Sometimes I’m afraid that the people who hurt me will find me and do it all over again.
I know the facts in my head. They don’t have power over me anymore. I’m an adult who has full control over my choices. I don’t even live in the same state as them anymore.
But then there are the realities in my heart. Her voice comes up every now and again telling me I’m not good enough and I’ll never get what I want. I feel like a child more than I want to admit struggling to find the words to explain my unexplainable rush of emotions and reactions. I fear that they’ll find me and somehow crumble this life that I’ve built for myself.
So there’s that. The battle between head and heart. The unavoidable and irrational internal struggle you face when your worthiness has been put into question. Who am I?
Every single time I coached someone I would tell them, “You have an A to B. You have been on a journey whether you realize it or not. You’ve gone through something. You’ve overcome something. Small or big, you did it. You’ve gone from A to B. I’m going to help you find it. So that someone else can learn from your experience. So you can see how worthwhile you are and how many lessons you have to share from what you’ve been through. Your past is their present. Your present is their future. You don’t have to know where you’re going, but know that you’ve already been somewhere.” And then we did it. We uncovered the journey they weren’t even aware of.
Thing is, I don’t ever really think I took the time to do this for myself. I avoided myself with such precision. I helped others to avoid helping myself. My journey? I’m still learning it. I’m still realizing that I’ve been through something and am on the other side of it. Sometimes I think I’m still in the thick of it struggling to emerge. This piece is an exploration of how I’ve made it.
I think I write because my mom wrote. I don’t know if a skill set is a hereditary trait but I’m taking it. I used to have a piece of her writing. It was a scribbled paragraph on a yellow page torn from what looked like a legal pad. She wrote about going to the movies. It was so simple and yet…
She talked about all of the different kinds of people you met - who annoyed the crap out of you. The person wearing a really tall hat obstructing your view. The person a few seats down who already knew the ending and was sharing spoilers (sorry mom - I do that sometimes). Or the kids in the back being loud and throwing popcorn. She went into detail and she was honest.
That’s all I got. And somehow it was enough. Mom died when I was seven. I used to say she died when I was six. Did I want her to be gone longer than she already was? I don’t know. We lived with my dad’s parents. My best friend was my grandfather - poppa. I clung to him after it happened. I remember an ambulance. I remember me being mean to her. It’s like any good memory I had of her at that moment was wiped clean and what played on repeat in my head was how I bit her when she tried to put vaseline on my skin. I don’t know how old I was.
They told me it was liver failure. I remember trying to figure out why years later and still I don’t have answers. “She took too many vitamins,” they said. “But she didn’t even drink,” I protested.
No one told me anything. No one ever wanted to share the truth. Maybe that’s why I do now. My dad loved my mom, that I knew. And she was madly in love with him. So much that she left her family. She was Jewish and he was Catholic. Mom’s family shut her out when she decided to marry dad. She’s not even buried with her family. No one’s next to her in the ground.
I didn't realize until this very moment how similar pieces of our journeys were. My family didn’t end up shutting me out because I ran away with someone they disapproved of. But they shut me out anyway. Mom, I never knew how much that must have hurt you. I do now.
I knew I acted out after she died. Poppa and mammy (my grandmother) had to discipline me all the time. I remember lying when poppa asked me if I had carved into his favorite wooden table. I said I didn’t do it, but I did. And then there were the times I flushed mammy’s cigarettes down the toilet. That majestic chainsmoker leapt out of her rocking chair next to the kitchen vent and chased me around our large dining table. She always caught me. I misbehaved. They loved me.
To the best of my memory, dad was pretty absent for a while after mom was gone. He went to clubs a lot. A white man in his forties going clubbing. Who the fuck do you meet at clubs at that age? He met my stepmom. He told her she had nice feet and the rest is history.
It all happened too fast. I don’t remember exactly when he met her, but it was just before mammy died. I know that because he asked for her blessing to be with this new woman not long before my grandmother would die. Dad had gotten her pregnant. I was supposed to be excited.
