Dear Mom,
Trigger Warning: mentions of Self Harm, Mental Health
I’ve been tackling the things that happened after your passing in order by event, and while it seems as though I’m breezing through the subjects with ease, I think it’s best I acknowledge that this part will be a bit harder to address. I’m not proud of who I was after you passed. For the first few years, I think it’s correct to assume that I dissociated enough to survive. Even so, that doesn’t feel like a good enough reason to leave myself with these deep, physical scars. It has been twenty or so years, and I still can’t look at them without being filled with shame.
But it’s about time we talk about it.
Maybe I should have lashed out emotionally in order to show that I wasn’t coping with your loss, and the subsequent changes it brought into my life. I want you to understand that I wasn’t comfortable with expressing myself in any way because Rose made it seem as if I would be a burden. I didn’t want anyone, or rather any adult, to see me as a troubled child. I thought it would make people want me around more – make them feel comfortable around me, or that I was easy going. Anything to make me lovable. It didn’t help that I can see my efforts were working – or at least, I made myself believe that they were. After Rose essentially abandoned me, Belle took me in despite the full house she had and I thought that meant whatever I was doing was working.
I didn’t know that I was supposed to see therapists, and psychologists after my treatment. Nobody was made aware of the resources that were carved out for me after your death. All the phone numbers on file were unhooked – the bills left unpaid, and cut off. Not that it would help, seeing as Rose practically kicked us (me and grandma) out of the apartment. I think I wouldn’t have gone as far as I did if I didn’t lose the only home I knew…
In my attempts to play this perfect kid that’s well adjusted despite losing her only family and going on remission from cancer, I neglected these deep and heavy emotions that seemed to wash over me in waves. Sometimes I wanted to reach out to someone, but my mounting anxiety kept me still. It was like sitting in a crowded room where the noise was getting louder and louder. You want to tell everyone to quiet down, but you see they’re having fun and in turn, that made you think they were having fun with you – so you tried to deal with the sensory overload the best that you can. However your skin is crawling. Your chest is getting heavier and heavier, and on top of that, people are giving you things to hold. Your arms are filled with school work, social events and everyday happenings.
Instead of dropping it all to cover your ears, and tell everyone to stop, you make a little cut as if it’ll fill up an empty battery. Instead it empties you more, but it doesn’t feel like that. Not at first. The marks were small, yet they helped keep everything together. And what was the harm? I could wear sleeves, keep up the rouse and nobody would have to be bothered by my maladjustments. I thought that if I played pretend for as long as possible, that everything would just be okay in the end and I’ll be fine. I didn’t expect things to fall apart the way that they did. I didn’t expect I would lose that bit of control..
I’ve since covered the most affected arm in a tattoo I’m sure you’d love. It needs a touch up, but that’s in the books in a future where I’m a little more adjusted than I am now. The scars are still visible if I look at my arm long enough, but they’re healing. Much like I am.
Sometimes I would stare at my arm in order to see the memories of what it once looked like during that time. I really did a number on myself. As I sit here and write this out, I’m reminded of how my sleeve would stick to my arm due to the dried blood. How it would sting when I pulled it off to shower, or how I’d struggle to keep it hidden whenever I was around Belle and her kids. You would think I’d do everything possible not to cause myself more pain, because the universe knows I’ve suffered enough of it. Yet I found peace in the bit of pain I could control. The distraction from my emotional wounds paired with the physical ones was what I was desperately searching for. I didn’t have outlets for my emotions as I do now. I didn’t know how to be gentle with myself.
I’ve never acknowledged the pain I was in after your loss. I never wanted to talk about it because I would have to explain my thought process behind harming myself. Even now, I have no good excuse. There’s nothing that I can say that would justify having done that to myself. Especially not with what happened after my secret got out.
Nikki was the first to notice the sudden obsession with long sleeve shirts and sweaters. As expected, honestly. She earned the title of best friend for a reason. My face still stings from the smack she gave me, but it had its intended effect. It woke me up from the spiral I was in. My sessions of self harm were only getting violent. The more I swallowed back my emotions, the more blood from myself – leading to my act becoming a daily occurrence rather than ‘once in a while’ it started out as. I don’t like thinking about where it could have gone had she not noticed, but I thank her for snapping me out of it. Unfortunately for the two of us, others took notice as well. I didn’t stop in time.
My stint at the Psycho-Ward of Bellevue Hospital was three months, but my God were they a fascinating three months. I can’t help but wonder if people actually made it out of there with the correct mental health assistance. I was fine, but none of those other patients were. One even taught me that you can cut yourself with a comb if you try hard enough, but thankfully I was all tapped out by the time she shared that little nugget of information. That hospital had the first set of therapists to tell me I’m well adjusted despite what has transpired in my life around that time. I knew how to articulate my emotions, what was needed to regulate them and I was expressive through my writing. Besides my troubling bouts of insomnia, I wasn’t their typical kind of patient and so I wasn’t really there for help. The weeks dragged on because I didn’t have a guardian. If it wasn’t for your brother, my uncle, I probably would have ended up in the system.
I was intimidated when I arrived in Puerto Rico. They shipped me off in an airplane by myself, and I was supposed to just figure it out when I landed. Nobody really told me what to expect, and I honestly didn’t ask. Your brother picked me up, and with the little bit of Spanish I knew at the time, I expressed my gratitude. He was quick to tell me that I’m family, of course he would have picked me up but my opinion of our family in Puerto Rico was limited. The cousins in New York kind of ruined my idea of family. Not to mention how Rose abandoned me, and everyone else was left to scramble whatever piece of me had been left behind. I was, rightly, scared but I was also quick to realize that Puerto Rico was a welcomed change. It helped me in a way I can’t exactly articulate but just know that I adored my experience with your homeland.
I have forgiven dad, my aunt and uncle, and my step-siblings for the way they greeted me. While they overwhelmed me with their presence, and somewhat made me think taking medications for my mental health was wrong, it wasn’t like anyone gave them a manual on how to greet someone like me. That was the responsibility of the social workers who had arranged all of this, but I now know the system was – and,basically, is choked. Destined to fail. I was just one of the lucky ones who had a situation work out in the end. I don’t even want to think about what my fate would have been if my aunt and uncle had not stepped up. I can’t say that they were my rock, because I never really lean on anyone emotionally, but they provided me peace in an otherwise chaotic situation. And were it not for them, I would have never had an opportunity to say my goodbye to my grandmother nor learn the beauty of the island. I don’t think I’ve thanked them enough…
I would like to say that my scars have healed. I still see them peeking out from behind my tattoo, taunting me with a heavy past that still looms over me even now. I want to say I’ve got a handle on what I need to do to make sure I’m mentally sound, but I’ve had a relapse. Everything had gotten so loud again, so heavy. My heart aches when I recall the face my husband made upon discovery of my new wounds. They have since healed, and faded – but it has only been a few months since, and it makes me feel like I washed away twenty years of healing. However I’m not afraid of tackling what I must to get out from the depths of my emotions. In a way, these letters have become just another method I use to deal with them. There’s so much unsaid about what I have experienced, so much more than the pages of a book can handle. I don’t know what my plans are for the future, or what will become of this blog but I hope to look back at this to see just how much further I’ve come.
By then, I hope for my scars to be nothing more than a memory.
And yes, I can hear you cursing me out in spanish. I’ll be kinder to myself. I promise.
Sabey
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