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The Real Reason I Cannot Connect With My Mother
The ‘mother wound’ leaves scars that take a lifetime to heal
CW: This post has content related to suicide.
I was about four years old as my memory was situated in a rental apartment we lived in before we moved into our own home when I was five. I was too young to comprehend many things, but my memory of what happened is vivid. It was a memory of my mother drinking the cleaning solution from under the kitchen sink, her body falling to the ground, and then being taken away.
The next memory is from when I was in third grade. One evening, after I had finished my after-school dance lessons, my mother asked my brother to go to the pharmacy to buy 30 pills. She had written the name of the medicine for him to show the pharmacists. Back in the ‘80s, in India, a doctor’s prescription was not required to get medicines.
My brother was twelve and he ran such errands all the time. When he returned, our mother popped all 30 pills at once. Little did he know that they were sleeping pills or what she would do with them.
My father, who was somewhere in the house minding his own business, was alerted to the change in her disposition and rushed her to the hospital. The next thing I remember is packing my school uniform and going over to my…
