An Open Letter to My Mother

There is something wrong when you feel safer walking the midnight streets alone than sitting in your own home.

I have been afraid since a child, ever since you yelled at me for my sister’s tantrums and I felt the stinging red dancing on my cheek. I have been afraid since your yelling at the top of your lungs about how we are disappointments, and you closed yourself off for days behind the fortress of your locked wooden door which was steel to your young children. I have been afraid since the hot summer day two years ago when you became enraged and smashed the printer, keyboard, and laptop, threatening to smash my head with heavy objects, leaving a path of destruction as your shrill tones echoed across the quiet house.

Anything is a trigger — the length of my sister’s shorts, the news, the grave affront of being asked to go to a party for friends you despise. After your screams rip through the air, there is a deafening hush. You are closed off again, and I am trapped in my mind, trying to escape by pretending that I am someone, anyone else, perhaps a burglar as I creep through the house. I feel like one, a burglar who does not belong. When you close off, I spend my days worrying at school, what waits? A screamed lecture? More days of radio silence with no warning? Divorce? Murder? There is no rest for my paranoid mind.

You blame me for my kind nature, a nature that has been shaped out of fear of disappointing you. Every decision I make, from how I dress myself in the morning, to panicking when I spend a minute too long to get to the car afterschool, to lying awake crying about how I could be better when I was trying my best. You blame me for your belief that we see you as worthless, when you are the sole one who insists that you are. I try to show my appreciation, with the whispered thank you’s, the carefully chosen gifts you refuse, the silent perfection I strive for, yet I, or someone else, will disappoint and the shallow perfection of our home will once again become ironic in its empty stillness.

You expect me to always be cheerful, respectful, and have a good attitude. Yet in the same breath, you criticize me for things beyond my control, you belittle my successes, and you say I am to blame for my naiveté, a naiveté born out of your desire to micromanage my actions. In months, I will be thrust into adulthood, struggling to make decisions by myself because of this. Yet in the same breath, your temper boils hot as an incinerator, scorching my self-esteem and soul. You bitch and moan, throwing tantrums like a toddler and describing us as the childish, unworldly ones.

In between the screams and the silence, there is good. There is generosity and sacrifice in your care, when you drive us everywhere and make sure we eat well and try to teach us life lessons, in the little every day gestures. In these moments, I can’t help but think how my life is amazing, that I have a family that loves and cares for me so much, and I am content. I am incredibly privileged — how could I ever consider myself even remotely similar to a victim? But as my personal ocean poured down my face the next day, I pondered, confused by my conflicting emotions.

I have put up a front for so long, that my front has become me. But like every wall, it crumbles. I tried, once, to tell you, but you dismissed me and said I was childish for ever believing that you had hurt me.

I can never tell you this, because I will always be too afraid. I love you, but more than that I fear you. I crave your validation, but you will never accept me for who I am. You cannot even yet accept who you are.