19: The Disappearing Mother

If you are anything like me, you know this feeling intimately: Don't cry. If you do, you'll never be able to stop again. So don't even begin.

Well, I began.

Maybe it is really was this place, this house I was in, the safety of it. Maybe it was Rex the Rescue, snoring merrily on the curry-colored couch. He would growl. Even bite if you didn't respect his no. I had decided that obviously we had genes in common, he and I. 

The tears had snook up on me. A friend had behaved in a way, I recognized a little too well. She would say one thing, and then turn around to do the complete opposite. And then get really angry, when you pointed to the fact that those two things were not super compatible. 

It was triggering. That is PTSD for you. Something other people can shrug off easily leaves you reeling like had you been hit by a sudden tornado, the luxury of not being affected on levels way too deep out of your reach. 

Her bullying behavior had reminded me of the feeling of my Self slipping away. The realization that this was always the goal for another person all together, the Original One; All that was me, a separate Self, needed to be gone. All that could possibly offer independent thoughts or dreams. That weren’t his, that weren’t of him, that weren’t dangerous or oppositional, but simply not his. Gone. Nothing left than an empty shell of malleable air, easy to control. 

It was such a quiet day, too. My favorite kind. Outside the fall was shaking the last leaves off of the trees, the sky was a menacing black-tinged grey, the rain relentless. People didn't walk the street that I could see from the kitchen window; They ran, umbrellas first. But inside, here, it was warm. Not just the temperature, the house had a sense of genuine human kindness over it, the kind that make you feel instantly at ease. People like me know that it a double-edged blessing. Or well, a blessing with questionable ancestry, specifically the cousin twice removed who tends to make any good situation slightly on the anxious side. You know the kind, the one where the rest of the family sits around shooting each other glances, wondering when the trouble begins. But that's the thing; Any situation that is safe will always invite the trouble. It is the only place it feels safe enough to dare make it's existence known. And the trouble never meant any trouble. And no trouble can ever be resolved if it isn't seen. 

Which was why this morning I never even made it to the coffee maker before the tears came. So unexpected, a sudden tidal wave, a flash flood. I felt safe here. So Trouble kicked my teeth in:

It was like he was in the room. Breathing all the oxygen: All that really mattered was him. His will. His wants. His thoughts. His view of the world. If you didn't agree, you would get bullied, belittled, shamed and patronized, until you caved. Not simply because you had a different opinion. But because he saw that as trying to take away his. 

I realized that was abuse. That was the rotten, twisted, and mundanely simple core of it. It was not about the beating. Not even the myriad of intricate other ways of exerting power, the manipulation, the suppression, the saying one thing, then doing another, reminding you nothing can ever be relied upon, trusted, you can never ever just breathe.

No.

The core of abuse was the utter sadistic joy of shattering another person’s very sense of self. The complete eradication of existence. But the clever one, the one where no visible murder had been committed. Come to think of it, maybe actually that was the perfect murder – the one, where a body was still walking around, even interacting with the world. But where not a trace of that original soul was there anymore. It had left the building that was the body, the body now a condemned space, too dangerous to inhabit. 

He even said it once. He stated his parenting technique as one of destroying us. Then putting us back together as he wanted us to be. Like in the military, he smiled with that smile that said that he could do anything to us, no one would lift a finger. Except he wasn’t actually exactly the stellar military personel himself, he said himself how all he wanted was to return home to his mom, not doing great with neither taking orders nor being physical. And also children aren’t actually meant to be soldiers.  

Still, I don't believe he ever meant to be mean. I love him. Of course I do, he is my Father. 

I will always love him. I will also always have to do so from very far away. Not because I want to. Because he clings to that belief that he is just another victim, he is being hurt by the evil that is me. It took me a very long time before I learned how that is such a common tecnique of abusive people everywhere, you would think it would be more commonly known. If a book existed, they would have it on page one. 1: Make them think they are hurting you, even while you are hurting them. 

It is what you hear every time a violent person put responsibility to the side with these words: You don't even know how much this is hurting me, too. 

Here's a tip to abusers everywhere: Then stop!

I do believe that also might be at the core of it; the abuser never see himself as an inflicter of pain. He truly believes he is the one being hurt. 

No matter how many times you tell him: You. Are. Hurting. Me. 

