Disowned Before Your Wedding
A constant cycle of emotional parental abandonment.
I don’t think there’s any amount of therapy for childhood trauma that can stop the re-opening of wounds when you have your own children.
This may be foreign for people who have experienced a relatively healthy upbringing, but when your parents are verbally and/or physically abusive, you believe from your earliest memories that you’re a bad person.
When you have a child, suddenly you’re faced with seeing yourself at an age that your parents saw you and yet, still treated you like the little enemy who ruined their lives.
My five-year-old memories feel like I was sixty. I had the cognitive functions to know what was right, wrong, the rules to be followed, the extreme consequences, and what a horrible kid I was for constantly getting my parents angry. The logic I had back then is as sound and mature as my logic now. It wasn’t up for debate and it was rational.
But then seeing my kids at those landmark ages and I think, “they’re still so little, their brains are developing, they’re innocent and don’t understand the world yet.” How is it that at 8 I felt like I could don a briefcase and pantsuit to hop on the bus to work and yet I look at my daughter like an innocent lamb who can barely brush her hair?
Eva is in the stage of crafting bracelets for her friends. Rainbow Loom is her jam. Do the kids on Bridgerton make bracelets for their friends out of horsehair and sticks? Is this a right of passage for all girls? I remember making gimp bracelets at her age and trading with my friends. It’s like my memories are of two different people: the kid who cared about friends and The Babysitter’s Club, and the kid who was a horrible person who had her own cooking spoon dedicated for spanking.
Last week, I instinctively smacked my son’s hand away when he reached for the ice cream dripping out of a self-serve spout at Yogurtland because I didn’t want him to contaminate the dispenser. I spent the rest of the day apologizing because I was terrified that it would cause long-term mental harm.
Around seventh grade, I downed half a bottle of Tylenol. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to die as much as I wanted a night away from my house and parents. A stay in the hospital was my version of Club Med. I had tried calling a kids helpline from a payphone but after being bounced around (I sure hope those programs have since improved) I hung up and chose the pill option. It wasn’t enough to warrant hospitalization, just lots of vomit on my bedroom floor. Still, it’s a defining moment forever etched in my life’s timeline.
I was only one year older than my son is now. The thought of Ashton being in that much agony where he’d harm himself cuts me to my soul. I can’t imagine him hating himself as a core part of his identity; I know depression is a symptom of his chromosome disorder but for the most part, I see a kid obsessed with Halo and Transformers. I have a watchful eye and I try my best to boost my kids’ confidence as much as possible. I also remind them constantly they are loved regardless of anything they do. I can’t…I can’t even imagine my young kids hating their existence so much that they’d call a hotline and I’d have no idea.
I can’t reconcile what I see with my children with who I perceive myself to have been at their age. I struggle to believe I was genuinely an innocent, sweet kid who made normal kid mistakes that didn’t warrant corporal punishment.
Once I graduated from university, I bailed out as far as I could from my parents. I barely communicated with them until my father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. In the Michael J. Fox era of the disease, I imagined the worst.
My parents went berserk when I broke the news that I was marrying a non-Muslim. It was Defcon 1. My theory was that I wasn’t waking up next to them every day so they didn’t get an opinion on my marital choices.
It was clear if I went through with the wedding, I’d be disowned.
I didn’t come from money. Being disowned meant zero communication with my parents and any extended family (I have an extremely large family on my dad’s side, as with all Indian families). It meant bringing shame to my parents.
My father didn’t attend my high school graduation. My mother only showed up because my brother bought a Handycam and was eager to test it out on a momentous occasion. My parents showed up for my university graduation at my brother’s insistence; they bailed when it ended. My wedding was another event that my parents checked the Opt-Out box.
My bridesmaids sent my mother a bridal shower invitation. It was met with more frantic calls from her insisting that the wedding couldn’t happen. At least my future mother-in-law attended.
Leading up to the wedding, my parents acted like I was choosing to cut off a limb. Well, my mom specifically. My dad at that point checked out. He was barely there when I grew up, why would he veer away from using my mom as his delegate? She acted like marriage is irreversible (I type this as a divorced woman).
My bridesmaids, Mercy and Jackie, knew my parents wouldn’t attend. Leading up to the big day, Mercy asked me if I wanted her mom there. I met her mom once. “You need a mom to fuss and dote on you that day,” she said. Mercy is Mexican; their moms don’t fuck around when it comes to making a big deal during special events.
At the time, it seemed silly. Why would I have someone else’s mom pay attention to me? I hated being the center of attention. Even more, I loathed (and still do) inconveniencing anyone for my own needs. I told her it was a lovely offer but that it wasn’t necessary.
Almost twenty years later, I regret that decision. I mean, I regret marrying Joseph altogether but I’ve written about that plenty.
I regret not experiencing at least a stand-in for a maternal figure who cared about me on one of the biggest days of my life. I still feel jealous when I see pictures of friends and their parents on their wedding day. There’s even a hint of sadness when I watch shows where the bride spends time before the wedding with her mother, whether it’s a positive interaction or not.
It feels like that was the final life milestone where I needed my parents to finally give a shit about me.
It’s odd that it still stands out in my brain. There was an opportunity to have the surrogate of what I needed on an important day. My brain aches to experience even a faux version of a mother doting on me, pretending to care about my happiness.
Life moves on. After years of little communication (turns out, being “disowned” meant “we’ll keep bugging you about marrying outside of our religion until you have a fake Muslim wedding to shut everyone up”), I made an effort after having kids.
My children are the perfect buffer. They get to know their heritage via Skype while I’m absolved of the guilt for being the oldest person to run away from home. It’s the only olive branch I could muster.
In a shocking twist, my parents stepped it up when I divorced. I was terrified to tell them and waited until escrow closed on my new house before confessing to them. In truth, I only told them because I knew the kids would say something over Skype and I didn’t want to be ratted out that way.
They offered to help financially if I was in dire straits. They checked on me constantly. They vilified Joseph until I finally got through to them that he wasn’t a bad guy and it was all my decision. My mother berated me more for a bad haircut at fifteen than she did about this divorce.
It’s the first and only time in 44 years that my parents showed ongoing concern for me. They don’t care about my emotional needs but if there’s a chance I’ll be homeless with their grandkids, they’ll step it up.
I’ll take it. My desperately emotional sponge is dry and absorbs any concern they throw my way.
It doesn’t undo four decades of feeling like I’ve been the shameful, troublemaking black sheep since birth. I’ve worked hard on undoing the feeling that I’m not lovable, that I’m a bad person, and that I don’t deserve happiness. Those feelings caused me to not even accept a loving mother by proxy on my wedding day.
I look at my children and continue my vow to never, ever make them feel undeserving of anything that they want. Especially if it’s my love and attention.
