Child Built Walls

Mom and Dad

From an early age, I always thought my mom looked tired.

I guess that the overwhelming weight of fatigue meant she was too tired to take care of me. Because she never really did. Not in a way that counted anyway.

And when I say tired, I mean emotionally drained. She was absent, in every way except physically. Sometimes, when I'm sitting in my room feeling particularly angry or hateful. I think it would've been better if she were physically absent too. Because then I wouldn't have to mourn the loss of never getting to know her. Or cry over the fact that the parts I did know, never seemed to be the best parts. But instead parts she spent her life fabricating to seem steady on her feet.

My mom, her boyfriend would say, is like a guarded castle. Firmly built walls, with archers at every door, ready to attack. To distance perceived threats.

So, I guess I was a threat. Because while I was a kid, I felt as close as I could be to my mom. But as I got older, I realized that maybe I didn't know my mom as well as I thought. And it hurt more knowing she was more comfortable that way than if she had to be close to me.

I was twelve when I really started to see it. I was in the car with my sister on the way to school. And my mom was on the phone with my grandma. I hadn't really been listening to the conversation, opting to look out the window instead. Until the conversation had for some reason shifted toward me and my sister.

My mom would then tell my grandma.

"When they have the word teen in their age, I'm going to stop caring about how they feel."

I would question my mom about this. Shocked, and even a little hurt. My mom was already pretty emotionally absent. I didn't want to know what total withdrawal would feel like.

But my mom would just scoff and say. "Teenage girls are the worst. They're little monsters."

And from then on, my mom would call me and my sister monsters. I don't know why it hurt as much as it did. Maybe it was the fact that I felt like I was burdening my mom. Or maybe it was the fact that my mom didn't seem to care about how I felt at all.

But I think I made a dumb choice in the following years. Bottling up all the emotional parts of me, so my mom wouldn't have to deal with it. I think I lost a lot of parts of me that would've made life brighter because of that.

But in a lot of instances...

I think it granted me a shield of sorts. To protect me from the whiplash that was my mom's ever-present anger.

My mom, despite being emotionally withdrawn. Usually presented herself in anger. It's not like she hit me or my sister. Never on purpose anyways. And it wouldn't be 'till much later that my mom would start hitting my sister during fights.

She would often brag to strangers in public about it. Saying, "See I clearly don't hit my kids. Do you see the way they talk to me? They're not afraid of being hit." Like not hitting your kids deserved some kind of metal.

But she did yell a lot. Her anger stung like touching a hot stovetop. While her words weren't always hurtful, it was the fallout that usually did the most damage. Scornful silence, blaming her emotional state on others, guilt-tripping, leaving the house, and talking to the other sibling about their actions and character.

I think my mom did a lot of things wrong. And I would tell her that, if I wasn't so afraid she would stop talking to me. Or at least yell at me, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Child-built walls are flimsy ones.

And mine were going to have to be rebuilt, again and again, and again.