No matter if you say it as a child. Or if you say it as an adult, when he continues with the same behaviour as always. 

It is never him. It is always you. 

And that is how a culture of abuse doesn't change. The one who needs to do the work will always refuse to acknowledge he carries responsibility at all.

Oh, don't look at me, I've been in therapy since I was 15 years old, I'm 41 now. I'm doing the work. Every damn day, I'm doing the work. Looking at where I might carry the family legacy on. I praise my good fortune that I never had children, at least I know for sure I am not hurting them. Since I have none. I search for other ways I might carry pain to others. Then I search for how I carry pain to myself. Then I simply search for myself, unable to find my pieces. Like a mirror someone dropped to the floor a very long time ago, I am like shards of glass in every corner of the Universe. For safe keeping. The disappearing of Me.

I fall to the floor. The tears are stronger than me. I’m so tired. Tired of fighting this. 

*

I remember it in my mother, too, the disappearing. Not just as a child, as an adult and even worse:

We were out for dinner. I was in my thirties, maybe, living in Copenhagen. I hadn’t seen her for a very long time, because the family continuously denied the ‘issues’ we had, and refused anything was worth looking into. I was the problem, end of story.

So I kept my distance. No one can survive being other people’s problem. 

I'm not sure I actually saw her again after this:

I don’t remember if I reached out to her or she to me. I do know I was so happy to see her. For some reason I was under the impression that this meant she had finally woken up again. Like she did after my hunger strike, when she realized something was amiss, and just maybe it wasn’t me.

I thought she saw. That she finally saw. And that we could begin talking, finally, really talking, not skirting around the truth. Then healing, finding a way to belong to each other, really belong, not just saying we did.

We had a wonderful day. I loved her. I love her. I really, really love her. Of course I do, she is my mother. She is beautiful, too. A small woman, almost petite with a finely sculpted face on her small frame. I always felt like she was a lost baby bird, frail, fragile, and all I wanted to do was scoop her up and protect her.

I spent my life trying to create a home, that she would feel safe in. I only just realized this recently. I knew, I had done most things in my life to try and make her see the world wasn’t dangerous. I had driven small trucks, lived dead-broke in Paris on my own, even jumped out of a freaking honest to God real airplane in a parachute. Not a tandem. Just me, by myself. With a parachute that also didn’t open automatically, but with a string for me to pull. I did it for her.

It was like somehow I thought, that if I could only show her these things were possible, she would remember things were possible for her, too. And that if I could only create a place, where she would feel safe, she would remember she was in the world, too, and return to me.

I remember her. A few moments, rare as precious metal, she would come back. She would inhabit the body that housed her. Her eyes would spring into life.

I thought this was one of those times. I thought I saw her. We had such fun, she can be very funny. We visited the Queen’s castle in Copenhagen, saw valuable tapestries, magnificent modern art in the hallways, high ceilinged rooms, fishbone floors in precious woods. I want to say the sun was even shining, but I suspect it was probably overcast. I know we went to a wonderful little restaurant after, just her and I. We were looking at the menu, and that is when I made my mistake.

I don’t know anymore what I said exactly. It wasn’t even a full sentence, I know it was in relation to something else. I thought we were at a place where this could be spoken out loud;

That we were a family of abuse.

Silence.

Her head still down, the menu in front of her.

It was like all that was her just slipped away, like an almost imperceivable fog, lifting off of her, and disappearing down her side towards the floor. Just like that she was gone.

She didn’t look at me. She just got up. Her movements almost mechanical. I talked to her, asked her, what was going on, where was she going? She didn’t answer, I don’t think she could. Actually I don’t think she could even hear me, or that she knew I was there. She just got up, and left.

I was left behind, so shocked it took me a while to be able to move. I didn’t know what to do either. Was I supposed to stay here? Follow her? She obviously didn’t want to be near me.

Then I was hit by complete and utter fear for what might happen to her. All of a sudden I was terrified that she might die. What if this was it? What if I would never see her again? What if the last thing she remembered about me, was me saying something she didn’t like – and then she got hit by a car?

I felt an overwhelming need to make sure she knew I loved her. No matter what. I felt such a strong urge to protect her. I didn’t want this to be the last thing that happened, if one of us should drop dead.

