Love yourself. You deserve it.
A NOTE: This post is riddled with vague descriptions of trauma. There are several people referenced.
I wrote to my partner: “The thought of a person seeing every ugly part of you and still loving you anyway is far more compelling than anything else I can think to experience.”
Less than a week later, she told me she loved me, but wasn’t in love with me anymore.
It’s been two months and I am in full-on agony, my heart eviscerated, my lungs unable to gasp enough air, but not because I feel unloved by my wife. My brain is firing off images of abuse I experienced and witnessed over the last thirty-one years. My childhood trauma didn’t catch up to me until now. I keep thinking, “If she doesn’t come back, and the family I formed with her isn’t my family ever again, what do I want my family to look like? I don’t want my kids knowing anyone besides my siblings.” I keep thinking, “I didn’t deserve to feel unlovable. I deserve to love myself so much that my partner could leave and I wouldn’t feel so utterly alone.” My couch is soaked with tears when my kids are sleeping. My computer is filling with videos of me sobbing over my guitar. My family trauma is scribbling all over the walls of my brain and it needs to come out. Not in a 300-page memoir. I’d like to use that kind of emotional space for a love story. Just in a blog post. This blog post. Here goes.
Albuquerque, the city that raised me.
I didn’t deserve to feel like I could be left. I didn’t deserve to be left with her. Or him. Or him. I didn’t deserve to be called a “little shit,” “a little brat,” I didn’t deserve to be drugged until I was hallucinating. I didn’t deserve to be called a “little bitch.” I didn’t deserve to be told I wasn’t his kid, over and over. Or that other guy’s kid, over and over. I didn’t deserve to be told I wouldn’t make it to 21. I didn’t deserve to be kicked out of the bedroom when the new baby came. I didn’t deserve to be told that she was having a dream that Satan was walking towards her and she woke up screaming because I was touching her. I didn’t deserve to repeat disgusting things back to him on the phone. I didn’t deserve to be told that kissing girls was repulsive. I didn’t deserve to watch my snow globe smash against the wall. Glitter everywhere. I didn’t deserve to be hit by the chair that was meant for my mom. I didn’t deserve to watch his hand go through the wall. I didn’t deserve to wake up to dollar amounts written on my skin, under my clothes. I didn’t deserve to be picked up and thrown against a wall because I woke up my little brother. I didn’t deserve to watch him jump on the hood of the car and choke my mom while we tried to drive away. We didn’t deserve to be left alone with him when she knew he was using. We didn’t deserve to see him nod out year after year after year. I didn’t deserve to get no presents because I wasn’t his kid. I didn’t deserve to be told I was going to hell if I didn’t behave. I didn’t deserve to see his dick. I didn’t deserve him laughing about it.
My sister didn’t deserve to be kicked out of our clan when she was twelve. We didn’t deserve to stand in a line and say goodbye to her one at a time. I didn’t deserve to be grounded over 300 days of the year in the 8th and 9th grade. I didn’t deserve to have to bathe in the same water that five other kids bathed in before me. I didn’t deserve for him to hold my jaws shut when I didn’t want to eat that. Or that. I didn’t deserve to be cornered and hit repeatedly after I came home crying because I had a knife held up to my throat and was beat up by kids on the bus. I didn’t deserve to have her pounding on my door, wasted, while I sobbed on the other side. I didn’t deserve to have to run out of my house in the dark through my neighborhood. I didn’t deserve to have her laugh about me reacting. I didn’t deserve to have my door taken off for doing my homework and not helping with the kids. I didn’t deserve to have the phone unplugged because I was trying to call a friend for the homework assignment because he took away my computer. I didn’t deserve to be left alone with him. I didn’t deserve to be told he would kill me if I called him again about my mom. I didn’t deserve to be left alone with all the kids when I was supposed to be in school. I didn’t deserve to be left alone with all the kids when it was time for bed. I didn’t deserve for her to move in to his bedroom. She was my best friend. He was my ex-stepfather. My siblings didn’t deserve to start calling her “Mom.” I didn’t deserve to watch this. I didn’t deserve to feel like my ex-stepfather could have just as easily preyed on me. I didn’t deserve to start questioning whether his comments about my looks were because he was my parent or because he was a fucking monster. When he said I looked like my mom, what did that mean, really, in the context of him fucking my best friend as soon as she was 18? Or maybe she just slept in his underwear in his bed. I told myself it was just sleeping for a long time. I didn’t deserve to feel unsafe.
They didn’t deserve to see her abused. They didn’t deserve to have to call the police. They didn’t deserve to call me, sobbing, over and over again that year. She didn’t deserve to watch him try and kill himself. She didn’t deserve to go to jail. She didn’t deserve to have her face smashed open by him. She didn’t deserve to be told she shouldn’t have been standing up for another siblings. He didn’t deserve to get hit by a car. He didn’t deserve to be asked to leave his own home. He didn’t deserve to be handed pain killers. He didn’t deserve to be handed downers. He didn’t deserve to be told he was sick. None of us deserved to be told we were sick. None of us deserved to be told we were sick. She didn’t deserve to not have a home. She didn’t deserve to have me as the only person there in court to support her. She didn’t deserve to feel alone. He didn’t deserve to feel alone.
