I am ready for her to be free…I know she is too!
It’s 9:30 PM. I am 8 years old and not in bed yet. My mom stumbled up the stairs earlier and my father sits on the adjacent couch watching something on TV with me. We are silent.
I walk upstairs to bed. My mom isn’t there. She is sleeping on the toilet. I wake her up and put her to bed. Kiss her and tell her I love her.
I am 8.
This happened for years. And to a young girl, it felt wrong. I knew it was wrong. I knew something wasn’t right.
I navigated this for years alone in my head. Nobody talked about my mom’s problems. So i just managed on my own. A sister who didn’t live at home. Another who was too busy being a hormonal teenager to be bothered with anyone but friends. And a father who was so blinded by a peculiar balance of complete adoration and resentment to my mother that I could literally feel it in my bones.
I was alone. And scared.
That hasn’t left me. If I am being honest, I have never felt safe. I am anxious about life most days, waiting desperately for the house of cards I live in to come crashing down on my head – so fragile, a cool breeze could come by and ruin it all.
But I forget to look at the bigger picture sometimes: I am ok.
I have never been less than okay. So I need to learn to trust this life and the process.
Growing up in dysfunction makes you feel uneasy. I went through life like this. When things looked normal on the outside, I was most likely faking it. As a matter of fact, I still do. But there are times where it becomes unrealistic to continue to fake it. Because deep into my core, I am a HORRIBLE liar and an EXCELLENT oversharer.
I have let that scared little girl have the drivers seat all my life. Sure I have shimmied the wheel away from her clutches at times. I made grown up decisions without her. But she always creeps back into the drivers seat. She didn’t know how not to drive. She’d been doing it her whole life.
Letting her rest and being the grown up she always needed is my life’s work. I am forever not wanting control. Neither one of us is a very proficient driver anyhow. But every day I try to show up for me and her so we can both feel at ease in our skin.
So, little girl, go play…rest…be free. And know that you are safe within me.
Love, Libby