My father writes emails as if he were quoting poetry in MLA format. / Like this. / Each thought is made separate. / And sometimes it is surprisingly poetic. / As if he could be channelling E. E. Cummings. / It is an endearing quirk of a man I wish I could understand. / I know little things like this that make me so sad. / Because the man who writes his emails in such an avant-garde fashion was not the man I knew growing up. / I'm not sure I can remember the man I knew growing up. / There are too many hurt feelings...
Tonight, I received an email from my father that made me cry. In two lines that could be poetry, he finally said what I knew all along: "sometimes i think we are the opposite of 'helicopter parents' / we did this on purpose, now i regret this"
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It is a traditional trope of psycho-therapy to "blame" the parents. I spend quite a bit of time discussing my mother with shrinks. The experience has caused me great terror of my own future as a parent. One of the things I know in my heart is that I want to be a mother some day, but it is a terrifying desire - parents can really screw up their kids.
My relationship with my parents, especially with my mother but also with the man of the quirky emails, is fraught with unspoken resentments and disappointments. I do not "blame" my parents for any of the pain I have gone through over the past half dozen years. Depression isn't caused by bad parenting. The only way I could place "blame" on my parents is for the genes that gave me this illness - my grandmother and my mother have suffered clinical depression, one of my brothers was hospitalised for mental health reasons.
I don't blame my parents, but they weren't perfect. A fundamental part of growing up and becoming an adult is accepting the fact that our parents are flawed human beings. Mommy and Daddy are also Laurie and Vince. But a part of me always wanted them to remain Mommy and Daddy - the people meant to make me feel loved and safe. My fractured relationship with my parents came from that visceral need remaining unfulfilled for the latter half of my childhood. Growing up I felt that burning desire for Mommy and Daddy to love me and protect me and make me feel better, especially while I was hurting so much; but they failed me. They were distant and I felt as if there were an ocean of overlooked feelings separating them from me. But I know now that I failed, too. And I can't dwell on that feeling of disappointment in my parents, because my parents are only human and there isn't anything I can do or say now to change the past.
I am reflecting on all of this tonight because this week I have once again been struggling. I am returning to regular treatment with a psychiatrist here in Oxford and I had to email my mother to ask for money to pay for the sessions. Sending that email, admitting weakness again, was hard for me. When I had a serious breakdown last year, it was only my brother threatening to tell my parents that finally forced me to tell the truth and admit my depression to them. Telling my mother that I was very seriously depressed and planning to kill myself was a million times harder than telling the school counsellor. Even throughout my treatment I've struggled with being honest with my parents - I wouldn't talk to my mother until I had to beg to be picked up from school and taken home because I couldn't handle it all. Now living an actual ocean away, I still can't talk to my parents so much so that I only mentioned returning to therapy in a post script to an email about summer classes. An email post script.
I know my parents are as supportive as they can be - when my brother was hospitalised they were very strong and comforting to him despite experiencing marital problems; when I had my difficulties last year they were understanding and I know they really tried...
I remember that first night after I came home from school - I was broken into little pieces of myself, a ghost version of their daughter; my mother looked heartbroken as she helped me carry my suitcase into the house. After I unpacked and showered, I put on baggy sweats that hid how much weight I had lost in that past month and went downstairs to find my mother washing dishes in the kitchen. She watched me as I sat at the breakfast table and flipped through one of her interior design magazines.
You know - she said -your father and I just want you to be happy.
I know. I'm trying.
She went back to washing dishes. And then - I just wish you didn't have to try so hard.
Me too, Mom.
She was silent for a few minutes as she continued washing up, her final chore of a long day.
It's like the song. - she said - Don't Worry, Be Happy.
I couldn't laugh because at that point I was numb, only a shell of a person. All I could handle was breathing, I wasn't strong enough for feeling.
Now when I look back on that memory I smile even though it breaks my heart, because it reminds me that my mother is funny. Sometimes her sense of humour can be unkind to her children, a trait I could never understand in a mother. But then I also know that she falls back on humour when she doesn't know what to say. And in that moment, she was a mother witnessing a child come home broken for the second time in one year, the memory of my brother's hospitalisation still fresh in her mind. She was feeling helpless and no doubt very scared. But she couldn't express any of that except through a little joke to try in the simplest way to make her daughter feel better.
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And so it is very sad for me to read in my father's email that he regrets that he and my mother were distant parents. And it is bizarre for me to find out that it was a conscious decision. I know my grandfather was overbearing and my father has had a very rocky relationship with him because of it. But in trying not to repeat his own father's mistakes, he made his own. Because growing up I would have done anything for overbearing, "helicopter" parents. At least then I would have known they cared.
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