I remember when I first met her. I went to the mall with dad to pick out a “hello, welcome to our life” present. I picked a stuffed tiger. I got one for myself too. I don’t know why I did that. Maybe I needed something to hold on to too because it would be “goodbye, leave your old life behind.”
My half brother was born in 1999. Mom died in 1996. It wasn’t enough time. “It just wasn’t enough time,” I kept telling myself. I wanted dad to be happy but I also wanted him to be mine. Mom was gone, he was all I had left. I remember finishing up fourth grade at my school up the street from my grandparent’s house. I remember starting fifth grade at a new school in a new town living in this new woman’s house with a new sibling. And it was all supposed to be okay.
Before my brother was born I had to call her “mom.” They didn’t eventually get married until my brother was 2, but I had to call her “mom” before we even moved in with her. That’s just how it was supposed to be. My days of watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer were gone because that wasn’t appropriate. My days of sitting with my feet on the couch were gone because that would get the nice furniture dirty. My days of wearing what I wanted were gone because I had to look like a nice, presentable young lady. My days of getting compliments were gone because I wasn’t supposed to be more special than someone else. My days of being carefree, unfiltered and myself were gone because it was time to be respectful, well-behaved, polite and someone else.
I didn’t know how to grieve and I didn’t know how to be in this new world. Dad would beg and plead with me over the years to make it work. There was always this pressure. I started caring about school because it was the only thing I could control. Kids made fun of me because I was such a teacher’s pet but I think I just wanted someone somewhere to let me know I was doing a good job. I know something shifted in me when I was about to turn in my Britney Spears timeline, but then saw everyone else’s “smart” timelines and ripped mine up and said I forgot it.
The next day I handed in something about Albert Einstein or Walt Disney. Everything I was when my mom was alive had to go. The person I was then couldn’t be anymore. Dad said we had to move on. “This is your new mom Diane.” That was the start of all the faulty thinking. Forcing something to be good and be right when the pieces won’t fit will only cause heartbreak in the end and that’s what happened. I only loved her because dad did, but when I was finally honest with myself years later, I never really felt anything at all. And that was the biggest sin I could commit in their eyes. I couldn’t love my mother and there was something wrong with me.
It wasn’t until I was out of that situation, living on my own, that I learned that it was absolutely okay for me to not love her because she wasn’t actually my mother and that there was actually nothing wrong with me. But rewriting a story you’ve learned to believe about yourself for over a decade takes a really long time. From 1999 to 2010 I lived with my dad and stepmother.
For 11 years I believed I was a piece of shit. More than worrying about grades and more than worrying about guys, I was plagued with a gnawing inside that there was something detrimentally wrong with me because I couldn’t love this woman my dad was in love with.
I hated going home after school. I hated being in that house. My brother was actually my only solace. I knew we were only half-blooded siblings, but we had some sort of bond. And he was stuck in the middle of all the shit. She was his mom. He was his dad. How could he get it?
She wasn’t my mom. I wanted to scream it out but it was just a nagging reality that wouldn’t leave the back of my mind - and I tried to push it away. “Diane, this is your new life. You have to love her. Why can’t you love her?” I only repeated the bullshit I was told by them. Every car ride from middle school through the first few years of college my dad would push it. He wouldn’t ask me about what my hopes and dreams were or what I wanted or how I was doing. It was always, “Diane, why can’t you do this for me? Why can’t you love your mother? It’s not that hard. She’s done everything for you. You have to make it work. We can’t keep doing this…” on repeat.
I did everything they wanted. I gave hugs and I kissed them good morning and good night. I got good grades and didn’t brag. I never dated or broke any rules. I also couldn’t get out. They had full control. No one would teach me how to drive. All the money I ever made from jobs went to them. And when I couldn’t work I had to watch my brother. And as the years went on, they got at me for the littlest things. The window between how little and petty they were got smaller with time. From not being home on time to meet the drape installers to not taking out the bathroom garbage or putting on pajamas after I showered or having a hole in my pants. Repercussions went from sitting me down at the kitchen table to have a conversation to taking away the little social life I did have. It didn’t matter how old I was - I was always the child and I had to be respectful. It all eventually bubbled over to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore.
