How Could My Mother Look Me In The Eye While Keeping Such A Secret

What my mother did changed my life forever.

In November, I sat in class not feeling well. Something felt stuck in my throat. Something like a fish bone. But it couldn’t be a fish bone. I never ate fish for that very reason.

I continually coughed to try and clear whatever was stuck in my throat, but I could get no relief.

Other times, it felt like an elastic band was wound tight around my neck. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I’d never experienced anything like it before. Something was horribly wrong.

Every day, I became more anxious, convinced my boyfriend Will was happy in England and had forgotten all about me in Nova Scotia.

In my bedroom, in the increasingly dark evenings I cried, my anxiety mounted. I was convinced a disaster was coming.

A new boarder, Lillian, arrived at our house. She was in her mid-fifties and years earlier had jumped from a burning building and smashed her face so badly her mouth was permanently pulled up to one side. That side of her face didn’t move, and she talked out of the other side of her mouth.

And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d once had cancer, and both her breasts were removed. She wore foam falsies in her bra. We all knew because when she got upset, she’d pull them out and throw them at us. I just didn’t know where my mother found these people.

Just the sight of Lillian made me uncomfortable and reminded me of all the bad things that can happen in life. I worried that worse things awaited me.

The tightness in my throat increased. I couldn’t shake the feeling of doom — something was going to go wrong at any minute.

In school the following week, our teacher told us about an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and that it might hit us in a matter of weeks. The class was filled with discussions about what that would mean.

She laughed and told us not to worry because the asteroid was big enough to kill everyone on the planet. Either we’d all die instantly, or later like the dinosaurs. I sat listening, horrified, remaining calm on the outside, while screaming on the inside.

Life was out of control. There was no safe place to hide. Nowhere to go. No one to turn to.

Every step I took, I feared would be my last. I felt like Chicken Little. The sky was about to fall. The asteroid could strike at any moment.

Nightmares devoured my good dreams. Fear chewed up any remnants of happiness I had left. Sleep provided no relief. In the morning, the bed spat me out into another day that could be my last. My heart was like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. Every day could be the day that I’d die.

Coming down with a cold, I got hit even harder. My throat was so raw I could barely swallow. My nose was so stuffed up, that I could hardly breathe. The suffocating feeling set in and I panicked, fearing I’d die before the asteroid hit the earth.

And just when I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, my nosebleeds started up again.

“I can’t breathe,” I said, as I paced the kitchen floor.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you lately,” my mother said.

“I don’t either,” I choked out, coughing and pulling the neck of my sweater away from my throat.

“You’ve got to calm down,” my mother said. As if I hadn’t been trying, as if it was so easy to do.

“I can’t.” I coughed, until seeing stars. “I can’t breathe.”

“Good God girl, you’ve nothing to complain about,” Lillian said, smoke rolling out of her crooked mouth. “When you’ve been through all I’ve been through — ”

“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed. “It’s none of your business!”

“Barbara Ann,” my mother said. “Stop this, right now!”

I exploded into tears and ran to my room.

When the asteroid avoided hitting the Earth, I wasn’t relieved. It left me dangling in the unknown. If not the asteroid, then something else.

I wasn’t safe. I was still doomed.

Nothing seemed to matter anymore: not friends, reading, drawing, or writing. All the things which made me happy were now like dead birds at my feet. Other days, I roamed outside in the cold morning without a coat, not feeling the cold, not feeling anything. I’d become a zombie.

I craved sleep more than I craved cigarettes. Sleep was the drug I wanted. I prayed death was like sleep: an escape into nothingness, black and comforting, with no dreams. I wished to be like Sleeping Beauty, to sleep for a hundred years and maybe when I’d awaken, all would be fine.

If I wasn’t crying uncontrollably, I sat in a trance, staring straight ahead. I wanted to move. I tried so hard to move. I wanted so badly to do something, but my body would not cooperate.

I tried sitting on the cot in the dining room in front of the television. What was on wasn’t important. What mattered was to appear as normal as possible. It was better to seem as if I was watching something on TV rather than simply staring off into space.

Then one morning, the bed wouldn’t release me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get up. My mind and body were in a tug-of-war. They couldn’t agree. As much as I told myself to move, my legs wouldn’t.

“Get out of bed, Barbara Ann!” my mother hollered from the bottom of the stairs. “You’ll be late for school!”

I didn’t answer. What was the point?

Minutes later, she stomped up the stairs and pulled the covers off me. “Get up,” she said. I curled into a ball.

