Careful, the Past will Visit Often

Learning the hard way about taking responsibility

It’s difficult to start this piece because it’s a sensitive topic that’s close to my heart. It’s about my children, or so far, just one of them. More so, it’s about my mistakes that unknowingly impacted the lives of my adult child. Now, I walk on eggshells, trying to figure out parenting once again.

I thought the worst of it was failed marriages, relationships, and becoming permanently disabled. But no, that wasn’t the worst of it. The most traumatic part of life came when my oldest son proclaimed,

“I and both my brothers are trolls, and we got it from you.”

When he speaks of trolls, he doesn’t mean little creatures that live under bridges like in our childhood stories, oh no. In his own words, it meant, “Someone who does or says anything just to be mean.”

And yes, it took a minute to understand that he was outright insulting me, and had been from the moment he departed his flight to come to visit.

Of course, we’ve had fights, several of them, but it was nothing compared to this statement. I realized that other statements he’d made in the recent past went along with this one, as I asked his younger brothers what certain new words meant.

Once my oldest son said, “Mama is sus.” And I remembered the times he’d called me, “savage” and other such words, so I laughed at this one too. I wasn’t aware of where his mind was going. I wasn’t aware that some storm was brewing on the horizon.

But after the troll statement, I started to dig deeper, asking my other sons to tell me what “sus” meant. They said it meant imposter, which is fake. As I put the statements together, my heart sank. My adult son no longer respected me as genuine, and this hurt like no other hurt I’ve ever felt. And it was untrue.

He’d done some digging as well, finding out about my relationship issues with his father and things I’d kept to myself. He went on to tell me that I’d lied to him about how the relationship between me and his father ended. He was obviously angry and resented me.

I didn’t know how to fix it

That night, after my work was done, I lay awake in bed crying. I cried the next day too whenever I was alone. When he left, I cried again, and for a week more until I realized that I couldn’t keep feeling this over and over. It was heartbreaking and confusing.

Because, aside from my personal problems with his father, I was genuine with him. After graduation and on through college, he’d become my best friend. I was confident that nothing could come between us and he would always support and love me.

But something changed

He’d been seeing a therapist, and yes, it’s good to seek help when we’re hurting or sick. But was there something I was missing here? I questioned the motives of the therapist and wondered if this professional was pushing him too hard to look back at his past.

The power of suggestion is just that, it’s powerful, powerful enough to conjure things that aren’t real. But maybe these things were real. I floundered for something stable to ground my mind.

Was this entirely healthy? This took me on a journey back in time, reliving every birthday, every scraped knee, every time I yelled at him. I tortured myself every day, trying to remember all the mistakes I’d made. Because now, he was focused on emotional turmoil from the past.

And in walks the past in all its glory

You see, after being called a troll, he proceeded to tell me about all the times I yelled at him, how I put alcohol on his scraped knee. I only wanted to protect him. He told me that although his father was physically abusive, I didn’t stop what was happening, but it happened to me too.

I was young, I was scared, and his father was not around all that much. So my adult son remembered my yelling much more than the physical abuse from his father. And yes, it was emotionally abusive to yell, I own that.

We’ve hashed it out before

And here’s the thing. my adult son and I have already talked. I’ve told him horror story after horror story about how hard life was when he was small. I told him I was sorry for when I didn’t help as I should, and I told him about my bad parenting.

We talked on many occasions, mostly during his late high school years and on into college. I’ve asked for forgiveness, writing blog posts, and I even included much of the abuse that happened in the past with our family in my memoir.

But here it was again. I was taking that trip back to the past once more after decades of clawing out. The past rose back out of the grave I buried it in, and it was ready to go for my throat. Do I bare my throat and let it have its way, or do I get out my sword and fight? Maybe I should try and talk with the past and help it heal.

But I don’t know if the past even wants to talk. It seems to like snipping and running. Maybe baring my throat is my only option, or just standing there and letting it take bites out of my back. I just don’t know.

I love my adult son. I love him with a love that hurts. I was nowhere near the perfect mother, and I cannot go back in time to repair that. To be honest, I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong about this situation. It’s one that I cannot easily wave my hand at, turn, and walk away.

I am aware that in the future, there may come a day that he decides to cut all contact with me. I don’t know how prepared I am for that. I don’t even know if I deserve it anymore. Things are much more clouded than they used to be.

What have I been doing in response? Only a simple thing. I text him. I tell him that I love him, and I ask if he is okay. At this point, I need to give him space to heal, while being in the background if he needs me.

I won’t push, I won’t persuade, and I will not grovel. I will finish raising the other two boys in the best way that I can. With hope, we can all heal.

For young mothers: Do the best you can. Don’t let your personal problems spill out into your parenting. Do the hardest things now, so that in the future, you will know you did everything in your strength to love and appreciate your children.