I teeter-tottered between being a “good daughter” and being done with this shit. There were such moments of clarity where a speck of the old me would surface and say “what the fuck are you doing?” Those moments were quickly eclipsed with the reality that this is your life and you have to make this work. “Just make it work.” Conversations turned into screaming matches.
I cried and I wanted to die. I wanted something to happen to me, so maybe then they would care. When they sat me down to talk, they’d come at me with verbal daggers. And when I’d cry they’d push it even farther, “Wash your face. Stop manipulating us with your tears. Crying is for wedding and funerals. We’re not saying anything that’s hurting you.” But it was, hurting.
“We’re not teaching her to drive because she’s too clumsy. She can’t even walk, she’s obviously going to get into an accident and we’re not putting her on our insurance. And she doesn’t work, so she can’t get her own. So she’s not driving.”
“Don’t give her any compliments - her head doesn’t need to get any bigger.” “Why are you dressed like that? Do you want people to think that no one takes care of you?”
The little jibs and jabs here and there got bigger and more hurtful with time. They turned into, “You’re going to end up alone. No one’s going to love you. If you didn’t meet me, you’d be on the street right now. You’d have these kids and you’d be on drugs. You’d be nothing without me.”
I used to think I was losing my mind. I think I had Stockholm syndrome. I went from hating my abuser to wanting to protect them. I fooled myself into thinking I made up all of these things, but they were truth. I couldn’t make them up. And everyone I knew was so good at hiding the truth.
But when I spoke the truth and told the very few people I trusted what was going on, they gave me a funny look. And every time they told me that what was happening was wrong - I pulled away. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, this is my life.” I drowned them out because I didn’t want to admit how much I was drowning myself. And if I actually admitted the truth to myself of what was happening, I’d be so overwhelmed because I had to go back to it. I had no way out. I couldn’t see a way out. So I stayed and it just continued to get worse.
The more dad disagreed with her, the more she’d come at him. It wasn’t just me - she’d say we were both ganging up on her and, at the same time, leaving her out. We couldn’t have a father-daughter relationship without her. You’d think a blended family would acknowledge the fact that they are blended and things are going to be messy and confusing and might not work how you want them to. But real love works through that and navigates it. This wasn’t that kind of love.
This was a “you do this for me, or I’ll hate you forever” kind of conditional love. It became a “choose Diane or choose your wife” ultimatum and I wasn’t the one delivering it. She threatened to leave him. She told him he’d be nothing without her. The dad I knew was fast slipping away.
He chose her. I don’t blame him. I faded into the background. I just wanted to disappear. I didn’t want to be a single part of this fucked up situation, but I still had no out until I did. After I turned 18, things escalated pretty fast. She said she was done “trying to have a relationship with me.”
From that point on, I would have to prove myself. I’d have to make an effort to love her which had to measure up to her satisfaction. Dad was still battling with himself at this point. When he pleaded for me to love her, it was like watching an innocent man plead for his life behind bars.
He was stuck in a decision he had made, and there was no way out for him. I was his only hope for things to get better. I had always tried to love her for him, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep living without actually feeling life in my bones anymore. I don’t remember when I quite lost it. I think it was a slow build-up over time. It was the time I couldn’t take voice lessons anymore because it was something dad let me do that she wasn’t a part of. It was the years I had to take piano lessons I hated because it was something they decided on together. It was the moment they told me I couldn’t do any more high school plays because it was a waste of time and I was only in the chorus - even though dancing on that stage, sweating bullets, never being so thirsty before was the best fucking time of my life. What happened to the little girl who came out of her room one day with all of her underwear piled on and as she took off each one said, “Fuck underwear! I hate underwear!” I wanted that weird little carefree girl back in my life so bad.
I think the worst part of it all - more than her directly coming at me - was her pretending that I didn’t exist except when it was convenient and she had to make an appearance. At church, she’d say “this is my daughter” and at the restaurant afterwards she would talk to everyone except me. She would literally not listen when I spoke to her, so I was speaking to myself.
I was so confused all of the time. What had I done wrong? This was the bane of my existence.
