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Learning to Forgive My Mother

A Story of Learning to Accept Mental Illness

By Chelley C.Published 6 years ago 9 min read
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There are times when to me my mother seems like an angel or a saint. I look at her and all I see is how amazing she is but yet I struggle because the reality of her is often difficult for me to conceptualize. I do not want to give a biographical timeline of my mother’s life, but I’m not sure there is any one story my mother has told me that can take up more than a minute to explain. The stories I get from her are in bits and pieces, more like a puzzle that has not be solved yet. Within these narratives that feel more like anecdotes than stories, I see her as either all good, to be lauded or someone I am completely disappointed in.

The earliest stories of her life that she mentions are of her being a tomboy, playing in the mountains and hills of her hometown, La Torre, “un campesito de La Vega”, in Dominican Republic. She was carefree. Like a porcelain doll, so delicately, she was also the most looked after child. She was a picky eater and would not eat unless they made her. My Tia Fela recounts her being pious even then, still surprised she didn’t just become a nun.

My mother, much like myself, had a mother who was mentally ill. Her mother had her first psychotic break when she was 13. My mother became a parentified child, she had to leave school to take care of the household duties and her younger sister. She wanted so badly to have an education so she continued doing her schoolwork on her own. She soon went back to school but when she arrived in the United States, her education was yet again sidetracked by the need to care for her family.

She still managed to make the best of her life and tells stories about her early 20s when she was decked out to the nines. Her hair was always on point and her nails were always painted in red, her favorite color. She felt she always had to look her best so she would wear five-inch heels, even in a snowstorm. It turns out women today don’t have the same gall. Forget the times people walked miles in the snow, my mama said she walked a mile in five-inch heels up the hill during a blizzard, so yea, she was fierce! She’d go out dancing every weekend with her sister and friends. On hot summer days in New York, she would enjoyed the beach. She was gorgeous, kind, and chaste. She didn’t drink but knew how to have fun, she was every man’s dream or at least that’s how she puts it.

The stories she often tells me about her life are before she got sick and some before she even had me. I have come to realize that the most resounding theme in most of her stories are that of sacrifice, of how time and time again she gave up what she wanted for the best of her family and the best of all.

I love my mother, flaws and all, but sometimes it’s hard to come to terms with those flaws. There is a part of my mother I completely idolize but sometimes I fear she is lost in a world of fears. As I come to see my mother more clearly and see her as a whole person, I am able to piece together her story more clearly. As I’ve gotten older she has begun to be more honest about her life, and although the perfect idealized version of my mother still exists in the back of my mind, I am able to see her as a fully flawed and wholly beautiful woman.

The mother I know has an overwhelming amount of compassion and kindness that can rival few. My mother can see the good in almost anyone, even those who seem completely heinous in my eyes. On the day of Trump’s inauguration, she sat with her hand over her heart, with her soft Spanish accent that she is often still ashamed of, and said, “Pobresito (poor thing), I know he acts the way he does, but I can tell he had a hard life. I can see it in my mind, him standing in the playground and none of the girls wanted to talk to him because they thought he was ugly and he had no friends. Nobody wanted to play with him. That’s why he’s like that. I pray for his soul everyday.” It’s funny how she can look at a man who views immigrants, especially those of Latinx heritage as villains, and yet carry sympathy in her heart for him. These are the same people she has spent so much of her life sticking up for. She came from the Dominican Republic at the age of 18. She struggled to learn the English language and complete her college education. She would tape record all of the lectures and repeat them over and over again until the facts stuck in her head and the language that was so foreign to her soon became part of her own.

But that version of my mother was one I only really knew of in stories. For much of my early childhood she was still active and vibrant but she was not really the party girl anymore. She had me in her mid-30s just as she was starting her dream of a college education. She was a part time student and a full time mom. She’d spend most of her time with me. She’d take me to class with her because she didn’t trust anyone to take care of me. She’d read bedtime stories to me every night and would have me pray for everyone we knew and I mean everyone… for my abuelita, my big brother and sister (who she helped raised even though they weren’t her own), my tio (who got kicked out of his house yet again and was sleeping on our couch), the great aunt who was in the hospital, and most importantly all the homeless people in the world, so they may find food and shelter.

In my eyes she was perfect and in some ways continues to be but then there’s my mother… the human. The human who spent the majority of my life battling but mostly suffering through mental illness. There was my mother, the human, who almost died when I was five and was never the same again. She likes to remind me that before she got sick she was a fully functional, dare she say successful woman, but most of my life I have seen a women ridden with fear and anxiety.

My mother is a woman who lives paranoid that there are people out to get her. My mother is a woman who lives in fear of the repercussions of her past mistakes, small as they may be. My mother is a woman who is afraid to turn on the tv by herself because she may get electrocuted hence she has not used a microwave in almost 20 years. My mother is a woman who goes to a restaurant or family event and is on my father’s coat tail urging him to leave before the event has finished because she might suffocate in a world of panic. She has called someone three days ahead of an event to let them know that she is going to be sick in three days because although she’s not sick now, she can feel it coming in the pit of her stomach. My mother is the woman who refuses to take medication because God forbid the the side effects are worse than the alternative of living a life of constant fear and angst. She attributes her rapid heart palpitations to a heart condition that no doctor or cardiologist can find evidence for.

My mother took little control of her own life but yet she spent so much of her time trying to control mine. She would hide food from me and let me know how fat I was. With every few pounds I gained, she would let me know how I looked like a cow or would call me some other horrible name. She laughed when I told her a boy liked me and asked when was the last time he saw me cause I definitely gained weight since then. Because of her own fears, she barely let me leave the house. She would punish me for months for small misbehavings. Until this day, she still wishes I was chaste and holy, believes that one day, I will return to Jesus and prays for it every goddamn day. She tried to fit me into a box of perfection and I rebelled! She chastised me and called me an atheist when I shared I was agnostic.

My mother held me to devastatingly high standards and until she realized it was damn near killing me. My mother taught me to suppress my feelings as a child. She told me to turn the other cheek when people hurt me but never acknowledged that I hurt too. This is my mother, who I have spent so much of my life struggling between feeling hate for and/or utter idolization. Despite my cries, screams, and utter meltdowns, my mother still refuses to go to therapy and still refuses to deal with her demons or even talk about their existence.

And yet I still love her, because she is my mother.

My mother, who still holds me when I am in an utter state of panic because life seems so overwhelming.

My mother, who is still so afraid of the world, but prays for the souls of the people in it from within the safe walls of her home.

My mother, who also reminds me there is nothing I can possibly do to stop her from loving me.

My mother, whom I have forgiven for all my childhood hurts and trauma.

For a long time, I wanted my mother to be stronger, to be the type of woman I thought I needed to look up to. I wanted her to be the type of woman that is a fighter, that has a successful career and is unafraid of the world. I wanted her be the version of herself that I idolized, the version she so proudly told me about. I wanted her to be a hero of sorts but now I see that in her own way she is. I think that we so often forget that at the end of the day Superman goes back to being Clark Kent and Batman goes back his secluded cave as Bruce Wayne. We so often forget that heroes are vulnerable and imperfect and when the capes come off they are just as broken as the rest of us.

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