The tears wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t talk. She called my father home from work and they took me to the doctor.

Dr. Bennett examined me and said, “She’s depressed.”

“Depressed, depressed,” my mother repeated the word like a parrot. “Depressed. What’s that mean?”

“She’s very sad, Violet. She needs treatment.”

“She has no reason to be sad.”

Useless, I thought. She understood nothing.

“I’m going to prescribe medication for her.”

“What?” my mother spoke, still sounding dazed and confused.

“She needs anti-depressants.”

My mother shook her head and said. “I don’t get this depression stuff.”

“That’s why she should be in a hospital, Violet. I’m putting her on Elavil. She needs rest and time for the pills to take effect. The hospital — ”

“ — A hospital can’t give her what I can at home.”

As much as the doctor tried to convince her otherwise. She would not bend. She took me home.

Day and night, I couldn’t escape her. She would not leave me alone. She even slept in bed beside me at night…something no teenager wants their mother to do.

Most nights I couldn’t sleep, maybe because I’d slept most of the day. But for whatever reason I stayed stiff in bed, my body straight, not daring to move even a finger, all the while imagining whether this was what it was like to be dead.

The slightest move could wake my mother, so I didn’t dare get up to pace the floor. I didn’t want her shadowing behind me, like a part of me I couldn’t escape.

My mother doled out the little yellow pills the doctor had prescribed. Without argument, I swallowed them like an obedient dog, happy to please its master. Anything to keep her from nagging me with more foolish questions about whether or not I was feeling any better.

During my waking hours, I constantly stretched the neck of my T-shirt away from my throat, pacing the floor feeling like I was being strangled all the time.

Tears came to my eyes so easily and I could no longer hold them back. I’d lost control. If I started talking, tears flowed. I had become a broken faucet.

I waited and hoped for the magic of the medicine, for the relief it was supposed to bring. I waited with anticipation like I had waited many times over the years for the tide to come in, for the pleasure of swimming and floating in the waves, for the possibility of all my troubles disappearing, and for just one minute having nothing to worry about.

After a month, of endless crying, of struggling to breathe, my tears slowed. It was as if the pain of my losses had been washed away.

One night, my father came into my room and asked what would make me happy again.

With all the strength I could pull together, I told him I needed to be allowed to be with Will.

“It’s been six months since September. I fear he’s written and Mom’s hidden the letter.”

“Oh,” he groaned, putting his head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for all of this. I didn’t know how much you cared for him. I promise I won’t stand in the way of your seeing him. I’ll talk to your mother and if there’s a letter, she’ll give it to you. I’ll make her promise to never hide another letter.

“Okay.” I dried my eyes, feeling hopeful.

“You get better, Barbara Ann.”

He stood and leaned over like he wanted to hug me, but then straightened instead.

“Rest assured,” he said, “everything will be all right.”

He seemed as defeated as me.

“Stop worrying. You can see Will again. Everything will be okay.”

He turned and left my room.

I sat stunned, almost unable to believe what had just happened. I had to pinch myself to make sure I was awake. It was the best thing ever! I could be with Will again.

The next morning when I went downstairs, there was a letter sitting on the dining room table. I grabbed it and ran back to my room. My father had kept his promise.

I studied the postmark, January 15, 1975… three months ago. It was a stab to my heart.

She’d opened the letter. I wanted to scream at my mother, you read this letter! You read MY letter! How dare you read the words meant for me? Me and only me! Not you!

The weight of what she’d done sank me to my knees. All that time… all that time I’d spent worrying about whether Will still loved me… all that time I had wondered if he would keep his promise and write … all that time his letter was in the house, hidden from me.

But the worse realization of all was that all the while I suffered she’d held the ability to stop my pain, and she’d chosen not to. What kind of mother could do that? I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Cruel. So cruel. How could my mother look me in the eye every day and keep such a secret?

I said nothing to her. What could be said to someone who could do such a thing?

Instead of confronting my mother and asking why, I sat on my bed and read the letter, struck by the date… exactly four months after that dreadful Friday the 13th in September when my father had ordered him off our property and told him never to return.

Wasting no time in answering Will back, I spent the day writing and explaining how my mother had also read and hidden this letter like the one before. I told him about how worried and sad I’d been, how I thought he’d forgotten all about me.

Most of all, I reassured him that I still loved him and couldn’t wait to see him again. As I mailed that letter, I believed it would all be okay.