I couldn’t stay on campus at college. I had to come home after one year because I didn’t say “I love you” enough on phone calls home. I didn’t fight that decision. It was like I didn’t have a say in my own life anymore. I just let it happen. “Okay, I’ll stay at home.” I commuted via train to a local campus for the next few years. When I got a job at a law firm because I decided that was the smart move to make with my life, I was excited. I stayed late that day to celebrate with some friends. That was a stupid decision. I took a later train back and instead of being happy for me, dad was pissed because his wife was pissed because somehow I’d messed up everyone’s schedule that day. They didn’t care I got a job, but every cent I made went to them.
I was going to be a bridesmaid in my friend’s wedding. I got a dress and went to the rehearsals and everything. The wedding was coming up and there was one more event to show up for. I carpooled with a friend there. We had a great time and when he dropped me off home, they were waiting for me. “Diane, you didn’t take out the bathroom trash. Your aunt and uncle came over and they saw your business in the trash.” She looked at my dad because at this point he was the one who was supposed to deal out the punishments. “You can’t go to the wedding.”
I was about to fucking lose it at that point. It was 2010 and I was 21 and it was the start of the year that I would leave for good. I went into the start of my last semester at college. I decided to start a newspaper because I needed some sort of creative outlet to get past all of the shit I had to deal with at home. And then they took that away from me too. Why did I tell them about it?
Our first edition came out and I left a copy of it on the kitchen table at home before I left for school. I didn’t have to do that, I had to keep reminding myself of that. But I did it. When I got home, that was it. They sat down me down at that fucking kitchen table - the meeting place of every dysfunctional conversation turned fight - and started in. “Diane, what is this?” “It’s the newspaper I made.” “Diane, you dropped this on the table without even telling us about it. You didn’t even present it to us. That’s unacceptable. Go into your room, take this with you, and come out when you’re ready to show it to us.” I went into that fucking room. I seethed and then I breathed. I went outside. “Mom, Dad. This is a newspaper I made. I want to show it to you.” “Thank you Diane, we’ll take a look at it.” I went back into my room and sat in my closet where I kept a little desk and my computer. I opened up a Word doc and that little girl who hated wearing underwear erupted. “FUCK THIS! If you stay here you will die. You need to leave.”
Plans had already been set into motion. We had been meeting with a pastor from church. Our case had been passed from one pastor to another because no one understood what was actually happening. I couldn’t even feel safe in church anymore because I thought people were staring at me. “That’s the girl who can’t love her parents and does evil things.” I had learned to beat on myself real good by this point. But this one pastor was different. He took my side.
I didn’t know what it meant to have someone believe in me anymore. It was strange. I told him about the deadline they had given me. They said I had until the first month of 2011 to love my mother or I’d have to leave. I told him I was talking to the few friends at church I had, asking them if I could stay with them if things went south. I knew I couldn’t do what I was supposed to.
He asked me if I wanted to leave and I said yes. They found out and there was an intervention. I sat in the living room facing dad, his wife, her sister, her sister’s husband, and their son. They all stared at me. “Diane, do you love your mother?” They pressed. “No. I mean I say ‘I love you’ but I don’t think I’ve ever really felt anything towards you. Maybe if we met under different circumstances, but this all just feels forced. It has for a long time and I can’t do this anymore.”
They definitely were expecting a different answer from a more repressed version of me. But like Rose was done with her fake life on that doomed ship when Jack told her he didn’t want the spark inside of her to die - I jumped too. I made the leap and told my truth and they weren’t having any of it. Dad said, “Do you know what you just did? You just put an ice dagger in your mother’s heart. You did that to her.” Her sister jumped in, “Maybe if she could just call you by your first name instead of ‘mom’?” Nope. She wasn’t having any of it. She got up and left. She didn’t come back when I moved out the next day. Dad got up, spat on the ground and told me I was scum. And then he pleaded with me the next day as church friends helped me move. “Why are you making me feel like a devil here? Why are you doing this to me?”
I don’t know if it was that I couldn’t care anymore or that I still cared too much. I remember telling him, “I’m doing this for you. It’s going to be better without me. You have everything you want. There won’t be any more fighting now.” This was my last act of love for my dad.
