Pillar's Empty Promises

Countless times during my childhood I was called upon to be ‘the strong one.’ I really didn’t seek this role, but felt, for some reason, it was my ‘duty’. Family therapists would label me the ‘caretaker’, the ‘pacifier’, the ‘peacemaker’, and the ‘responsible child taking over a parent role.’ Not once as a child did I ever feel like a Pillar of Strength. I felt more like that hollow chocolate bunny I received each year at Easter, easily broken with tiny fingers. Yes, that was me, a bunny wearing Pillar’s façade, trying desperately to do my part to hold my family together.

My mother’s suicide was beyond excruciating. The raw agony pressed upon me so fiercely, I could barely breathe. I was paralyzed with heartache, and simply wanted to disappear. I desperately needed help and longed for a parent’s loving arms to rest my head and cry my river. I knew, however, that someone needed to wear Pillar’s mask to help my family get through the days and weeks following my Mother’s death. So, I succumbed to my familiar role as that bunny, disguised as Pillar, fully aware of the many empty promises.

Because there was no other option, I placed the agony and heartache of my Mother’s suicide carefully in a box and sealed it tight. I took the box to the corner of my being, where it joined all of the other neatly-wrapped packages that were being guarded by another part of me. Before closing corner’s door, I looked back at the girl juggling all of those boxes thinking, “I will come back and help her someday.” Sadly, I would not return to help for several years; I was too busy surviving. However, there were times when I would peek over and catch a glimpse of repression’s charged glow from beneath corner’s door, knowing it was waiting for me to release it, box by box.

The Color of Rage

White. White as a blinding blizzard on the coldest and windiest day of the year atop the highest mountain. Yes, that’s the color of rage. I know because I was there. It held my hand, and then seduced me into its depths. I was there because I didn’t know where else to go. I was catapulting in the blinding White, helpless.

When my father told me my mother had passed away, I can remember forcefully escaping his embrace, needing to ‘run.’ In my father’s home, I ran, up the stairs, around the corner, down the stairs. Somewhere between the first and fifth step going down, I leapt into the infinite depths of the White rage. Yes, I needed it so. Within that White, I knew I could say what I wanted and needed to say, in that moment: “THAT BI_CH, THAT F_CKING BI_CH! HOW COULD SHE DO THIS TO US! I HATE HER! I HATE HER!! I HATE HER!!!”

In some distant universe, I heard my father calling me, begging me to stop. The woman inside me was open to listening, but the child, the one who had become so entangled in the White, would have nothing to do with him. She was in control, and fury was pouring out of her, from every crevice of her being, embodied by the welcoming arms of the White.

Yes, I have once been engulfed in blind rage. In fact, I almost drowned in it that day. As I look back, however, I realize I was lifted out of the White in those horrific moments, and for about a billion moments thereafter. I suppose, given all of his omnipotence and all, God’s hands weren’t too badly beaten and bruised as he carried me, tantrum and all, out of the White. And, considering his vast and infinite experience, there are probably worse things he has heard.

Why Sideways?

My life has been consumed with constant movement. Always moving. I can remember times as a child running through the canyons near my childhood home in New Mexico, sharing my days with the trees and rocks, my closest friends on some days. Within my home, my movement was psychological. My mind could take me to whimsical and peaceful places. Places free of mental illness where parents were parents and kids were kids. Within my infinite daydream world, worries dissipated and burdens were no longer. Yes, movement helped me survive. I felt that if I kept moving, I might outrun the villain constantly following me, teasing me and beckoning me to stare it in the face. Yes, my Mom's mental illness was always there, behind every door, around every corner, in every box. If I could only outpace it, it might disappear, even for just a short while.....

I've realized I can't outpace the monster of my mother's severe mental illness. I must see it for what it is and was, and focus my movement on letting go, loving completely, and living in the present. I must stop running and start simply 'being.' I'm not perfect, you know, and I may not always be moving in a direction towards healing and wholeness. So, I relinquish control and know, at times, I will be walking sideways.

                       A watercolor painting of Los Alamos - the landscape I escaped to in my childhood.