Before the pandemic hit, I worked on putting my house together after a few bumpy yet traumatic life issues. I had many items packed into plastic containers that I just didn’t want anymore. There were items from past memories, stuff I never used. Some were gifts from people who have hurt me. I just wanted the things out, and I was determined to do that.
Around this same time was when I planned on releasing my mother from my life. I had used the limited contact rule for years. Still, since she moved to the same city as me, I had relapsed several times to the point of me being debilitated. Then the word came that we all had to stay indoors. I reverted to a childlike state. I could not release my mother or all the objects in my garage (this was primarily due to people not buying stuff because of losing their jobs). When you are given such time, you tend to do things out of your everyday habits. Mine happened to go inside said boxes and look around a bit more to see what I could find.
One box contains just letters and mementos from a time past. One was a letter from my maternal grandmother that I had forgotten she had ever written. It began well enough explaining how much she loved me, how much I looked like my father, then went into how my mother wasn’t around for the first three years of my life. To hear your paternal grandmother talk about not knowing where you were in the world as an infant is concerning for me as an adult.
However, knowing this brings me many answers to why I constantly feel alone, fear abandonment so intensely, and have issues with being touched/loved.
This same box carried a letter from my father’s sister. This one actually hurt the most. This Aunt explained how they tried to adopt me as a teenager, and my mother almost came close to letting them do this. She explained how worried she was for me in great detail because I was so skinny and looked so unhappy. It was shocking to see three decades later that someone was out there trying to help me. However, my mother sabotaged that somehow, but the letter didn’t explain how or why.
This time area holds a lot of pain, and I can remember the day my Aunt came to my best friend’s house to talk to me. My best friend’s stepmother happened to be my mother’s best friend and favorite drinking partner (this will be written about later when I dare to do so).
That Aunt went on to adopt and raise a wonderful child. Part of me is jealous of that, but overall I am grateful that they became the parents they wanted to be and appear to have done an excellent job in it. However, I wonder what my fate would have held had my mother released me to people who empathized with my position. It’s a question I will die with, and every answer I give myself isn’t good enough.