Then I waited for Will to write me back, foolishly trusting my mother would keep her promise to my father and never hide another letter.

The wait for a reply began, but I felt hopeful.

I dried my eyes, and continued taking the pills Dr. Bennett had prescribed. I settled into a strange calm flatness, kind of numb, like a thumb after being hit by a hammer. But I was finally able to smile again.

Two weeks later, I was ready to go back to school. I rose easily from bed, pulled on my jeans and a shirt, and moved one foot in front of the other, purposefully stepping out the door.

At school, I avoided questions about why I hadn’t been there for so long. I ignored curious stares and whispers. If pressed for an explanation, “Sick,” was my reply. “A really bad cold.”

What was I supposed to say: I lost my mind, but now it’s back?

I had no idea, had no words to explain what had happened to me. How could I tell anyone else when I didn’t fully understand myself?

I soon learned from Debbie that I hadn’t been the only one with troubles. She filled me in on why Mary was no longer at school. Shortly after I became sick, she overdosed on a bottle of aspirin. Her sister then had enough of Mary’s troubles and kicked her out. Debbie told me the last she’d heard Mary was living with some other relative in another town.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I would never see Mary again. I would never know how her life turned out.

After my breakdown, I was no longer the girl I used to be. Every day I moved further and further from who I’d been.

I thought I was left weaker by the breakdown, and that I’d lost a vital part of myself, but I was too young and inexperienced to know that change is inevitable, that nothing ever stays the same, and that going through hard times only makes one stronger in the end.

But I didn’t understand any of that and I worried about having another breakdown. I wasn’t sure I could trust myself. That I could judge when I’d gone too far.

At home, my family never mentioned my breakdown. It was as if it had never happened. Even the other kids didn’t tease me about it. I figured Mom had told them to never speak of it, that she had threatened them with severe punishment if they did.

The silence around my breakdown made it seem like a shameful secret, best never to reveal.

Despite all the bad that had happened, I still vowed not to give up on my dreams. No matter how damaged I might be, I was determined, more than ever, not to end up like Dorothy. I didn’t want to remain under my mother’s control and kept an obedient prisoner.

Months went by, with no letter from Will. I checked the closet to make sure my mother hadn’t hidden another one. I trusted that she was keeping her promise, so eventually, I stopped looking. I put the blame on Will for not writing me back.

His lack of response seemed clear enough. He no longer loved me. He had moved on.

My stomach ached with the loss.

I wanted love in my life and a boy that wouldn’t let me down.

I wanted so badly to be free from my parents, to live on my own. Where I could stay up late, sleep until noon, eat what I wanted, when I wanted, drink what I wanted and listen to my music all day long as loud as I wanted. I craved the freedom to do as I pleased. I wanted a happy life with money and acceptance of who I was. I didn’t want to be moulded like clay and twisted like a pipe cleaner into something someone else wanted me to be. Was that too much to ask?

Somehow, I declared, I would gain my freedom. I would find love. I would get over Will. I’d find someone new if that’s what I needed to do. I’d find someone who really loved me.

Years later, in 1977, I’d find another letter from Will, and I’d feel so sad for Barbara Ann, that girl I’d once been. Sad for all that girl had gone through and lost.

Too much had changed by the time I held his last letter in my hand.

I’d cast off everything that reminded me of him. Gone too far down a different road and could not turn back.

Barbara Ann was dead and gone. My mother had won. But what had she really gained?

As a teen, I believed the loss had been my relationship with Will. As an adult, I understood the innocence of our love and how we would have most likely drifted apart on our own.

But my mother couldn’t let our love run its course.

In the process, she succeeded in destroying not only my relationship with Will, but my relationship with her.

What she had done would leave a lifetime scar.

Worse yet, was how she’d never admit to what she’d done. Never apologize.

So I held onto his letters as proof. Proof I wasn’t the crazy one she tried to make me out to be.

For many years, I hoped she’d someday say she was sorry, maybe even tell me why she’d done it. But there came a time when I accepted, I’d never hear I’m sorry from her, and that what had happened with Will would be just one of the many betrayals yet to come.

Thank you for reading this young girl’s journey through first love and heartache. Hope you will continue to follow the many other stories Barbara Ann still has to share.

BARBARA CARTER is a visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life.Thank you for reading this young girl’s journey through first love and heartache. Hope you will continue to follow the many other stories Barbara Ann still has to share.

The above was the last story in a series, if you’d like to read what came before, the link is below.

BARBARA CARTER is a visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life.