I didn’t deserve to feel unwelcome to help out with my siblings. I don’t deserve to feel like my help is unappreciated. They didn’t deserve to be put in the cold in below freezing temperatures and spoken to that way. They didn’t deserve to be asked if they wanted to lie on their backs and be fucked all their lives. They were ten years old. They didn’t deserve to be treated that way. They didn’t deserve to be told they were unloved. They didn’t deserve to be told they had a new mother now. I didn’t deserve to be banned from seeing my siblings. I didn’t deserve to be banned from seeing my siblings. They didn’t deserve to feel alone.
They didn’t deserve to feel unsafe in their own home. They didn’t deserve to have weapons stored upstairs with a volatile teenager who was experiencing PTSD from being hit by a vehicle as a child. I didn’t deserve to be put in the middle.
I don’t deserve to be treated like I am judgmental because I want to help. I don’t deserve to be treated as anything less than a fucking superhero for being there, no. matter. fucking. what. No matter the time. No matter the circumstance.
I have been there. My partner was there for a decade, there to buy a carseat when the police said the baby needed to be taken. My partner was there for a decade, there when anyone needed space for a night or for a week or for a month or for a year. She was there when I said, “I need to do this.” She pushed me when I said, “I can’t do this.” Ten years of feeling like my help is perceived as hostility and I just can’t go on. I can’t go on. I can’t go on being denied my feelings exist, being denied my experience, being unloved and deserted and watching them being unloved and deserted and all my siblings they come to my house to laugh and drink and play board games and just feel a sense of peace, all of my siblings with different parents and different groups of “family,” all of my siblings who were witness to atrocities and none of us deserved it.
Not everything in my childhood and early adulthood was fucking terrible. But I didn’t deserve to feel like I didn’t matter. I didn’t deserve to feel like I was a jerk for helping.
I don’t deserve to feel like I am a jerk for still helping. I deserve to feel loved, and I just don’t.
How do you love yourself when you don’t feel loved?
I’m figuring it out. I’m writing down ambiguous letters of anger and sharing them on the internet, for starters. I am putting on clothes that make me feel beautiful, because after two kids and years of feeling eroded, I believed I wasn’t beautiful, inside or out. I believed I wasn’t lovable.
There was so much my partner didn’t deserve, being in the middle of all of this with me, year after year. I know she wouldn’t take any of it back. I wouldn’t take any of it back. She was my partner. Is? I don’t fucking know. I know I feel really alone right now and I know she is making room in her life for people who aren’t me and I know she deserves it. She deserves to feel good again. We both do.
But I feel exhausted. I feel so goddamn tired. I feel unheard by my own parents. They have their own trauma they haven’t worked through and it makes it impossible for them to hear ours. I feel guilty for not being what my parents want me to be, despite not wanting to be what they want me to be. I spent years self-sabotaging because I couldn’t stand the thought of being okay when everyone in my life wasn’t. I felt like no one could feel how deeply I cared. I felt that no one fucking cared that the seams of my relationship were wearing thin while we were making room for everyone.
The seams have fucking torn, and I’m thankful to have sibling after sibling say, “What? How are the seams torn? You guys are the strongest. If you need anything let me know. If you need someone to watch the kids, let me know. If you need help, if you need help, if you need help. . . “
For the last two months, I have tried to sit with my mom and joke and talk about nothing, I have tried to foster some sense of normalcy. I have tried to just be present with her. I repeat to myself myself, “Parents don’t want their kids to feel hurt. The hurt that happens is collateral.” I thought if I said it enough I could patch up our relationship. But right now, there is too much fucking collateral damage and I’m not convinced this shit is over—my mom doesn’t want to hurt, my mom doesn’t want any of us to hurt. But she also doesn’t want to talk about things we experienced and things we are currently experiencing. My mom doesn’t want our relationship to be terrible. She doesn’t want to talk about the terrible. But denying my experiences is making me feel fucking crazy, and I don’t deserve that.
I deserve to feel strong. I deserve to feel capable. I deserve to feel like I am the most helpful, most loving kid and person and parent because even when I couldn’t give anything to myself or my partner, I still would give to my siblings. We broke our relationship giving to my siblings. I want to be a good big sister and a good parent and a good partner and a good member of my community. I just want to be a good person.
I am taking as big a step back from my parents as I possibly can. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am wearing glittery nail polish. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am watching Spongebob late at night with my kids. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am asking my sister to watch the kids so I can shower. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am buying clothes and shoes that make me feel good. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am working on my business. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am dancing and learning how to ride my kid’s penny board and learning how to hoop and learning how to bake bread and drawing and saying hi to the people who work at grocery stores and restaurants and asking how their days are. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am letting myself take up space with my friends and I look forward to reciprocating when they need it. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am seeing a therapist. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am helping my little sister get through her junior year in high school. That’s how I am loving myself.
I am going to a friend’s church this Sunday so I can be around people who care about something bigger than themselves.
I signed up to volunteer with a local voting organization and with an organization that holds birthday parties for homeless and low-income kiddos.
I am just saying “yes” to loving myself instead of saying I don’t deserve it.
I took a photograph of my first beef lasagna I have ever made. It was delicious.