I’m the only person who ever cried over the child I never got to be.
Parenting instead of playing; mediating instead of mingling.
My self-imposed role was to ensure that the boat never rocked, no matter what it took. Nothing was okay and all I wanted was for someone to notice, but I had to make sure nobody noticed.
My skills became planning, preparing, conflict-managing, de-escalating, cleaning, organizing, memorizing.
Age seven felt like seventy really fast.
My world had just shattered and all I knew was overwhelming confusion. Was I supposed to just let things happen as they may? Absolutely not.
Off I went to earn the best grades, to cause the least trouble, to be the go-between, and to parent my younger brother and sister as necessary. I was instantly their protector, whether they recognized it or not. It was all so unbelievably painful and if I could spare them any of it, I would, and I tried.
But at what expense?
Oh, but at what expense.
I was just a kid.
I was made to fill the role of communicator between two parents who tried to hurl nasty insults at each other through me. They couldn’t stand to look at each other, let alone speak to each other on the phone. They wrote letters back and forth. Dad faithfully sent anniversary cards the first few years while my mother ran away with his best friend, half his money, and billed him for every expense under the sun.
I spent years locked in a state of hypervigilance, my persona made up entirely of trust issues. I remember everything and have hearing that can catch a mouse walking across my bedroom floor in the dark. I have a keen sense for people and my first impressions are rarely wrong. My entire personality is a trauma response.
Years later my heart is still broken and I am still the communicator, the mediator, and the organizer. I have always felt old beyond my years and have longed for nothing more than to fit in. I used to read everything I could get my hands on and was reading well beyond my grade level; books were the perfect escape. This did nothing to help me understand my peers who played, laughed, goofed off, and had their lunches packed for them.
I cooked suppers, drew endless purple stegosauruses for my brother, and sheltered my sister. I read bedtime stories and tucked them in. I carefully showed them which landmines to avoid in this new landscape of ours. Both of them have hazy memories at best of what life was like before. It was all I knew. I remember the happy, the good, and the sunshine.
Now we spend time in the same house but nothing is the same, though we are master pretenders. We ignore the cracks, the avoidances, and the things left unsaid. We pretend we cannot see the glaring holes in the walls but we all know that we all know.
Nothing has ever been the same but the same is still what I long for after all this time.
I wish to return to that little girl who knew nothing but happiness and joy, to when the worst thing she knew was having to go to bed while the sun was still up.
The sun has never felt quite as bright since.
I have found that after all this time, I am still carrying this weight around, still balancing the boat, still protecting them. They are both grown now, as am I, and the role is no longer necessary.
I can’t seem to make myself give it up.
My worst fear is of failure, of the boat rocking, of letting go. If I let go of the control I have struggled with for twenty years, I have to let go of my idea of ever having a whole family.
One small part of my heart wants nothing more than that, twenty years later.
There is no getting over this, when my identity seems so fractured. Am I still the little girl? Am I grown? Am I the adult? Who am I outside of this pain?
It does not seem to matter, as it hasn’t since the day the sun dimmed.
.
.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
Sight Unseen 