I have recently escaped from the
concentration camp, the tyranny of a warped world view from an abusive
childhood. I am learning the truth, and the truth is setting me free.
I was conditioned to believe that my
mother was always right, that I could trust her opinion on anything. She was
the worst of tyrants, conditioning me to run everything by her. She infused in
me her unending suspicion about everybody, deceiving me to believe that
everyone is bad, mad, or just plain out to get you. I endured her abusive
manipulations and verbal abuse, convinced it was normal. She contradicted my
intuition, ridiculed my insight. I was
never good enough, convinced that I was always wrong, unless she approved.
When I was fourteen, my mother took
my sister and me away from my father in
a bitter separation. Forced from stability to instability was too much for me, an
adolescent who was still trying to make sense of the world.
My mother never hit me, but she stole
my savings, accused me of things that I did not do. She found fault with
everything that I did. When she wasn’t bad-mouthing my father for every
grievance in her life, she would rail against her own rotten mother.
I lived in fear or depression around
her, although I never connected my discontent with her caustic raving. Looking
back, I recognize now that I was under intense pressure to try and be good, an
enslaving habit of mind which crippled me.
I felt so alone in the world. One
night, I got down on my knees and begged God for help. He answered my prayer
most unexpectedly. When I told my mother that I was still depressed, she began
screaming and yelling at me, simply unwilling to deal with me. Labeling me
“spiritually sick” and beyond help, she
kicked me out, sent me back home to my father,
the man whom she had denigrated for so long.
I cried myself to sleep that night.
For the next two days, I just wandered the city to forget my shame. Then a miracle happened – my mood improved.
I was happy for the first time in months. I was finally living without fear,
but at the time I did not connect that my mother’s absence precipitated my
improved outlook.
After Mom and Dad got back
together, I still stung from her abuse, always fearful of that terrible,
overwhelming sense of loneliness, inadequacy and fear overtaking me at any
time. I learned to do what I was told, never standing up for myself, and taking
personally everything that others said or did.
separation from her husband, she gloated that she did the right thing by
kicking me out. Because she was my Mom and therefore “could not be wrong”, I
would descend into a terrible pit of shame and condemnation that rarely abated.
I grew up believing that I was an incompetent who had to look over his shoulder
all the time, that every time something bad happened, or that someone got mad
at me, it must be my fault.
Higher Authority, better than by the favor or failings of others. “When my
parents forsake me, then the Lord will take me up,” (Psalm 27: 10) empowered me
to confront my wizened mother, forgive her, then let her go.
believe in what I was meant to be, no longer in bondage, free to be me.