Dear Mom,

For years, and I mean for all my life leading up to probably last week after my new therapist helped me open my eyes, I believed I had gotten away with it. I had pulled one over on you. I had been sneaky, and I had been in control. Turns out? It’s all bullshit. I was never in control of anything. 

And here I was, living my life, thinking I had fooled you all along. 

Though maybe I did actually fool you a little bit. Even if not entirely, there was still so much of me that went undetected. So much you never knew about.

I can’t simply ask you how much you were aware of, but I do think I can say with a great amount of certainty that, though I didn’t fully get away with all of it, I did for sure get away with some.  

I got away with hiding myself from you for a very long time. I got away with pretending to be happy and healthy and perfectly fine. I did, in many ways, fool you. My question for you, Mom, is how? Really. How did you not see through it all? How did you not know?

I’ve already written to you about this, and I don’t want to harp on it forever, but I do need to attempt to understand how it’s possible that, throughout all four years of high school, I was completely drunk, in an emotionally abusive relationship, on all sorts of drugs, starving myself, totally unhappy and you didn’t notice. 

Really. How?

Why were you so oblivious of what I was going through?

For so many years I believed that everything was my doing. Every bad thing that happened. Every moment of sadness. Every crazy night out when I most definitely broke the law and somehow made it home without wrapping my car around a tree or worse. I always looked at these moments as me getting away with it. Me getting away with being a total drunk teenager. Me putting myself into situations where I was easily taken advantage of by people who knew what they were doing. Me being utterly clueless as to who I was and what could make me happy. Me dating the wrong guys. Staying too long. All of it was me in control. It was me sneaking around. Me getting away with it.

But what exactly was I getting away with? What part of me was I truly hiding?

I thought I was hiding my party girl brand. I was hiding my escapades and my shenanigans. I was hiding the bottles of liquor in my closet and the drugs under my bed. But that was all on the surface. I was really hiding my cracks. My feelings of loneliness. Of aimlessness. Of sadness. I was getting away with being so lost in the world.

Again, how did you not notice?

I know you loved me. I never felt unloved. But, as you hugged me each night and wished me sweet dreams, how did you not know that I was so broken?

Could it be because you were also broken?

I’ll never know how fractured you were, but I know you had your own cracks. I know you were deeply unhappy at times. We simply never spoke about it.

I think I could tell when you’d lay on the couch, watching TV while mindlessly balancing your checkbook, that you were off in some other world. You were thinking of the adventures you wanted to go on. The connections you wanted to make. But while you were fantasizing, I was desperate for your attention. Too bad neither of us knew it at the time. Too bad I didn’t know it until it was too late.

It’s never easy to admit how much time I wasted. How many moments went by when I didn’t see the value in our relationship. How many moments when I needed you and never bothered reaching out. Because, though you may have not noticed my cries for help, I know without a doubt in my mind that you would have come running if I had asked.

Why didn’t I ask? 

I was young. I was naïve. I was sure that all of my problems were my doing and based on bad decision-making skills. I didn’t know until very recently how deep rooted it all was. I didn’t know there was trauma. I didn’t know there was so much baggage. I didn’t know.

So how could you?

It’s so easy to place blame. It’s even easier to throw a dead person under the bus. I won’t take the easy way out of this one. You were a good mom. I know that. You loved me and wanted what was best for me and showed me often throughout my childhood. But somewhere along the way, something changed in me. I don’t know when or how. Something simply shifted and somehow you didn’t notice.

Or perhaps you did. Perhaps you saw it all in slow motion and decided for some reason to sit back and not interfere. That’s a hard scenario to believe as you weren’t known for your ability to step aside and not meddle. But we as women have been conditioned for all of history to accept the bad as inevitable. Maybe you saw my darkness as par for the course. Maybe you thought I’d grow out of it like most girls do. The truth is, Mom, none of us fully grow out of the pain. It sticks with us, and it festers, and it becomes the very fabric of our being.

In a perfect world, you would have tried harder. You would have taken me by my shoulders and shook it out of me. In an even more perfect world, you would have found a therapist for me to talk about my own problems with. Not only the ones happening to people around me. You also would have never left me in the suburbs at the end of high school while you moved back to the city. It hurt more than you ever knew. Even if I pretended to love it. 

I know in hindsight it’s so easy to say I needed you. Back then, I would have pushed your hands off of me and I would have run into the arms of the first person who told me they loved me, even if that person was a terrible human and only ever tried to tear me down. I couldn’t accept your help back then as anything other than you trying to ruin my life. But I now know how much I needed you to interfere. I needed your help.

So, as I look back at those years and contemplate how things could have been different, I wonder how I can protect my own kids. How can I be that person for them who they can turn to when they’re hurting? How can I better open my eyes, so I notice the red flags before they’re set in stone? Is it even possible?

Or is this the ugly cycle of life? Is this how it always will be? Our parents make mistakes and screw us up and then we go and do the same for our own children? Is it possible to break this cycle? I want it to be. I don’t want my kids walking this world thinking they deserve every negative moment. That they asked for it. I want my kids to be strong. To be secure. To be pain free.

Perhaps my wanting them to not suffer is a good start. I can control how much they know about my desire to help them. I can reiterate to them over and over that I am here for them. And when the time comes that they don’t want me to be the one to protect them, I will see the value in outsourcing the guidance. Isn’t that all we need in life? A little hand holding? A little help? A little direction?

I’m starting to understand finally that what I needed the most back then is the same thing I still need today. I need genuine human connection. I need relationships that don’t come with strings. I need someone to listen to me. To all of me. And most of all I need to be told that none of it was my fault. That I didn’t deserve it. That I didn’t ask for it. As much as I continue to tell myself that it was all my doing and I made my own choices, I need to hear that I was just a kid.

A kid who did her very best to hide herself from the world. A kid who put so much effort into pretending to be ok enough. A kid who never truly felt seen despite the love that was provided. A kid who needed to feel any sense of control.

I am now an adult who understands that the control I awarded myself back then was false. I was never steering. I was always following along on a path that I thought would lead to the least amount of disappointment. My failures couldn’t be too impactful if I set my expectations so low. I convinced myself I was holding the reins in an effort to protect myself when everything imploded. I wasn’t being taken advantage of if I put myself in the situation in the first place. In a way, I was protecting myself by putting myself in danger. It seemed so foolproof at the time, but at the time, I was so young. 

I think what I need now the most is to admit that even if I fooled myself that doesn’t mean I am a fool. Just because I hid my pain doesn’t mean I believed I was ok. I knew my control was a façade. I knew I needed help. And just because I didn’t know how to ask doesn’t mean I was giving the world permission to discard me. 

If I could go back in time and guide my younger self to a better future, I’d travel back to thirteen-year-old me and this is what I’d say to her…

You have all the potential in the world. There is nothing holding you back besides your own fear. It won’t be easy. People will try to bring you down. That is the truth of the world. But you don’t have to listen to them. You don’t have to listen to the voices telling you that you’re not good enough or skinny enough or pretty enough or smart enough.

You. Are. Enough.

And when you feel like the world is caving in around you and failure is approaching and nothing is working? It is OK to ask for help. You are not alone.

I love you, Mom.

Love,

Rachel