I flew out of the chair, grabbed my coat and bag, and ran after her. I had a feeling she would be moving towards the train station to go home. And she did. I found her in the overcrowded pedestrian street in the middle of Copenhagen, just walking in short, measured steps, not fast, not slow, just one step after the other. Like it was all she could do to keep walking. I felt like I was looking at someone fighting for dear life, nothing left but sheer instinct. Or a zombie, shuffling ahead, all that made the human body alive; gone.

I called her name. No reaction. I ran.

It took me getting all the way up to her side, and touching her shoulder to make her turn around and look at me.

What I saw was one of the most petrifying things, I’d ever seen:

She didn’t recognize me. There was nothing there. Her eyes were completely and utterly empty. It was at the same time the same look I remembered growing up, and a look several levels deeper to the place, where she could survive seeing anything.

Because she didn’t see it at all. She wasn’t there.

It was the same nothingness that met me as a child when I looked at her for help, when being beaten right in front of her. The same empty eyes I looked into, when I approached her after. When I asked her why? Why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you stop him hitting me?

- What do you mean, she would say.

- Hitting you? Haha, you’re so silly. He would never do that. Your Dad loves you!

Like somehow it was my fault. I was making stuff up. I was saying horrible things about that wonderful man, who loved me. Why would I do that. Haha. So funny. I must be so confused. Her husband didn’t hit. Except that he did. Right in front of her. She saw everything. Except she didn’t. She had gone somewhere completely different, while the thing she couldn’t see was happening. Now, here, in the middle of Copenhagen, years and years later, she had done the same.

I stuttered how I loved her, and how I didn’t want this to be the last thing we ever said to each other, and if there was anything I could do.

She just turned from me, and resumed walking.

I stood there, dumbfounded, looking at her walk away from me.

I should have followed her, even from a distance. I should have made sure she got on the train. I should have called someone. Even now all I can think is did she have her coat on?

But somehow I knew that in this instant I was indeed the problem. All she needed right now was to walk away from me. She perceived me as a threat. A threat to the carefully managed idea she had built, of what her world was – I had ripped it apart with one sentence. So she had fled. So far away, her physical body and the pure instincts that made it function were all that remained.

I don’t think I have ever witnessed anything just so heartbreaking. It wasn’t just the grown woman in front of me. It was the tiny child she once was, who herself had faced such vicious abuse that she had needed to create extremely deep and extremely pervasive protective measures that independently kicked in when it perceived danger. That was what I had witnessed. Pure protection from perceived harm.

It was a walking suicide. A disappearing of the Self, but with the body still standing. Everything that made a person, gone.

Only in her disappearing she didn't go alone. She took her with her. Every time. Not as in we were together. But as in I vanished every time empty eyes looked at me. I stopped being a person, I became air. When eyes see nothing, what they look at isn't there. It was the seeing version of the philosophical dilemma of whether or not a falling tree made a sound if no one was there to hear it; Do you exist if no one is there to see you? I don't think you do. My Disappearing Mother made me invisble, too, every time she went away, her body just a house now abandoned.

*

I told my psychologist about it once. She explained the technical term to me: Dissociation. How a person can take a situation and cut it completely out of their perception, like it literally never happened. To them. To them it really never happened. Not to their conscious mind. It would always be there, somewhere, in the depths. But they would have the ability to simply close that part off, so they wouldn’t have to know it. It was a well-known survival mechanism, and an effective one, too.

For a person to have that kind of survival mechanisms in place, they need to have been in situations very, very early in life that required extreme protective measures, she said.

It breaks my heart into tiny pieces like a strand of pearls being ripped and the single orbs just hopping and dancing every which way to disappear in unknown crevasses of floors and under old walls. My mother. Why didn’t anyone help her? Why couldn’t I?

*

The tears come in convulsions now. Like tsunami waves of generations worth of sorrow. I'm not crying for me. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I'm crying for my mother. I'm crying for all the little girls who disappear. And for all the little boys forced to become something they were never. 

I desperately try to make the tears stop, while also wanting them to just come. Just let them fall, like a rainstorm after the draught. Needed. Not of me. It's still raining outside, too.

