How I Learned To Hug

On ending the cycle and starting to love

I have heard it said that before you are born, you choose the parents who will mold and shape you once you enter the world. I used to wonder whether I was adopted. Whether the nice man and woman I had chosen had somehow been wiped off the face of the Earth before my parents took me in. I knew that wasn’t the case because I look like the two of them. And I used to believe that the similarities ended there, but now, as an adult, I know that I'm more like them than not.

My earliest memory of my mother is one of me combing her hair. I remember a time when if she had a headache, I had one too. She was never the most affectionate of people, but when we were kids, she would hug and kiss us randomly. As we got older, she told us that it was "too hot for all that." "Get away from me, it’s too hot!" she would say. After that, hugs and kisses came on birthdays, Christmas and other gift giving holidays (i.e., Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and my parents’ anniversary).

There were so many times when I needed my mother and I could not reach her. One particular instance that comes to mind is when I first gave birth to my son, Ryan. I had just started a job a year prior so my maternity leave was only a month and a half. Ryan’s dad, Max, was a diabetic and he’d just finished a stint in the hospital that lasted two weeks and would need a few more months of rehab before he could be on his feet again (literally on his feet, since he’d just had foot surgery). Translation: He had no job, no income.

I’d just about maxed out my credit cards, bills had a stranglehold on me, and my first disability check had just arrived — it was a paltry sum which wouldn’t even cover the light bill. I had to go back to work, and with Ryan’s dad outta commission, my mom was the natural choice for a babysitter.

I was barely back at work for a week when I get a call from my dad. I needed to pay babysitting, he said. I let him know that I would be glad to help out, but I was in bind. Could they allow me another couple of weeks to get on my feet? He understood, he said.

Fast forward to the next day and, you guessed it, I got another call from my dad. My mother is screaming in the background that I need to pay for babysitting; no one gets their child watched for free in this country, blah blah blah. I needed to pause for a moment. Was this really happening? Just last week Max and I didn’t eat MOM, because I needed to buy baby formula and, with my cards maxed out, I used the little money I had left, MOM. And so Max’s blood sugar dipped and he was incoherent and didn’t know who/where/what he was and we called the ambulance MOM. Could you please HELP me instead of hammering me into the ground? MOM?

My pleas fell on deaf ears. I keep thinking I forgave her for that as I have forgiven her for the many other times she let me fall on my face. That one is tough though.

I can normally attribute everything she does to her lineage. My mother was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. She comes from a really large family, sixteen brothers and sisters. When she was eight years old, her parents took her out of school and made her go to work. This was DR in the ‘50s. I'm not entirely sure what an right eight year old can do for work. Nevertheless, she had to help out to support her brothers and sisters. Aside from that, her story is pretty much the same as mine. No hugs or kisses, no I love you’s — you were only as good as what you brought in.

At some point, my mom met and married my father — a man who had his parents taken from him at a very young age and was raised by an older brother and an aunt. I want to say they fell in love and got married, but how do two people who don’t have a clue about what love is fall in love? Yet they got married and had three children.

Not long into our childhoods, the random affection stopped. She was never affectionate with my father, at least not in front of us. And so we grew up, not really knowing what love was — three empty people perpetuating a cycle. The only emotions that my brother, sister and I could adequately demonstrate were anger and fear. I, for one, had never seen a demonstration of true happiness, and I’m not talking about the fake laughter they would put on like a laugh track whenever they had company.

You’re probably wondering how people who don’t have joy live life. Well, the answer is simple: Alcohol. Alcohol fueled their arguments, their good times, and their not so good times. My mother wasn’t an alcoholic per se. She didn’t drink every day, and even when she did drink, she seemingly never got drunk. But those were the only times she wasn’t yelling — on the weekend, when she had some drinks.

I couldn’t stand alcohol, even though we were allowed to drink it. In DR you could have a beer in your hand as young as seven, if you could stand the taste. My drug of choice? Food. It was the only time I could make the anxiety stop. I quickly learned that if I ate enough, I got this weird buzzing calmness and my thoughts would disappear. As an adult, I struggled with anxiety, depression, and bulimia. I created a child with a man I didn’t love. I was an empty woman with no love that now had a child.

Then (when Ryan was around four years old), something in me snapped. Life had to be different than the one I was living. It HAD to be! So I took a few steps back and imagined myself back when I still had love. Back when it was okay to cry without someone telling me that crying was a weakness. Back when I wasn’t afraid to give a hug, back to when kisses weren’t met with rejection. I imagined that the little brown girl in the strawberry shortcake dress and afro was reaching for a hug. And I hugged her. I hugged her and I told her everything was going to be alright. Every time I found myself dying a little, I’d hug my little girl. I hugged myself back to life.

My relationship with my mother is still a strange one. I want to have a connection with her and I've put that out there. I forgave her and still forgive her for the times when she pushes me away and attempts to manipulate me emotionally. I forgive her and then I go home and hug my son. I tell him I love him and that everything is going to be alright. I become the love I wanted to receive from her and I give it freely, willingly, and happily to everyone around me. It comes across in everything I say and everything I do. And in that small shift, the cycle is broken.

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