My Mother is a Train Wreck

It’s a beautiful day in May 2013. I’m sitting on a blanket on an isolated beach, warmed by the late spring sun and surrounded by red rocks. I’m watching her throw stick after stick in the water for a dog. I am eight months pregnant. Later, we share the ham and cheese sandwiches she has packed for us.

It’s the first real memory I have of my mother. I was 28 years old.

She had been sober for two months–the longest stretch of time I ever remember her being sober. She laughs–her laugh bouncing and echoing off the rocks. I had forgotten what it sounded like.

I feel calm and happy at the prospect of finally having a mother.

This may not seem like an out of the ordinary day, but for me–it was anything but. In fact, my eyes still well up as I remember that she made and packed a sandwich for me.

I don’t know who my mother really is.

I know the woman who stays up all hours of the night playing guitar. I know the woman who mixes rye with her coffee first thing every morning. I know the woman who spends her weekends getting drunk at house parties and bars with the people I graduated high school with–the people who know even more about her than I do. I know the woman who, when I cried out for her that night and interrupted her plans to get drunk and eat lobster, abused me when I was 7. I know the woman who was abused herself as child. I know the woman who let me be abused by her partner when I was 7. The woman who went to jail. The woman who got back together with my abuser after she got out of jail, against court orders. The woman who stayed friends with my abuser until his death. The woman who forced me to come face to face with him countless times. The woman who made me afraid of conflict. The woman who blamed it all on me for “having a chemical imbalance” at age 7. The woman who still hasn’t apologized or acknowledged anything to this day. The woman who, shortly after my daughter was born, started drinking again, dashing my hopes into a million pieces. The woman who has been absent in her granddaughter’s life. I know the woman who never wanted to be my mother.

Becoming a mother myself shook me to my very core. I stared at this helpless infant and realized all at once: I have no fucking idea what I’m supposed to do. I have no female role model in my life. I have no help. I have no experience. I have never been nurtured. I am damaged goods.

Depression and anxiety run rampant in my family. I knew that, in an absent-minded sort of way, in early adulthood. There were times I locked myself in my room and didn’t come out for a day. There were times I felt so alone. I searched desperately for connection, and found it in too many toxic relationships. I hated conflict. I had no self-esteem. I had no life skills. I lost myself in everyone I knew. I had no sense of self, and I was so easily and eagerly engulfed by anyone who took me on as a cause.

My depression came to a head as soon as I gave birth. It was easy for me to fall into it: I had been climbing the perfect cliff from which to fall all along. It was the perfect storm, to say the least. I desperately clung to the nurses who treated me. Somehow, they felt so nurturing to me, and I wanted them to stay with me forever—just as they had when I was abused at 7. It was only later that I realized it: I wanted them to be my mother. They were all mothers to me. I had no other source of nurturing or comfort. All I wanted was a mom: that picture perfect, sweet-smelling mom who can soothe you like no other, even as an adult.

But I didn’t have a mom like that. My mom was lost to me. I had only caught a glimpse of her once, on that sunny spring day in May 2013.

Recently, she’s gone back to rehab and is sober again. I can count on two hands the number of times this has happened before. She called me last week–and I heard her laugh again, that same laugh I heard on the beach that day. My heart swelled with hope: that dangerously deceitful emotion. Now, I have to build walls around my heart, and around my daughter’s.

Someday, I hope to meet my mother again.

 
About the author: Amanda lives on the east coast of Canada, where she is a law student and Mama to a hilariously sweet and sassy three year old girl. She writes about motherhood, postpartum depression, and her ongoing attempts to attain work-life balance. She loves coffee, chocolate and obnoxious early 00’s rap. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or visit her blog at www.legallymommy.com.