Then suddenly there we were arms crossed on opposite corners of a white-walled room in a behavioral health center, me with my faded pink bangs, scabbed up arms and legs, and eyes that no longer opened to reveal the girl she once knew. How did this happen? Didn't I know that with every slice I made into my own skin I was piercing her heart as well? With every midnight escape from the home she had made for us I ate away at her sense of faith in me... and likely in herself? How could I not have known?
All I allowed myself to understand at that moment were conclusions of anger and self-pity. "My mom hates me, look how mad she is. She can't even look me in the face." ...and she couldn't... because she loved me. And that love was tearing her apart.
Even then we were so similar it hurt. We both sat there seething, tackling the very same emotional roller-coaster ride from separate cars tumbling about in the same sky, breathing the same air, both wanting to scream and vomit. And to just let go.
Anger, confusion, fear, more anger... longing.
Wanting to hug each other and punch each other at the very same time.
Words bubbled up in our stomachs but caught in our throats and together we were temporarily mute knowing full well that if either unlocked the floodgates a well-intentioned spew of toxic waste would rush out only to further rip at the seams of what was once such a tight-knit relationship. Every minute of silence dug in deeper and deeper... finally she left the room.
The next visit was different. It had to be... we couldn't go on like that and we both knew it, but it was Mom who acted. This time when she entered the door she had a book in her hands along with her purse. As calmly as she could muster she told me what I had already known, she had been too mad to speak to me and she couldn't bring herself to have yet another screaming match or emotionally draining crying session with me, she was drained.
This time we would simply read. Back and forth we took turns speaking other people's words out loud because ours were simply too hard to articulate.
It was something we had done before, many times. Sat together and read aloud for hours. This time of course was different. We read because direct, one-on-one interaction was no longer possible, and the people in the book, though they were real, they weren't us and we could identify with them without all the first person blame and guilt and... well, pain.
Over the next few visits we slowly verbalized word by word the stories of other adolescent girls struggling in ways similar and all-together different than I was. The pages of that copy of Reviving Ophelia are stained with tears and tinged with the soreness of healing even now. As the days went on we paused and added a few words of our own here and there; "that's how I feel" and "what do you think of this?". Soon we were talking more and reading less. It wasn't a cure, but it was a start.
Looking back I know that it was her courage that brought us back together. Her courage to let me be mad at her and to let herself be hurt by me instead of shutting me out and leaving me to fail on my own. She let me hate her for the sake of my safety and well-being when it would have been so much easier and more gratifying for her to play the friend card instead of donning the hard role of Mom. She embraced her pain but let go of her anger the only way she knew how in what turned out to be one of the most crucial turning points in my life.
It is no word of exaggeration to say that her courage literally saved my life.
To this day it has also been the model by which I live that life she so graciously gifted me with, in more ways than one.
Giving birth is only the beginning.
