On Hate

The toddler story was inspired by my reflection on another such time my own autonomy was overridden, and how pure hatred was crystallized that day. Let it be an inspiration, a warning, or a seeing, because sovereignty is trampled on in many shapes.

I’ve talked about a lot of things on this blog, but I don’t think I’ve really talked much about my mother, a woman I grew to hate, a woman who died young, two years older than where I’m at now, a woman whose death changed the entire course of my own life in a way I recently realized made me resent her a little as the child I was myself back then.

I remember very little of my childhood. But I remember my brother yelling, “You love her more than me! It’s because I’m not your real son!” and my Dad grabbing him by the shirt collar to throw him into the wall, ripping yet another of his Air Jordan t-shirts, Michael Jordan being his One Special Thing in life.

This happened several times. The words were different but the slam, the shirt and the tears always rhymed. He ran away from home, but I can’t remember how many times.

Since he died when I was 13 and had moved out by then, I must have been pretty young.

By 13, I’d had my share of trauma. I didn’t want what “normal” girls wanted. I just wanted to not be forced into a metaphorical box lest my own growth result in Undesirable Behavior.

So at 13, I ran away, not because my brother inspired me but because both of us reached the same conclusion about the house we were raised in: anywhere is better than here. And then my brother died. And then the school that had raised me said, “We don’t want your drama here,” and they kicked me out. I was shipped off, and when I returned home I knew there was nowhere safe for me.

So I ran again.

My mother concluded it was the romance novels I’d been reading, so while I was gone she emptied a five-foot bookshelf, throwing the “bad influence” away, never once able to understand that it was her I was so desperate to escape.

By the time the hallway evening arrived, there was a significant amount of anger and hurt between us.

I was 14 or 15, trying to walk down the hallway to the kitchen to get something to eat.

My mom, for reasons I never understood, approached me in the hallway and demanded a hug. Well of course I didn’t want to hug her, but she insisted. She grabbed me so I couldn’t back up, swept her legs behind me and took me to the floor.

I always understood, and it was reinforced by the paddle kept prominently hanging in the kitchen, a 1” thick dealio with holes drilled throughout, that One Does Not Resist What a Parent Does, so I had no recourse and I stilled, helpless and filled with rage I can easily recall the shape of, while she first forced a hug on me, then sat on top of me, eyes merry and bright while she laughed.

In that moment, the hatred that led me to vow 7 or 8 years later, “I will not return home until she is dead,” was solidified like a piece of bone inside of me.

I ran away a total of 7 times over 2-3 years, returning, finally broken, at 16, having learned first hand what is expected of a teenage girl in exchange for a place to spend the night. Broken, that is, until I met a boy three years later and moved two states away to start a new life.

And it turned out, three months after making that vow she died suddenly and I left the life I’d been building, coming home to take care of my Dad and fill the void she’d left in his business.

Another life happened after that. I married a year later and spent two decades dreaming of the life unlived, the life I’d been building before, even in death, she had a hand in shaping my future.

All of that is, perhaps, a tale for another day.

The autonomy that was stolen has created an almost pathological need for it now.

It has shaped my own parenting. I have fiercely, against all outside influences and their own father’s, defended the full autonomy of my own children.

Never without their consent.

“Your son needs to share his toys,” said the mother on the playground, glancing at my autistic son’s Special Stuffy as if her child deserved access to it by simply existing. “No.”

“Gross! I’m not eating that!” my child said to a mother who spent an hour preparing dinner. “Okay. Do me a favor and try one bite, and if you don’t like it, I won’t ask you to eat another.”

“Your child needs to wear his coat and be hot so he can become embodied,” said an educator while my son sobbed in his winter jacket on a sunny 45 degree day. “Then we withdraw from your school.”

And it has come full circle.

A few weeks ago, our whole family went to the lake to swim. There are no rules in divorce, you know. It’s okay to bring your coparent and have a good time as a family.

And as we were there, I was talking to my newly-licensed daughter. I told her, “Now you can come to the lake anytime you want. You don’t even need the parents!”

Her response hit me like the best kind of sucker punch. “It’s not as fun without the parents.”

I reflected on the contrast. At 16, I was trading my body in a desperate bid to escape the hell of my parents. At 16, my own child prefers my company to the freedom I offered.

We must not continue to mistake authority for love or justify crushing our child’s sovereignty under the lie of “care,” when what we’re really doing is avoiding looking at our own trauma and how it informs our parenting choices.

I have made many mistakes as a parent. But I have made many less than my own.

And if my children continue the trend, and your children, and every generation, imagine the world our progeny will inherit.