Letter to the woman that use to be my mother

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom,

It has been a few months since we last talked. I hope wherever you are, you are doing well. I know things between us have never been perfect, but I still miss you despite everything that has happened between us. I miss your hugs, smiles, laughter, and questionable taste in television shows. I miss talking with you, getting advice from you, sharing stories, and hearing about Grandma. I miss having you around, but I know that woman is gone, at least for now.

This is a letter where I will lay out what I have been dealing with for almost nineteen years of my life. I am not saying you were a terrible parent, but not the greatest either. I understand parenting is not an easy job, but it does not mean your actions do not have repercussions. This is a statement and how I am; this is not something for you to disagree with. This is not an argument you can win. I advise you to read and reflect on it.

To start with, mom, you should have sent me to therapy when the stuff with Todic went down when I was in second grade. Not just a one chat with the assistant principal and never bring it up again. There was no way in hell an eight-year-old understood fully what happened. It broke me. When I finally understood what had happened to me. I was barely a second-grader, and he was almost five years older than me. I am sure I am missing some details of things you did or said, but that part of the trauma response is to forget the memories. I have lost tons of my childhood memories. I needed help, and I did not get the help I needed. Not from a professional, not from you. It hurts knowing you could have done something, and you did not.

Let’s move on to about fourth or fifth grade. I knew something was different with me, well, two things. I did not have professional terms; how could I? I was a tiny child! One is Autistic/ADHD, and when you tell your child, “Girls can’t have autism,” it really cuts in part of me that never really healed. I know you have turned around with efforts with my older brother, but it is not the same. I will now spend the rest of my adult life unlearning habits that I made because of the lack of professional help I received. I have extreme anxiety, depression, ADHD, and I am on the autism spectrum, all not taken care of by my parents. The other thing I realized is a topic we will get to later in this letter.

In this next part, let us have an example. If you had two doctors, one using the most current medicine and books. The other doctor has been using the medical techniques from twenty-five years ago. Which one would you like to operate on you? I hope for your sake you pick the first one. Now let’s think of another example. How about modern science/knowledge or a book from three-thousand-four hundred years ago with many changes made to the damn thing for how you treat people and raise them. I will state that there are a few suitable lessons to take from it, but that is it. The bible is a terrible way to base your life on how to treat women, people of color, and LGBT+. But it has been used to hurt many people. Can the community help people? Yes, and people in this religion can be unique. But I been hurt by it more than it helped.

Mom, let me put it this way for you. If I told you that a guy said to me that he was number one before anyone else, he would hurt me if I didn’t. You would say to me to leave his sorry butt. Now that person is a God, this leap of logic doesn’t make sense.

There are many stories I can write in this letter about how this religion has hurt me and made me hate myself. I will just do this short one for you both. Being told I was only worth it when I married a man and bore his children is being told I was the equivalent of a stepping stone in someone else’s life. While over my shoulders, my brothers are being told how big and strong they are, and all that crap and how God will make their life blessed. That would destroy a child’s self-esteem.

As well, mom, you taught me that men and women are not equal. And yes, that is true at some levels, but you are downright sexist at times, so it will take me years to peal that line of thinking off. At one service at First Presbyterian, you were borderline disgusted that they had a female priest. Because she shouldn’t preach? Even though it is a teaching position which you do every day. Is she somehow going to do it worse? No, because she did the training just like everyone else, and like everyone else has their own style. In my opinion, the worse priest is still Pastor Perry and his rambling and yelling for thirty minutes after the time was supposed to end in his service. So, your religion has scared me on many levels. Therefore, I am no longer a Christian because I cannot be a part of that hateful group.

One of the worst parts of sitting through all of that unpleasant experience was I had the message beaten to me to “love not to hate” and then turned around to see both of you hate a part of me before I did not fully understand. It leads to the most significant part of why I am writing this letter. You hate the LGBT+ community; think it’s wrong. And use that stupid bible as an excuse to do so even though it is only about five-point-six percent of the American population and does not affect you. You are not part of the community, fine, move on. No, you chose to hate the community for what? I don’t know, and I don’t care, for it hurt so bad when everything came up in church or home. I knew something was different about me in fourth grade, and I did not have the words. You kept calling it me having a tomboy phase. I trusted you because you’re my mom. That was what I was supposed to do. I could do it, but it never stopped; I never could be that girl you wanted from me. I never like dresses, pink, nails, traditional girl stuff, and I couldn’t figure out why. I couldn’t figure out why I got so sad or mad that I couldn’t go to boy scouts’ meetings or campouts with dad.

Then I did.

And I knew at the age of twelve that you would never truly love me.

Because I was not a girl, I was a boy.

So, I did my best to hide that part of me from both of you. To pretend that I was fine, I wanted to make you happy. I was miserable, but I did my best to be your daughter, mom. But it has killed my mental health trying to please everyone else, and I can’t do it anymore. In later high school, I came out to some friends, and it was the happiest I had been in years. As you can easily guess, I go by Jackie or Jack. I use He/him and They/Them pronouns. At Dance, they all called me by who I was, and I was so happy, and I felt like me again for the first time.

Then I got home and pretended that I was someone else. To the point, I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t ready for college, but I had to leave having tasted basic respect and true unconditional love. College murdered me inside, but I had more freedom, but I couldn’t keep up. But going back was not an option in my mind because I could not give up the space I got.

A child should not be scared in their own home, not be terrified of their parents, and not shake on the drive to their parents’ home. But I do because of how much damage they have caused me. So, I am not returning to live with you; I will visit you on my terms. I need time to heal and understand fully what has happened to me.

Thank you for reading this letter,

Your son,

Jack.