And I left. I moved into a sorority house that afternoon several towns over. I sat on a bed in my own room for the first time completely alone and on my own. I felt free and terrified all at once.
That night I went out with the girls and had my second kiss and gave my first blow job all on the same night. They found out I was a virgin and sent someone to my room later that night. He didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to. What was I doing? Did I just want company? Was I that lonely? How much of a 360 would I do? The worst thing I did at home was sneak into the kitchen one night and drink some white wine to deal. Now I did something with a stranger. I was a mix of proud of myself and ashamed. I was 21 but I still felt like I was stuck at 7 on the inside.
I worked jobs and I finished school. I got and lost a boyfriend. I worked full-time and hated it. I made some of the best friends of my life. I had one-night stands to feel something and I drank.
I slammed the phone down and threw it against the wall when my dad called to tell me someone died just to make conversation. I got in touch with my real mom’s brother. I got in touch with a step cousin I actually liked. I got tattoos. I went back home only once - the Christmas after I left. I went into my old room which was my brother’s now. He was allowed to put pictures on the wall. He had a huge bed. He had a nice computer system which wasn’t in the closet. I was happy for him. It felt odd being back there. I saw them all again a few years later in New York. I was getting along with my step cousin and there was a christening for her daughter. Dad and his wife acted like they didn’t know me. It wasn’t the first time he had done that. This was the last time I would see all of them together. We had brunch at a restaurant nearby after the christening. Dad went up to me and noticed my tattoos. “Why would you do that to yourself?” And I asked him, “Why would you give my mom’s fan to her?” I saw his wife at the end of the table fanning herself with what I remembered to be my mom’s beautiful handmade fan.
I was allowed to see my brother for a few years after I left. Dad had to be there every time. He’d stare at me and ask me questions you’d ask someone you were meeting for the first time. We were strangers. And my brother and I were becoming distant too. The visits became more infrequent until they stopped altogether. The last time I saw my brother was sometime in 2013.
He’ll be 19 next month and I don’t know what he looks like anymore. I hoped to see him last year. My dad got into an accident and I found out through an aunt and a cousin I hadn’t spoken to in years. I called my brother and he finally picked up the phone. I went to see our dad at the hospital and just missed my brother. He had just left. So I saw my dad who I hadn’t seen in years and all of his wife’s family. I couldn’t have the room alone with him and they interrogated me. “What have you been doing with your life, Diane?” They cracked jokes and made subtle jabs. No one seemed to be concerned that dad’s face was swollen shut. But then again, dad didn’t seem to care that I was there either. He talked about how great Trump was and wondered why the nurses didn’t know what tiger balm was because he was now versed in alternative healing methods. He was my dad but he wasn’t. And seeing his wife didn’t do me any good.
I felt like I was in fifth grade all over again needing to give her that tiger and call her “mom.”
He had called me a few months before the accident and one time I actually picked up. I asked if I could see my brother and he said, “You can’t have a relationship with me or your brother unless you have a relationship with my wife - your mom.” No change. I told him we couldn’t do this. He couldn’t call me and expect me to pick up and have a conversation with him if I wasn’t willing to take up the charade. This wasn’t healthy. This was toxic. I think a piece of him knew it.
And I think a lot of him denied it. I had been telling pieces of my truth on the internet for years now and I couldn’t keep allowing my past to pull me back. It was preventing me from living in my present existence that actually meant something and where I was actually worth something.
I’m 29 now. I left when I was 21. It’s been 8 years and I am still healing. I am still learning that I do not need to apologize. I am still learning that things aren’t my fault. I am learning how to hear my boyfriend when he tells me that he loves me and isn’t going anywhere. I am still learning how to process that he wants a long life and future with me with kids and everything. I am learning to rewrite the story I was made to believe about myself that I am worth nothing and that no one will ever love me. Because he loves me and we’ve lived through so much already.
