Cleaning House

I keep dreaming about my parents’ house. The mess, the chaos, the shame. All of it floods me as I try desperately to clean it up before anyone can see. This is a frustration I’ve lived with my entire life and the helplessness is agonizing. When I wake up, heart racing, I find myself again in my own home. The filth vanishes and I gratefully breathe as I see the carpet. As I enter wakefulness, I am not surrounded by trash.

Oh… but the mess is still there.

It resides two-hundred miles away. I haven’t seen it for ten years, but I know it’s still there. Probably way worse in both size and depth, I know it waits for me. Somehow, this is my birthright. This poisoned inheritance merely the physical manifestation of the generational trauma passed down through both sides of my ancestry for centuries. The filth an echo of the tears and screams contained within the bodies and homes of the ancestors before me.

I often wonder about the moments that led to this. The hours, days, years of displaced anger that finds its way into the unassuming infants with no choice for their landing space.

We are not born into the world without burden; our parents make sure of it. Supposedly newborns are free from guilt. They’ve only just arrived, but somehow, as soon as the novelty wears off, they become the defenseless empty vessels their parents can pour their anger into. They move the fight forward because it’s safe. The unbridled rage festering for years is now released on those who cannot fight back. Because we know no better, we take it because we must somehow deserve it. Childhood trauma results in a dangerous fusion of rage that only grows with each new generation. The slights, frustrations, and transgressions of the past now take hold of the tiny buds of newborn resentment. Energy is neither created nor destroyed and so it must find somewhere to go, and yes, the only direction for it is forward.

And so…

the monster grows,

and grows,

and grows.

When do we decide that our children are not where our trauma should land?

I can only answer that for my own lineage because, until now, this monster lives because it’s always just been there. My parents’ best answer has always been, “This is how we were raised, so…”

I guess that provides absolution from all guilt. Their parents did it to them, and their parents did it to them, and so on and so forth.

As painful as it is, I cannot forget how it felt to grow up the way I did. My memory reminds me of how much I hated the way my parents treated me. Every slap, every scream, every hair-pull lives within me. When I feel the familiar frustration bubbling under the surface, my children’s faces mirror my own from so many years ago and I instantly recall how it feels to be on the receiving end of so much rage.

I cannot carry this forward. These are my babies.

At first, it took so much to step back and breathe. The emotions have been waiting for so long and it would be so easy to just unleash it all.

But I know too well the cost. I cannot and I will not do this to my children.

It's taken years of therapy and self-reflection to find the strength to hold it back.

By calming the anger within, I become a forcefield (a patronus if you will) between my children and the ancient anger monster carried in my veins.

I breathe…

I step away…

Instead of unleashing the fury onto my children, I channel it into protecting them. Finding the courage to stop what has always "just been" galvanizes my resolve.

So, while the mess of the past waits for me, I work to clean my own house. I take it day by day.

When the time comes, I will pull on a pair of yellow rubber gloves, tighten my respirator, and finally eliminate my parents' mess. It may take months, or even years. When I am finished, I will return to a home that is clean.