Fucking Up

2016

“You fucked up, Mom”. 

A hard thing to read from your adult child - on a screen, published on social media - to lots of people - but there it is - and I'm crying like a baby.

For some reason, the first thought that comes to me is a memory of a time that he was a baby, crying too – what seems like just a few months but was really 31 years ago.

An innocent, vulnerable baby just 10 weeks old crying on the floor after being thrown there by his angry and frustrated father. The baby that I picked up and cried and screamed with the same terrified intensity – because I felt the horrific violation too.

What made it feel even worse though was the voice inside my head saying “you really fucked up this time”. And the inescapable fact that it was actually true. His father even reminded me of it as he stepped over us on his way back to bed - "if you wouldn't have made me get up with him, this never would have happened". And as fucked up as that was - it was still true.

Of course, the obvious glaring fact that still remains all these years later and will forever, is that no matter what the reason…to throw your own crying infant across a room out of frustration and retaliation to me, the mother, is just about the worst, insidious crime a person could commit.

I was 19 at the time - just recently leaving my parents' home to begin a family with a person I'd met a few months before he had (barely) graduated from the college that we both went to. The only things I really knew about him were that he was a cute baseball player, several years older and was ready to begin an adult life with me.

How I had arrived in that crazy, irresponsible and fucked up position is complicated, but if the full truth be told, the roots probably go back thousands of years.

Regardless of the reasons why or how, there I was, kneeling on the floor, a puddle of pure blackness. I was too weak to move much, so I scooped my screaming baby up into my arms, put him to my breast and just rocked him there on the floor, on my knees, telling him over and over “I’m so sorry honey” “I’m so, so fucking sorry””I love you. I LOVE YOU. i LOVE YOU” with a morbid relief that at least he was alive and seemed to be, miraculously, relatively unharmed.

I reached up to the guest bed that was in the nursery - an arms reach away - and pulled the blanket and pillows from it, wrapping myself and my baby into a little makeshift nest to sleep on the floor with him at my breast. Singing to him, nursing him while staring, in shock, at the cute lamb night light on the dresser next to us.

“How will I ever un-do that?” I asked myself repeatedly through the night, waking up sporadically every few minutes from the adrenaline that just wouldn't stop. A question I continue to ask myself still to this day, usually around 4a.m. when I wake up with the same racing heartbeat.

It's 31 years later now, and what I’ve continued to arrive at despite my many desperate attempts to find a solution, is that there is no un-doing what happened. The wounds from this horrible act of violence from someone who is supposed to love and protect their child, have become enmeshed in the fabric of who my son is. He is required to now carry the sins of his father. On so many levels.

And with every cell in my body resisting, I've also had to accept the fact that I fucked up too. I hurt him by not protecting him. Not only on that night, but so many other times too. And oh wow - this horrendous admission cuts me to my deepest core.

I’d give anything to do it all over. And for sure, I’d do it so very differently. Of course I didn’t want to do the things I did or did not do – I wanted to do everything perfectly and NEVER fuck up. But it didn't happen that way.

I also wish that I didn’t still have the desire to defend myself but I do anyway – and while that feeling is there, it tells me that I’m far from being the person that I want to be. It tells me that my ego is still strong and fighting. It tells me that I haven’t surrendered yet – I haven’t surrendered fully to life and the deep dark places that you end up in sometimes. It tells me that rather than blame his father for such a horrific act of unchecked violence, it's almost easier to blame myself. Because as fucked up as that is, at least I have more control that way.

I tell women that I work with that the preparation for and becoming a mother will most likely be the greatest and most challenging thing you will do. And one of the best ways you can be a mother is to foster a positive and compassionate relationship with yourself. That if we want to teach our babies in utero that they are loved, we must nurture this compassion for ourselves in the same way that if we want to teach our kids how to bake bread, we let them watch us do it over and over until they start doing it. And maybe one of the biggest things we can teach our children – is that they are going to fuck up. Probably a lot. It’s what we all do. And, at the same time, we can still maintain a loving relationship with ourselves by understanding this.

So today I say “I fucked up”. A lot.

I didn't leave that night that my 10 week old baby was assaulted. I didn't leave when I was brutally raped by his father, or the night he choked me, slamming my head against the floor until I passed out. I didn't leave after so many horrible things were done to me and my babies. I didn't leave for 10 years. Major fuck up.

And in many ways, there is no “but…” – no redeeming, enlightened conclusion to any of it. No real comfort that I finally did leave. Just a simple, pure admission of a true fact while weakly staking a small tattered white flag in the sand.

What remains though, through the blame, the anger, frustration, guilt and pain – is a love that is so intense that through the distorted thick veil of tears, I see my son as beautiful and amazing even after reading those true words from him – while feeling the deep love that I have and will always have for him, in the same way that I used to kiss his new little cheeks, whispering over and over while rocking him to sleep as a baby – “I love you sweetie…forever, and ever, and ever….”