The Phoenix

A chilling January wind parts around a cozy-looking house. Outside, it is decorated with precisely planted flowers in the front garden, a little bird-feeder by the front window, and colorful potted plants by the driveway. It looks like a happy little cottage, nestled cleanly among a wonderful neighborhood on the edge of upper-class rural suburbia.

But inside, the house echoes with screams. My mother and I are caught in another battle to the death, with only our anger as our weapons and our words as our shields and armor. My throat burns. This has happened too many times before—between her and me, as well as me and three separate former romantic partners—and my body has to make sure that I am protected, so it tells me I should run. When I hold back that fight-or-flight instinct, I swear I can taste bile on my tongue.

“You live in your own fantasy world!” I look for any kind of remorse in my mother’s face as she once again stabs at my self-esteem, but instead, all I see is anger. Vitriol. I am not the perfect child she wanted; not a “mini me” for her to live vicariously through. Not a doll she can control.

In the wild, a baby bird only stays in its mother’s nest so long. Once the feathers come in, it means that it’s time for the mother to teach her hatchling to fly. But what happens if the little bird’s wings didn’t grow in right? What happens when that little bird, with its feathers unique—different from its mother’s yet still beautiful—tries to stretch its little wings, and can’t fly, no matter what it tries? The mother bird only knows what she was taught: that she is a bird, so she must fly on her own, no matter what. And her hatchling’s pretty feathers make it look fine on the outside, so it should be able to fly just like she did. So, in order to teach it to fly, she does the only thing she was taught: throw the little bird from her nest.

Too many times have I been put through the ringer. I lasted through three abusive relationships, where my exes stripped down who I was because they didn’t like this or that part of me. They wanted me to fit their vision instead of loving me for who I am. So, when I didn’t measure up to their expectations, they cut me down and manipulated and abused me emotionally, till I lost all sense of who I was. My mother is the one that started the ball rolling, even if it wasn’t her intention.

Because of her treatment of me growing up, I developed a form of emotional defense called “fawning”: when I got yelled at, instead of trying to defend myself and fighting it or running away, I complied. According to Khiron Clinics (2021), when a child is abused, it “significantly damages the child’s world perception and creates a pattern of learned behaviour that many such children carry into their later lives, for the same trauma response to manifest as people-pleasing in relationships” (p.5). My mother had done damage to my self-esteem as a kid, such that I did not think I was ever going to be good enough for anyone, so I did everything I could to appease my abuser to keep them from leaving me. That fear of being abandoned kept me hiding pieces of myself away.

This time, in this battle, I refused to do so.

“You have to stop treating me like a kid!” Was my battle cry, “I am an adult!”

“Then start acting like one!” She screams.

It’s a losing battle. I know it is. The last jab I take is the only one I can think of, before I abandon the battle:

“FUCK YOU!”

The little bird cannot fly. It tries its best, but its wings don’t work the way they should. Why would its mother throw it out of the nest like that, if she knew it couldn’t fly like a normal bird? What did it do wrong? Its mother was supposed to love it, so why didn’t she try to understand how it felt, or why it couldn’t fly like every other bird? Bigger birds—birds of prey—try to snatch the little bird as it falls. Their talons leave wounds the little bird cannot even think to heal properly, and it cannot escape. It cannot defend itself. There are horrible gashes in its skin and tears in its feathers, but nothing hurts as bad as falling alone, feeling abandoned, bleeding and helpless.

I have to get away. My knuckles are white as I grip my bedroom doorknob, and the slam of the heavy door rings in my ears. I can’t see a damned thing through my tears anymore. My cheeks burn bright red, cooled only for a second as each teardrop slides over them, the salt lingering on my lips. To try and bring myself back from the dark place my mind has gone to, I yank on my headphones and turn on empowering songs: songs about finding your own power and not letting yourself be silenced. A true theater kid, acting out the songs helps me work through my emotions. As I silently scream the lyrics into my bathroom mirror, I can see the little bird, falling to its death. My hands slam on the cold stone counter, and I swear I can taste bile again.

“You have to fly!” I want to scream at it, “Any way you can, or you’ll die!”

I look myself in the eye in the mirror and see a spark.

Out loud, I say to myself: “In order to fly… you have to become something greater.”

The little bird catches my spark. Its feathers are suddenly alight, burning away all its wounds and imperfections; its fear and sadness, self-loathing and lack of confidence. It can’t fly like its mother could, so it will fly a different way. Its own way. As the bird is engulfed in flame, it is reborn in the blazing embers: a beautiful Phoenix, with eyes like newborn stars and feathers of flaming red, orange and pure white. Its wings alone weren’t enough to fly, but the fire that came from inside its heart was just the boost it needed to take off and soar.

That Phoenix found its home in my chest, and passed on its flame; that flame, in that moment, became my own chrysalis. The person I used to be burned to ash. In my new form—a genuine, clear-headed and proud Phoenix—I finally turned the tide in my internal war.

While the phoenix is colloquially accepted as a symbol of reincarnation, Dr. Penelope Starr-Karlin (2018) claims that the mythical firebird can also be a psychological metaphor of emotional rebirth after trauma. This was especially true for me: the demons that plagued my mind since childhood— that told me I would never be good enough as I was, that I had to hide parts of me—no longer held power over me. I could hear the snap of my bowstring as my arrows brought them all down, and the battlefield falls silent. There is only my voice:

“Who I was is burned away,” I affirmed to the Phoenix in the mirror, “Who I am is here to stay.”

This moment is one I will remember for quite some time now. I’ve struggled greatly with my mental and emotional health for so long now, that before I reached this transformation, I was convinced I would just continue this vicious cycle of ups and downs until I finally got sick of it and gave into my suicidal thoughts. But this moment—even if it wasn’t as eventful as my colorful depiction of it made it seem—I felt a real change within myself. It was as if I had finally turned a page into a new chapter of my life where I won’t allow myself to be walked over. I felt like I truly became an adult then, and though I am very much still at war with my neurological divergencies, this rebirth marked the end of a very long battle with my low self-esteem.

References

Khiron Clinics. (2021, January 8). The Subtle Effects of Trauma: People Pleasing. https://khironclinics.com/blog/people-pleasing/

Starr-Karlin, P. (2018, April). The Lost Analyst and the Phoenix: Image, Word, Myth, and the Journey from Dissociation to Integration. Psychoanalytic Inquiry. https://login.oclc.fullsail.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=129233874&site=ehost-live