am human. I cannot think differently; I cannot want differently. I certainly cannot dare live differently. You want me in some kind of alignment. A mimicry. The child as puppet, the mother as the unerring hand of God. I cannot think. I cannot question. I cannot talk back. I cannot step out of line. Whatever emotions I have about how you treat me are nothing compared to your intention, your master plan, your own assurance of your goodness. I listen and I do and I conform. Under your shadow, I take shape. I am twisted and turned, I am dressed and undressed, my face is turned to the audience and then away from them, and I take whatever is placed on me, no matter its weight. I do not complain. I do not weep. I cannot question. I learn the mechanics of survival—if I can surrender to your control, assume that lifelessness, allow my life to be so small that I feel incapacitated, then the living won’t hurt as much. Because much of what would be left of me is the numbness, a real and dangerous absence from myself, such that all things can be stripped from me and distorted, including my own being, my own perception, my own mind.

It is the hardest thing to admit but this is where you currently find yourself, T. That just before this birthday, you can’t tell whether or not you made up the childhood trauma, whether or not you’re a good daughter, whether or not the past happened, if you’re exaggerating its impact, if you’re just too sensitive, if you’ve carried with you a false narrative of this relationship that shapes and shapes you, that breaks and breaks you. You are scared and shocked and numb. You feel misunderstood and unseen. You do not know what to do, where to begin, where to end. You do not know which door to close, and which one to pound on with your fists. You are glad you are not home. This distance, a safe haven. How terribly sad, that the places and people that ought to bring safety take that very thing away from you. They pull it all down. You walk into a room and know immediately that these small violences, these nasty glares, these things left unsaid, these heavy silences, will ruin you. And all for what?

You have nothing to prove. It is obvious now the path you have chosen—to be honest and simple, to be courageous in living, to return again and again to the matter of the heart, to know your convictions and test them. To sharpen your perceptiveness, to be able to live with yourself and your contradictions—your playfulness and seriousness, your solitude and extroversion, your sensitivities, your compulsion to give, your quiet fears, your awkwardness. Take nothing for granted. You are good, you are good, you are good. And that is even beside the point. What I wish for you is a new way of seeing things, of being in the world, and it is no great revelation: your obsession with permission, with seeking validation, will take more from you than you can ever imagine. People are always going to project, assume, reject, define, distort, and draw terrible conclusions about who you are, what you do, and why you are the way you are. But their assertions and expectations belong to them. That has nothing on you. Why, because you exist independent of it. And because people are seldom right about what they haven’t cared to pay enough attention to, to take time to learn. Do not be afraid of the misconceptions. Do not let it make you miserable. For so long you have held tightly to the impulse of correcting, debunking, or setting the story straight, and it is hardly a labor that that is fruitful. It changes you, this compulsion, and the self and one’s sanity is too great a cost in this endeavor.

So, if you do anything at all, live. Freely. You do not have to explain. You do not have to beg. You do not have to carry the past years on your back. There is no time to contort, to shrink, to look over your shoulder in panic. Know and feel and do and be. Say yes and say no, too. Forgive yourself. Forgive all the devastations of mothering. There is a vitality to living and you should immerse yourself in it. No complacency. No passivity. Live intensely here and now. Here are your fears, your friendships, your private preoccupations, your imagination, your imperfections, the effort of your trembling hands, the desires of your heart. Here is your one precious life. Within this fleeting body, how are you going to hold all of life’s intricacies, beauty, and sufferings? With love, I hope. With tenderness and openness. And if you so dare, with no fear of how the world would perceive you. Break yourself from their recklessness & dance away into the night.