Bruised Love

My friend’s voice pitched high and mocking, “With your personality, I bet you’ll hate your own offspring in the future.” We were still in high school then, our uniforms’ color was an eyesore and painstakingly stood out in the crowd. I forgot what we were talking about at that time, though I never forgot what she said to me. I replied back saying, “What? Of course I’ll love my own children!” I said that not with full conviction, but in a matter-of-fact-ly manner. I was so confident that that would be the case, until I learned about Baby Blues, amongst other-millions-concerning things regarding child bearing. The things I learned solidified and also validated my fear of having children.

My mother and I didn’t have the best mother and daughter relationship, sometimes I think we didn’t have a relationship at all. She loved to brag publicly that birthing me was earth-shatteringly painful, and that I should always kiss the ground where she stood. Her idea of loving me as a child was a pinch to my forearms, a hit with a clothes hanger, sometimes a thin comb. Strangely, there were cruel moments in the past etched in my head and I was not able to erase them. I was not the brightest student at school and my mother hated me for it. She was curiously competitive and always strived for me to achieve something academically. Whenever I got a low grade she would reward me with a hit or two, even lock me out of the house once. I was left in the terrace of our home only in my undergarments, luckily we have a pretty tall gate so no one could see me half naked there. Another time was when an ugly looking grade came in, she yelled at me in front of a stranger, our daily help. Unfortunately, I vividly remember standing up, shaking and sobbing, out on the terrace, while my mom was still shouting words at me from inside. The stranger took pity on me and combed my hair, whispering soothing words in my ears. When my mother stepped onto the terrace, the stranger scurried away with her warmth and I went to school with my mother to pick up my red filled report card. Another love language that my mother possessed was silent treatment. Whenever I seemed to displease her, she could go on for days without saying anything to me. Even when I asked her about something trivial, she would either answer snappily or went radio silence on me entirely. That trait of hers got me always tuned in on her moods and emotions. I observed the way she spoke, walked, and if she breathed a certain way, I’d notice it immediately.

I grew to be a bitter person but at least I was able to stand my ground against my mother. Still, she loved me by blabbering nonstop on how I should be a more grateful daughter and listened to her. I felt guilty about my hatred towards my mother and racked my brain often for a speck of happy memories with her, but found very little. We shared laughs and jokes, but it was always outweighed by the sounds of her furies and purple bruises. For once I confronted her in front of my father, with a cracked voice I counted all of the vile things she did to me back then. Unsurprisingly, she denied my “accusations”. I mentioned my purple bruises, which she countered, “But I always treated them afterwards!” The rest of that argument was lost on me, although my father’s silence was still evident to this day. Now that I have my own family, she complained about my honest nature to my own husband. One day she scandalously whispered to me, “You should NOT tell your husband just about EVERYTHING!” To be completely honest, I have lost any shred of respect towards her a long time ago, and her “wisdom” on marriage life made me spiral. There was one therapist who said to me in the midst of my meltdown, “I think you are afraid to have children because of your relationship with your mother.” It hit me then, I could not believe I just paid 750k rupiah only to be told something so offensively obvious. However, I never did have the courage to say it out loud. Afraid that it’ll breathe into reality.

The apples never fell far from the tree, I was slowly turning into my mother. Disagreements? Silent treatment. Minor inconvenience? Silent treatment. Changed plans? Silent treatment. I was blatantly aware of this, and I hated myself for it. How could I hate someone so much and become that very person at the same time? My fear was starting to become larger than life. Amongst all of the agonizing thoughts and unanswered questions, the biggest one was this: What if I don’t love my own child? My friend’s statement in the past played on my head again and again and again. For years I thought about that one question, trying to find the absolute answer. If my mother loved me so, why would she hit me? What kind of love correlated with that kind of treatment? She said one time that it was because she loved me and was merely trying to push me to be better. I couldn’t fathom a tear-streaked face and purple bruises peppering my forearms were the motivation I needed to be first place in school. However, even when my mother had an odd way in loving her only child, I did in fact love her. I learned that my love for her could co-exist with the hatred, both things could be true. In the absence of our so-called mother-daughter relationship, I loved her from afar. Maybe I could be a more tender and patient mother for my own child. I haven’t found the courage to find out. Some would say that I was thinking things way too much. I did tend to blow things out of proportions for the sake of being certain. I hated uncertainties, just like I hated not knowing what moods my mother was in everyday back then. And so I sat here, in a sun-filled room of my own house which my mother always deemed too dirty and cluttered for her liking, pouring out hundreds of questions onto a blank page. Though I was in no rush in finding any answer.