Monday, April 4, 2022

The Strength of Mama Bear

My mother was made of steel.  I didn't know much about her life before she met my father, but even then, being a survivor of domestic violence, broken vows, and financial abuse, I watched her endure quite a lot. There is one memory I have of she and I living together in the backroom of her beauty shop, laying on a twin mattress on the floor, watching her 10" CRT TV (complete with wire antennae) which was perched on top of the mini fridge.  She would ask with a big smile if I was hungry and proceed to pull out one hotdog for each of us that she got from the convenience store next door.  She'd put them on a plate and heat them up in the same microwave that she used to warm wax for waxing facial hair.  Then, she'd wrap each hot dog in a slice of white bread and savor it like it was a ribeye steak, modeling for me how to enjoy my meal.  We didn't even have ketchup.    


I think about the strength it must have taken to put on a smile and pretend that she was happy just so her child wouldn't feel sorry for her or, worse, themselves.  I knew, even back then, that she would rather live in an 8' x 6' room than go home to an abusive husband who would beat her, then rape her, and if she didn't comply, then he'd beat her children.  We never spoke about it, but we both knew why she couldn't go home.  And that small room, illuminated by the glow of that small, staticky TV screen, was infinitely warmer than living with my father in that cold, expansive house .


I remember when she moved to San Jose for six months to start a new life away from my dad, and when we visited her, she took one look at me (sad and apparently malnourished) and broke down crying, wishing she never left us in the first place.  The amount of self-sacrifice needed to leave behind the new life you've created for yourself and the sheer delusion required to tell yourself that, this time, things would be different is astonishing.  This is the strength I inherited from my mother.


Thanks to my mother, I do not identify as a victim.  I have overcome physical and mental abuse, being "othered," and various health setbacks, to come into a life and career that others admire.  By all counts, you would never guess that I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth:  I have class, dignity, and enough grit to break rocks on.  But while I learned from my mother to always hide away those tarnished parts of yourself and your experiences, it didn't mean they didn't exist.  While my mother learned to survive by being able to compartmentalize her life, I grew up believing that compartmentalizing WAS life.  You weren't one person living two different aspects of the same life; you were choosing which life to inhabit and completely disowning the rest.  


This is why I grew up not acknowledging my weaker "twin".  I felt my feelings and emotions were something you could pick off and discard, like a piece of lint, and if I could remove that hindrance from my person, then I would be all the more polished and more beautiful for it.  As such, I never learned that my feelings and emotions also needed support and space to live.  My deep desire for survival only needed to engage that rational side of me that only chose the best possible options.  


You can imagine that when I woke up to essentially a panic attack for letting Anthony go so easily just because he didn't fit my definition of "best-case scenario" and felt my heart aching, I was bewildered.  Why was my weaker "twin," who was definitely making even poorer choices now, protesting so much?  Why couldn't I sacrifice the new life I had created as a result of exiting my relationship, and why couldn't I delude myself again and tell myself that, this time, things would be different with Billy, just like my mother had modeled for me all those years ago?  


If real strength comes from the courage to choose the more difficult things, then choosing how I feel over how I think is definitely a true display of strength, for me.  It's easy for me to prepare and plan for success and weigh out the odds in order to find the path of least resistance.  Do you know what's hard?  Taking a leap of faith, even with a high chance of failure, and deciding that learning through failing is also an integral and valid part of living life.  Whereas my mother's strength was found in being able to compartmentalize two competing aspects of herself, I believe my true strength is going to come from being able to integrate my estranged twin back into the wholeness that can, one day, be me.


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