I am learning to live without my mother.

It is just over a year since we have spoken.

As a little girl, my Mum was the person I looked up to more than any other. I would watch her paint her nails pearly pink before heading out to work. I would trip round the house in her navy blue court shoes, longing for the day when I would be that glamorous. I loved her fiercely, and when I curled up beside her for a hug it was the safest place in the world.

As a teenager she was my best friend. We used to go to concerts together. She’d dye my hair for me, staining our sink and towels with henna. She packed my lunches, parked outside school to drive me home every afternoon, and picked me up from the school prom when I’d had too much to drink.

At university, when I split up with my first serious boyfriend, it was Mum whose door I knocked on. I lay rigid and hurting, and sobbed beside her. She was there in the middle of the night when I got locked out of my apartment. She showed up to all my poetry readings, and kept a scrapbook of my articles in the student paper.

When I graduated and got a job, her flat was just five minutes from my office so I’d pop round for lunch a couple of times a week. She helped me choose a wedding dress. She was there in the hospital just hours after I had my son, bringing with her a big lump of Brie because she knew I’d been missing it so much.

In those early days of being a mother myself, I honestly don’t know how I would have got through it without her. She would take my son for walks so I could nap, she’d stick laundry in the machine and leave healthy snacks in the kitchen.

But, there was one secret I was keeping, and when I finally found the courage to share it with her, it was the start of a process that has changed our relationship forever.

My son was just a few months old, and he was asleep. My husband was out of town for work. I had a rare, quiet evening to myself and, after a large glass of wine for courage I took a deep breath and started typing an email.

Dear Mum… This is not going to be easy, but there is something you should know.

I went on to tell her about the sexual abuse that my stepfather—her husband—had perpetrated upon me for several years. I included excerpts from diaries that I had written at the time, setting out in detail exactly what had happened and when, and how it had made me feel.

Of course, the actual abuse wasn't the only secret I had kept. All the subsequent effects of the abuse—the self harm, the fearful frigidity followed by risky promiscuity, the excessive drinking, the counselling sessions, the nightmares. They were all parts of my life that I had kept hidden from her too.

Why hadn't I felt able to tell her earlier? Because I had to wait until I was safe, until I found the confidence to say that I wanted him gone.

I had longed for someone to ask me about it at the time, gosh how I longed for that. But I was too good. A good kid. Good behaviour. Good grades. All the anger and confusion was directed in, rather than out.

The thing about abuse is that you internalize it so much that you don’t know if you’re turning a tiny incident into a big deal, or whether you’re downplaying a huge incident into something minor to avoid dealing with it. It was only through the support of close friends throughout my early twenties that I gained some perspective and healed enough to even contemplate telling her.

She was great, to begin with. They separated and started living apart. She leaned on friends for support, and they too said they wanted nothing more to do with him. She said she would do her best to suppress the overwhelming urge to 'murder the bastard.' She asked what I wanted to happen now.

That was a difficult question to answer. For so long the one thing I had been working towards was telling her what had happened. I hadn't thought beyond that. I just assumed that she would do her Mum thing and fix it all for me. I assumed she would know all the right things to do and say to make me feel better, because she always had before.

After weeks of talking it out, of crying, of cuddling each other and promising that it would never change things between us, we reached what I thought was an agreement. I wouldn’t pursue any legal action, I wouldn’t pursue any of it further. I would let it go, as long as he stayed out of my life.

They separated, and I have never heard from, or seen my stepfather again.

That was over five years ago.

But at the end of last year I got an email myself.

Dear Monica, This is not going to be easy. There is something you should know…

She went on to tell me that she was moving back in with my stepfather. That due to her poor finances and poor health they were setting up home again together. She said she hoped it wouldn’t change my relationship with her. She said we all have to find a way of living with the ‘terrible mistake’ that he made.

Perhaps I should have seen it coming. I knew they still had some kind of financial deal, but I had naively assumed that was all it was.

So there you go.

Betrayal is a strong word to use, but that is how I feel. She has betrayed me. It is as though I laid every vulnerable, scared piece of myself out on a table in front of her, and rather than trying to care for those bits, she swept them off and walked away.

Just because I am now 30 instead of 13, just because I now live in another country rather than just another suburb, does not mean that I don't need my Mum to be there for me. I do, and it shatters me that she is not. I had assumed, wrongly it seems, that once you are a mother you are always a mother, and that your desire and duty to protect your children always come before anything else in the world. I thought she was stronger than she is. I thought she would be on my side.

It has been my choice to halt all communication with her. I know that I am not capable of small talk about the weather, or about how my son is doing, when her life is once again entwined with his every step of the way. I do not want to go back to those dark days when I would have to time phone calls and visits carefully to make sure he was out, and when I would have a sick, sinking ache in the pit of my stomach for days before every happy family occasion. Birthdays, graduations, weddings, christenings—they were all marred by his dark presence in the corner of a room, and I will not go back to that. I will not. I have fought so hard to get beyond it once and I will not do it again.

It is odd to come to a place where you realize the person who once knew you best no longer does. Where the person who once took care of you no longer will. Where the person who always understood you no longer can.

It seems that our understandings of the situation are just too different, and they cannot be reconciled.

So I am learning to live without her. When I have good news to share, I phone someone else. When I need support, I have other people who I turn to. When my son’s clothes need darning I do it myself.

There are reminders of her in my life every single day. She is the chopped chive and natural yoghurt in my potato salad. She is the teaspoon in the bottleneck, holding the bubbles in my champagne. She is my cosiest jumper. She is my crazy hair, my curse words, my caring side. She is my sensible shoes and sensitive skin. She is the warm smell of banana bread, baking in the oven. She is Johnny Clegg and James Taylor on my iPod. She is my eyes, and my smile and my tiny fingers.

My Mum is everywhere. And yet not.

Most of the time it is fine. Most of the time I can distract myself for enough hours of the day that I don’t think about it. Sometimes, once or twice a week, I drop to the floor, wherever I am. Maybe a song triggers it. Maybe a glimpse of some photo. Maybe a dream, or some stupid memory resurfacing. It feels like I have been thumped hard in the stomach. It winds me. I make a noise like some hurting animal, unable to articulate it beyond a howl.

I hold out a tiny, shimmering sliver of hope that one day I will get another email, from my mother. One that starts

Dear Monica, This is not going to be easy but I wanted to say I’m sorry…

But until then… until she gives me some inkling that she gets where I’m coming from, I am done.

We have nothing left to say.

***

About the Author

Monica Green

A lady of mystery.