During a recent counseling session, I told my therapist, Kristen, that I have a deep, aching sadness inside of me. No matter what good happens, no matter how much progress I’ve achieved in my healing, I always have this pulsating sorrow that I can literally feel beating bruises into my chest walls. It’s the sorrow that tells me, “Just hang yourself already.”
“If you could put a name to this sadness, what would you name it?” Kristen asked.
Without fucking hesitation. “Mother.”
And, with that, Mother Sadness was named. And it’s so goddamn fitting.
The origin of Mother Sadness’s birthday was a week ago. I thought of her. I wondered how she was. I felt sad for her. Sad because she probably didn’t hear many “Happy Birthday” wishes, not from anyone who truly matters at least. She has burnt those bridges. With her…well, own Mother Sadness.
My mother’s mother and grandmother were tyrants, according to stories from my mother, that she shared with me from an uncomfortably young age. Her Mother Sadness wept through my childhood and adolescence. I was raised by Mother Sadness, who herself was raised by Mother Sadness, and so it goes. Generational pain – mothers passing along abuse and neglect to their daughters, who then repeat the cycle of abuse and neglect to their own daughters.
With no children of my own, I’ve stopped the cycle. But that hasn’t stopped Mother Sadness from infiltrating relationships with those I love and have loved. That hasn’t stopped the infiltration of my inner most being, my core, the part of me that says, “You are good. Just the way you are. You are loved. You are safe. You are meant to be here.” Mother Sadness deafens and defeats those words, and replaces them with curses of “burden” and “shameful” and “damaged.” Mother Sadness is the scarf I once tied around my neck. The bottles of pills I twice emptied into my stomach. The razor cuts in high school that I’ve never spoke of until this very moment.
So, what do I do now that I’ve named Mother Sadness? Now that I’ve identified her, in all her glory and disgrace? I do what I’ve always done.
I write.