* 

I manage to sit back onto my shins next to the fridge. My face soaked in salt water. I can taste it in the back of my throat. I remember this, too. That same taste, that same sorrow, from the endless nights I spend alone, sent to my room as a girl. Really, he shunned me years and years before he finally uttered the sentence that I didn’t fit it in, and he was now sending me away for good. I was never let in in the first place, not really. Not in any real capacity, as a real human being. I realize that no one there were ever capable of that, all abandoned themselves.

I also realize, there on the kitchen floor, that the only ones afraid of the unending ocean of tears are the ones scared of what they mind find, once the tears are done falling. I’m ready now. I’m ready to see what is waiting, once the waters have drained.

It's so simple, what is waiting for me on the empty ocean floor, now void of waters:

I am free. They can’t touch me anymore. The final thing that he could use to control me was the apartment, I left behind when I went away on this journey. 

People had been telling me for years now that I should really get over it, childhood far behind me. I had started to think that maybe this was one of those things where only the ones afflicted could know the pervasiveness. How it was never about the childhood at all. It was about abuse.

You can't actually get over something that hasn't yet ended.

But now, at the age of 41 years, I was, for the first time of my life, really, truly free. 

Then I realize that of course I always was.

I remember that one time, when I hit him back. I was so small I remember punching so far up, I was standing on tip toe and still barely reached a chin. But I did it, he got my fist. And my words:

- You don’t EVER touch me again.

He didn't, he actually didn't. From then on he upped his game on the phychological warfare, which was so much worse.

But even more I remember being beaten so bad I felt myself slipping away. I was so scared, there was nothing I could do, he had me in such a tight grip, I couldn’t breathe, I was under no delusion that this was it, he just needed to squeeze a hair more and I would be physically dead. In that moment I knew:

They can do anything they want to your body. But they will never be able to touch ME. I am not my body.

It was such freedom. I wasn’t scared anymore. Not of death, not of violence, not of any physical threat. It could never reach ME. Never hurt ME. I was something completely apart from the physical world.

I think he felt it, too. I think that was the moment he also realized. He would never be able to destroy me. I was stronger than him.

I do think it made it even worse. That it made him want to even more.

And then there was the part of me that held this up as a shield for years: They may have destroyed me, but they didn’t break me. I’m not broken.

On one level I was right. On the spiritual level, nothing can ever be broken. Because this world never existed in the first place, it is all but a dream, and we are all one soul, safe and happy at home with God.

But on the level of this world, these times, where the knowledge of God slips from our fingers, it was nothing but simple protection: 

I don’t think I’ve ever met a child of abuse who didn’t at some point utter the words: 

- Ha, but they didn’t break me! I'm not broken!

It's always a lie. An understandable one. Because how do we continue on with life with the realization that not only were we viciously abused, but they also succeeded in what they were trying to do; They destroyed us, they broke us, we were exactly as weak as they said.

But being broken is not being weak. It’s being human. 

Being broken is not a bad thing, that is just another one of their lies.

There is nothing wrong with us. There is nothing wrong with you, if this happened to you, too. Even broken as all hell, there is nothing wrong with you.

No matter how many times they say it, there is nothing wrong with us. For me, yes, I have a ton of things I struggle with. I have a life time of work to do. But I am not unreliable. I am not a liar. I am not crazy. Don't believe me? Ask the ton of therapists I've been seeing through the years. Depression, anxiety, even personality disorders - they do not make you an unfit human being. I don't even accept the term mental illness. It will always imply that truly you're a little cuckoo, unstable, not to be trusted completely.

I don't buy it. 

I'm not mentally ill. I have simply been alive. And it broke me.

So what? I'm dealing with it. Every day of my life, I am dealing with it, and I will be as long as I am still breathing. 

Simply put:

I am broken, and I am human. That is what abuse took from me, the sense of being at all. Of existing in the world. Being a real human being. But I am. Even if it's going to take me a life time to truly know that.

All of my favorite people are broken. 

We are not the problem. 

What's going to save us is being broken and being honest about it. 

In a society that shames you for being anything than picture perfect, being honest about the cracked pieces is a radical act. 

And I'm done. I'm done accepting that I have anything to be ashamed of, just because I have to live a reality that might be different from most. I need to be able to speak this reality.

So I am being radically honest:

I am broken. I am damaged. I am deeply depressed, wildly anxious, terrified of other people, while simultaneously lonely on a levels frankly not really compatible with breathing. Then there is the physical pain, like having a constant invisible companion with a really big baseball bat randomly knocking my head in, reminding me that the pain I might have ever felt emotionally now is doing me the favor of reminding me of it's presence by adding a very real physical component as well.

