I Cannot Say

[no1schild]

I wrote something as therapy for myself, as I often do. I'm working on knowing and loving my inner child, as several people here have gently led me to do. I thought of posting it with "Unsent Letters", but chose this board instead, because I want to dedicate it not only to my inner child, but so many of your's as well...I've spent more healing hours here, reading through people's experiences and the support given from others, than I have in therapy.  I am both thankful and sad to feel more understood by people I'll never know or meet than by people in my day to day life. But that is the nature of these challenges, is it not? Anyway, for what it's worth...

I cannot say you love me as a daughter.
What would I know about that?
After all, I am a mother of sons.

And, for one "grown-up",
I was a caretaker and confidant.
I was far too busy rocking her to sleep and cleaning up her spilled tea. I can still feel the burns.
I could not run in the sun of righteous ignorance (I suppose it's known as innocence), that is childhood bliss.

For two fathers, I was wreckage, carnage, a cyclically resurrected casualty. They made it seem so casual.
Then I became the storm and they fled, horrified by how gracefully
my wounds bled.
Sylvia Plath once said,
"If I've killed one man, I've killed two."

Next, came you.
You are a different breed
and now I am too,
due to evolution.
Only the selecting seems anything but natural.

I've been deformed by your barbwire tongue, chewed on
behind closed doors,
and in all the usual places
that can be hidden under clothes of excuses.

I let you do it.
I let you, because what would I know about being loved like a daughter?

I am resilient. It took two decades before there was no more
fresh flesh left for you to enjoy.
It was then that you went
for my soul.
I thought I'd never be whole.

My pieces were too many to be called "pieces."
I was sand running through your fingers.
"Dust to dust," the important part here is that I was running.
It took millions of years,
but even dust and sand can become something new.
Something new that never fully loses what it once was...that would defy the laws of nature.

No, I cannot say that you loved me as a daughter.
I can only say you have loved me like you love your son:
transactionally, conditionally
as an extension of your own self-love or self-hate or whatever poison you call it.

You have "loved" us in a way I could never love my sons.
My sons are cherished, held tenderly in my arms and thoughts and memories and prayers.
I see them.
I hear them.
They were born of me,
but they were not born for me.

I do not contain your capacity to love them as you have loved your own son.
I cannot love them any more or any less than I do now or ever,
because my love for them is absolute and ultimate.

When my boys throw their skinny arms around me and whisper,
"I love you momma, forever and always amen", I can only love them back and say "thank you for your love." It is a gift of which I feel undeserving, thanks to you and the others.

I try to imagine my husband as a child (he was the spitting image of our oldest, have you noticed?),
sharing a moment like that with you.
I cannot. It's just not there.
I've known few obscurities more excruciating.

How can one miss a parent one never had?
How can we realize that pain?
How can we feel an absence so fully?

I think the answers are in the antithesis.
They're in our loving relationships with our children.
It must be a mercy of God,
to be able to freely give
something we never had.
Like treasure somehow manifesting in our pockets, to place into their own for safe keeping.
And it is so. very. safe.

I am a mother of sons,
and you are a mother to none.
How very sad for you.
I get to love my children—-all of my children.
Including the one who lives within.
 

[Cat of the Canals]

You have "loved" us in a way I could never love my sons.
My sons are cherished, held tenderly in my arms and thoughts and memories and prayers.
I see them.
I hear them.
They were born of me,
but they were not born for me.

Oof. Love this.

Thank you for sharing.

[chowder]

This is so well-written.  "Deformed by barbed wire tongue" - this is spot on.  I had an evil older sister who did nothing but cut me down my whole life, in childhood and adulthood, and her words and actions were so hurtful and cutting.  My parents did absolutely nothing about it.  When she died, I felt relief, and certainly don't miss what I never had.  And this was all behind closed doors - our friends and neighbors thought our family was the cat's meow.  What a facade.

Thank you for posting that.  It is heartfelt and so true, as we live our truth and come Out of the FOG for our better lives going forward. 

[bloomie]

no1child - I am just seeing this magnificent, heartbreaking letter to your mil. I can hardly type as I struggle with a giant lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, but what I see here, what I hear, what I celebrate is the beauty and resiliency of your soul. Your ability to build a nest of safety and transcendent love with your family. To forge on and love with a depth and tenderness that has changed the entire trajectory of your life.

Thank you!!