I think a lot of girls my age wonder when their significant other will propose. I don’t think about that. Instead I wonder how long I will have with him before he dies. How fucked up is that? He knows it too. He knows my ins and outs and we talk through it. I have to remind myself that something didn’t happen to him when he’s running late from work and hasn’t had a chance to text. Otherwise my mind will wander and go to these dark places. I’ve made progress though. I used to want to run away from him when things got hard. I used to wonder how long he’d stay.
I didn’t realize I was acting out from a flight, fight and freeze pattern I’d learned from survival in the environment I grew up in. There everyone who loved me died. And others physically left or checked out emotionally. I was told on repeat that I wasn’t worth anything. It was so easy for me to degrade myself and excruciating to lift myself up. Sometimes I wonder how I got so lucky?
I made something. I built a business. It may have failed, but it stood at one point. And I connected with so many people from all over the place through my writing. I know I have helped and I know I have healed. Every encounter I have had with another person has helped to shape me. I think me wanting to help others was both a way of avoiding myself and showing myself how loved and capable I am. It’s always a mixed bag. Full of nutty hard pieces and soft candies.
That’s my life. I am learning and fumbling when it comes to saying “no” and exactly what’s on my mind in the moment when it’s on my mind. I’m an expert at shrinking back like a turtle wanting to remove myself and pretend that I’m the only one dealing and surviving and having problems. But I am not a victim anymore. I have struggled but I am also victorious because I made it out. I am 8 years out of a situation that took away everything I ever was.
And every year since then I have been uncovering and discovering a new piece of me. I have wounds that still bleed. I have scars that to some are invisible to see. I have a truth that I can’t hide anymore because I’ve never been good at being a fragmented version of myself.
I know there’s still so much work to be done, but just like I’ve told my clients I have an A to B. This is me recognizing that for maybe the first time. I have been on a journey whether I’ve realized it or not. My current existence is proof of that. I’ve gone through something and I’ve overcome something. I did it. I’ve gone from A to B. And every person along my journey thus far has helped me find it. Others have told me that they have seen themselves in my writing and that’s why I write. I share what I’ve been through so that I can sift through the lessons learned. I’m worthwhile. I’m worthwhile. I am worthwhile. My past is in my past but sometimes the voices still come up. And someone I don’t know somewhere else may be experiencing that same pain and hurt right now. My friend, you are not alone. And you will find a way out, I promise you.
I am here now. A beautiful someone on the internet last week sent me a note that touched my heart in so many ways. One part of the note read, “It seems like you’re doing pretty well. Connecting with very influential people and making a great life for yourself. It almost put me off writing to you, because I’m nowhere near figured out where you seem to be now.”
Seem - that’s the word. It seems like I have everything figured out but, my friends, I do not. I am just here navigating the waves of this life and sharing my ups and downs with you. But then I remembered that my present is someone else’s future. And where I am right now is enough. It has always been enough. I don’t know where I’m going next but I have been somewhere. I have uncovered the journey I wasn’t even aware of and I’ve shared it with you.
I quit a job. I started a business. I backpacked and slept in hostels. I didn’t pay my taxes. I worked in a flower shop. I tutored English online and made great friendships. I’m not running a business anymore and am looking for my next line of work. I’m living in a new state with someone I love. My friends are all the way on the east coast. I’m making new friends through LinkedIn and random emails. I feel weird when people ask me about my family because I don’t really have any. My boyfriend’s family is my family. My friends are my family. I’ve coached entrepreneurs and the homeless. I have no insurance right now. I want to own a renovated warehouse one day. I want to host a healing space for people. I’m thinking about the future.
I’m hopeful. I’m optimistic. I’m on a second chapter. Sometimes that first one seems so far away, like another lifetime. Sometimes the voices come rearing back up like it was yesterday.
Then I remind myself that I am here. I have nothing to apologize for. No one is going to leave me anymore. Life can be good and easy and not so fucking complicated. People can love you whole. And I am worthy of love and abundance and so much more than I have even come to dream of yet. This piece was me attempting to explore how I’ve made it. Out and to the other side. It doesn’t have to all be figured out. It just needs to feel good and right and like the truth.
No one can hurt me anymore. I don’t want to hide anymore. So maybe, just maybe, there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. I like that reality. I’m leaning into that. Here we go.