Is it really a surprise that thoughts of suicide happen to gently knock on the door that is my conscious mind on an almost daily basis?

Still - I'm not the problem.

A culture that allows people to break other people - THAT is the problem.

A culture that then continues on to put the responsibility on the ones who were broken by shaming them for being affected by it - THAT is the problem.

A culture that even shames the ones who never lived through abuse or the myriad of other ways life can break you, but were simply labelled 'too sensitive'. As if being a sensitive human could ever be a negative thing? THAT is the problem. 

That is also the gates to heaven right there. Because realizing you’re broken and that it is ok, is the key to doing something about it. That is were the healing begins.

*

Rex the Rescue Dog is turning in circles around himself trying to make the blanket under him as cozy as possible. In the end he decides I need to do something about it. He stares at me. Just sits there and stares at me. Then he starts growling in his sing song voice, it sounds really close to him saying 'Human, this is your problem, do something about it'. I lift the blanket up a little for him, and he scoots into the little cave, lies down, looks at me again: 'Now let it go'. I do, and he is completely hidden under his blanket, if you didn't know a dog was there, you would sit down right on top of him. It's still raining outside. I should really get up, go out, see the art museum, get some ramen down the street. I can't move. I just want to sit here, not having to deal with other humans today at all, me and Rex hiding from the world. Sometimes that is allowed. Sometimes you need to hide to find a little strenght to live another day.

* 

I hear the voice of my family ring through my head. That happens all the time. It migt be years since I saw them last, but their voices are ever present. Today they are loud: 'You're such a drama queen' they're yelling. 'You think everything is about you. If we're not with you, we're against you'. That's especially my brother. For reasons I will probably never truly understand, he always felt like me trying to talk about how our way of being a family was harmful to all of us, was really an attack in itself. Designed to take something away from him. Maybe he thought of himself as the protector of a family that he felt I was trying to tear apart. But I never wanted the family to be torn, I wanted the abuse to stop, and I wanted us to stop pretending we weren't living on the edge of a volcano, the thing that was actually destroying us, never talked about. He wanted me to stop talking. So everything could go back to normal. Except it wasn't normal. Maybe that is another form of abuse in itself, making the abnormal normal. That way it carries on into the next generation, the hurt of the father passed along to the next child down the line. Maybe it was a way of trying to protect me. Knowing that talking about it would only awaken anger, never a moment of actual presence, of listening, of taking in the fact that someone was saying hurt happened.

This is the story of all of us. Maybe your family didn’t take it as far as the one I grew up in, but make no mistake. Please. Closing the eyes to how this is ever present for all of us on the level of society will only be closing your eyes for what is right in front of you. The exact same structures are alive and thriving is society at large. This is all of us. It is not me airing my people's dirty laundry. It's not me wanting attention. It's not me feeling sorry for myself. This is not even a memoir. 

This is not about me. 

I am simply pointing to a structure by pointing to a place it shines clearly through the crap normally hiding it from pain sight. I am pointing to the destructive ways of the patriarchy by showing you how it works in the micro cosmos that is the abusive family.

But patriachy is all of us. It is the structures of our societies all over this entire planet. Sexism in the work place. Harassment of women on the streets. Groping and touching inappropriately and unwantedly everywhere from in the metro to in the family itself. Sexual violence. Or 'just' violence to remind the ladies that we might think we have agency, but physically we can be literally beat. And it's not just violence either. Nor is it 'just' the silencing of women's voices. It's the silencing of men as well. Of course it is. It is hurting all of us, frankly it is destroying our boys and men by assigning roles to them simply because of their gender. No man is born an abuser. We give him that role. We tell him to not 'cry as a girl' and to 'take it as a man'. We let him talk over girls. We excuse his hitting with him just being in love with the girl he strikes. No, I am not saying all men are abusers. Let's not derail by going down that road. It never leads to anywhere but to more of the same. I believe in men. And women. And all of us. But we help no one by continuing on down the same path we have walked always. It is time to walk a different one, it is time to look at the uncomfortable truths, to look at where the structures we have called 'normal' are actually destroying us. Even the 'good guys'. Let's stop pretending that they are not part of it as well, as long as they pretend they aren't. Because that simple act, the 'but I didn't do anything wrong' is such a glaring privilegde in itself - no woman could ever just lean back and say that well she was never affected, she never had to think about her safety when walking down a deserted city street the hairs on the back of her neck standing in sudden fear. Let's stop letting the guys off the hook. Even if we backwardsly think we're being nice to them. Let's trust men to be capable of so much more. This is not about a women's liberation fight. This is really about us all. Let's do better by the men as well.  

