The Amazing, Cycle-Breaking Superwoman

“You’re a piece of shit. You never do anything right. I wish you’d never been born.” Mom stabbed an index finger at me, yelled her daily mantra, and slammed my bedroom door.

I crawled under my pink child’s desk and curled into a fetal position. Great wrenching sobs rattled my six-year-old lungs, tears streamed down chubby cheeks, and I blew my nose with tissue after tissue from the box I kept under the furniture for such occasions. I raised my eyes to the underside of the drawer.

“Please, God, take me home. Please, if you love me at all!” I pondered taking pills or cutting my wrists. I knew people did such things. I’d seen it on TV.

* * * * *

“You’re a piece of shit. You never do anything right. I wish you’d never been born.” Mom screamed and stormed off.

“But I was goin’ to put the glasses in the dishwasher after Gary left,” I said to the empty kitchen.

Gary leaned forward in the dining room chair, his brows furrowed, his mouth a thin line. “I can’t believe your mom just said that to you. My mom would never say anything like that to me, ever.”

I shrugged and dropped my gaze to the table where our psychology 101 homework was spread out. “She says that all the time.”

“That’s emotional abuse, you know that, don’t you?” Gary reached out and caressed my knee.

I welcomed his familiar touch. “Is it? I shouldn’t have left the glasses in the sink.”

Gary tilted his head. “What she said was seriously harsh for such a minor infraction, don’t you think?”

My mind went numb. My body, too. But then my neurons started firing. Yes, of course! I rolled her words over in my brain as if hearing them for the first time. They were harsh. An incantation. A curse. A hex.

For the next three days, I gave her the silent treatment. On evening three I lay in bed, studying a gripping chapter on trigonometry, when a timid knock came at my door.

“It’s mom. Can we talk?”

I bit my lip. “Okay.”

She shuffled in and perched on my bed. “I know I’ve done something wrong. Please talk to me? What did I do?” She gently touched my shin with her fingertips.

“The other day when Gary was here, you said, ‘You never do anything right, and I wish you’d never been born.’”

Her brows shot up. “I never said that. I would never say that!”

“You did! Gary’s my witness. And you always say that.”

“I don’t think I did.” She paused, staring down at the folds in the patchwork quilt. “If I did say that, I certainly didn’t mean it. I love you.”

Water welled in my eyes.

“Will you accept my apology?”

A tear escaped down my cheek.

“You’re my daughter. I love you.”

“Okay.” I nodded, still convinced my being born was a terrible mistake. The familiar list ran through my mind. Pills. Slit wrists. Maybe ramming my rusty Dodge Dart into a bridge abutment.

* * * * *

“You’re a piece of shit. You never do anything right. I wish you’d never been born. That’s what she said every day of my life. Every day! She’s right! I don’t deserve to be alive!” I screamed at the forum leader Antonio and flailed my arms in the air. A salty river streamed down my face. I blew my nose with the tissue handed to me by the man kneeling on my right. I dropped my head and stared hard at the hotel conference room’s ugly gray carpet. 118 people’s eyes burned a hole through the top of my skull. Why the hell did I raise my hand? What was I thinking?

Antonio meandered to the edge of the stage and peered down at me. “So what’s your racket?”

I sniffed.

He hopped down off the stage and marched over. “Remember, a racket is something you complain about constantly but don’t do anything to change it.”

I shrugged. “I complain about how mom treated me. But is that really a racket? I can’t go back in time and change what happened. I can’t do anything about it even if I wanted to.”

He leaned forward. “You can’t change what she did, but you can change your interpretation of what happened. You think your mom’s words were the truth? You’re a piece of shit and don’t deserve to live?”

“Yes!” I buried my face in my hands and cried. “No job, my life sucks. Hell, I can’t even afford this forum. I just want to die!”

“Think. There’s two separate things. There’s what actually happened and there’s what you made it mean. Can you change what you made it mean? Was she right or maybe, just maybe, was she wrong?”

I sobbed.

“What if your mom had an oral fart. Are you going to ruin your whole life, because your mom farted?”

My head shot up, and I met his gaze. “But she said it everyday of my life!”

“Just because someone says something a lot, doesn’t make it true.” He raised an eyebrow. “So you’re going to ruin your whole life, because your mom had an oral flatulence problem.”

In spite of myself, a giggle escaped. “She farted a lot.”

Laughter broke out among my fellow participants.

Antonio smirked. “Tell me, what is the payoff for running your racket?”

I nibbled my lower lip and thought. “I guess I don’t have to even try to do anything in life? I get sympathy. Maybe I even manipulate others a little.”

“And what are you giving up when you run your racket?”

I sighed. “A good job, money, happiness, peace, love, everything really. But you said no one ever gets rid of their racket.”

“They don’t. But now you know what you get out of running your racket, and you know what you’re giving up.”

I gathered enough courage to scan the audience, as a murmuring of a-has spread. Not a dry eye to be found.

Antonio grinned and tossed his head. “So it’s your choice. You can run your racket… or not. Is what you’re getting out of it worth what you’re giving up? What are you going to choose?”

* * * * *

“You’re a piece of shit. You never do anything right. I wish you’d never been born. Those were her exact words.” I glanced at aunt Gracie, my father’s sister, as she carved the ham for the family reunion. “I see now it was her problem, never had anything to do with me at all. I just got in the way.” I finished plating the brownies.

Gracie turned toward me and wiped her hands on her apron. “You know, honey, your mom and Leona were horribly abused by their stepmom, your grandma. I don’t know all the details, but when a neighbor told your grandfather what his wife was doing to the twins from his first marriage, well, it was so bad your grandfather kicked his wife out of the house for a whole year. The damage was already done, though. The twins were teenagers at that point. Your poor mom and Leona…”

I grimaced. “I figured there was some sort of abuse. You don’t know exactly what, though?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Not something that was discussed in those days.”

“The way I was treated by mom is the way her stepmom treated her, or worse.” I looked Gracie squarely in the eye. “No more passing this shit down through the generations. This stops with me.”

* * * * *

“You’re a piece of shit. You never do anything right. I wish you’d never been born.” Ninety-one year old mom executed a volley of feeble punches towards me in the air from her nursing home bed, unable to even sit up. So this four-foot eight-inch, frail shell of a person, who once wielded so much power over me, was at it again.

My guts didn’t contract, not even the slightest twinge. My brain didn’t go numb. My breathing remained normal, my heart rate steady. Understanding, peace and, yes, even love flooded my soul.

“Mom, I know you’re frustrated right now, but the nurse is with someone else. He’ll be here soon.”

She had stopped smacking the air, so I moved closer, patted her forearm, and leaned over to whisper in her ear. “And I am a wonderful person. I do lots right. I’ve got a great career and been married to an amazing man for 34 years. And I absolutely should have been born. It’s okay if you didn’t want a child, but God wanted me, and he trumps you, I’m afraid.” I giggled and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I do love you, mom, and I know you love me, too.