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.