*

My mother had prominent parents. Her Dad was rescuing the world. I remember the tales of him, told by his children, Jesus on the Cross couldn't hold a candle to his work. I double checked, and he really did amazing things: Right after the Second World War he went down into Germany to work as a medical doctor in the refugee camps for what would become the UN. Then he landed a job as a doctor on Greenland, the Danish colony in the north. That is where my mother was born, in 1949, on a frozen March day in a tiny community settled in permafrost. Her Father the only doctor there, on the frontier, brave and a help to those in need. The thing is. I started asking around. I found other sources to the jealously guarded tales of the Great Doctor. And that moment was when the gospel I was brought up with on the Saintly figure that was my Grandfather began to reveal cracks their the shiny surfaces: 

First clue was this: He was the only doctor in a place unreachable by anything but random boats and dog sleds. Yet when his wife went into labor with his first child, my mother, he set off for a hunting trip on the inland ice. This was the time before satelite phones, no one would be able to reach him, should something go wrong. In case his wife needed a doctor, him being the only one, he would be impossible to reach. Consider that one for a moment. Always struck me as curious. 

Not long after the birth of his first child, he had found another war. Biafra in Africa was in flames, people murdered and doctors needed in the extreme. His wife decided to come, too. Maybe she was anxious to lend her own skills to the good work, she was a trained medical nurse, I do believe that is how they met in the first place. He didn't want her to come. She knew her marriage was at stake, only a few years into it, apparently he had loose hands when away - she insisted. They went together. Leaving their baby girl behind, my mother barely two years old. She ended up with kind hearted people back in Denmark. Not because her parents asked them to take their daughter. But because these people couldn't bear for her to end up in the orphanaged her parents planned to leave her at while they were gone. No one in the family could take her. Her Father refused to let her stay with her maternal grandmother, he despised his Mother in Law for reasons I don't know. Apparently none of his wife's siblings were ok either. Somehow I doubt the problem was with them. His own mother couldn't take her either, I believe she was ill. And his brother, his only sibling, had just become a parent himself; his wife had her hands full with her newborn. In the end it was HER parents who took my mother. Complete strangers to the little girl. The parents of her paternal uncle's wife. While her own parents took off to save the world, she ended up for at least 6 months with strangers in the north of Denmark. At an age where time is a concept you have yet to wrap your head around. For all she knew, they left her for good.

My Disappearing Mother had Disappearing Parents.

*

How can childhood ever be said to be over, when the person living it never got to truly grow up? When they instead got trapped in place, frozen forever in that age where their Original Trauma caught them, petrified and shattered beyond the capability to ever be wholly in the world again? My Disappearing Mother always the child left behind, in chok that the parents who were supposed to keep her safe, instead just up and left her with strangers? So now instead of being left behind, she did the leaving herself? Not physically, but with all of her being. One moment there, the next gone.

*

The tears come less intensely now. The skin tight from salt drying. The nose feeling like I've been diving deep under water.  

This is surviving the war that is living through constant abuse in a family: Living with all of it at once. 

Knowing the war is over, while also knowing it will always be raging inside of you. Knowing that all the people offering 'solutions' or 'treatment' really don't know. No offense. But all of those things are band-aids. There is no solution except simply accepting what is. 

And that the only thing that will ever help on any real level is unabashed awakening. The final and true knowing that truly behind all of it, there was always only Light. 

Maybe that is just another mode of denial. Who really knows? 

All I know is that even despite everything that ever happened to me, being born into abuse, being kicked out at 15, getting myself through high school, then journalism school, falling chronically ill, loosing everything; my health, my job, my love, then all of my family finally, and most friends along the way, facing foreclosure, poverty, death. Even despite all of it, one thing shimmered with a stubborn light right next to it all. It was this simple knowing:

There is always also Light.