I’m a more-or-less healthy and strong person, but there are times when I get bouts of extreme fatigue. Like, shaking, weeping, my body and back hurt to even move, fatigue.
Yesterday was one of those days, and I spent the whole day apologizing to my housemate for feeling too weak to work out together and calling myself lazy.
Last night around 9:00 p.m., after spending the entire day feeling bad for feeling bad, I remembered I was born with a blood disorder called Alpha Thalassemia. It’s related to sickle cell, and one of the symptoms is–you guessed it–fatigue.
You’d think that if you’d been born with a blood disorder that causes fatigue, you’d understand that when you have bouts of fatigue it’s related to your blood disorder, right? Not that you’re lazier or weaker or somehow worse than anyone else, but that you literally have a condition that has been with you your entire life that requires care and attention, right?
Unfortunately, although I’ve had this blood disorder since I was literally born, I was never allowed to be ill or fatigued. Instead of being met with that whole “as your parent and the adult in the room when you were born I remember when the doctor diagnosed you with this blood disorder and can understand why you’re tired right now,” I was met with “I should have aborted you. You’re lazy.”
Which is why now, as an adult, I am so prone to gaslighting myself.
And I know I’m 36 and it’s lame to be blaming things on your childhood, but as y’all well know, I have spent most of my life feeling like I don’t deserve to be alive and wanting to be dead, and I’m starting to realize that it’s a direct reflection of how I was raised.
I was raised by a mother who, despite having the choice of whether or not to abort me, chose not to abort me and then blamed my dad for tricking her into not aborting me. And before you tell me that’s not how she felt, it’s what she told me out of her mouth.
Unfortunately, the person I love most in the world–the star and light of my life, the one who shaped my psychology and taught me how to see and feel about myself–spends most of her time either pretending I don’t exist or openly resenting me. Still.
The only time she has acknowledged me as a person this entire year (2022) was to 1) yell at me after I got Covid and her family turned against me (with her at the front) and 2) to send me a happy birthday text 9 months later.
When you’re a kid and your mom obviously wishes you weren’t born, that becomes the basis for how you think and feel about yourself forever. When you’re an adult taking advantage of all the mental health resources that are available to you to heal those wounds and your mom doubles down every time you’ve displeased her–well you try not to be suicidal when it’s clear your mom wishes you weren’t here.
My mom will hate that I wrote this because it makes her look bad, but she will not hate that she taught her daughter to hate herself. My mom won’t feel bad that even now, after coping with a blood disorder my entire life, I can’t take the time I need to rest and recoup without hearing her voice in my head calling me lazy and ungrateful. But she will hate that I told y’all.
And that’s why I’m writing it.
What I know from being a teacher and a human is that children want to help. If as their mother you spend 18…26…36 years telling them that everything they do for you is just a drop in the bucket for what they owe you for being stuck with you….you are crushing the spirit of the person of the person who loves you the absolute most in this world and teaching them they have nothing to offer anyone in this world. How isolating.
I used to assume I would die by suicide. I’ve wanted to kill myself since I was a little child. My mom won’t hate that I felt this way, only that I told yall. Because it will embarrass her.
I used to think that maybe if my mom realized that I also hate me, that I also wished I was never born….idk. That she would feel sorry for me and stop openly resenting me. Maybe even love me beyond the “my biology loves you and I hate every second of it” brand of love she raised me with.
That if I did what she told me to do…got independent and got the fuck away from her and never bothered her for anything…she’d like me. And she does like me like that. Only. The moment I need her to be a mom, I’m on my own being ignored and wishing I was dead.
No wonder I’m single lmao.
Now I’ve realized that nothing will ever make my mom love me the way I need to be loved (as a whole person even when I’m down). So I’ve decided that I might as well try to be happy. Try to honor my own physical and mental limits. And to try to stop showing my mom that even though I forced my birth upon her and plunged her into 36 years of miserable motherhood, I love her enough to punish myself eternally for this sin.
Time to stop gaslighting myself.
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