An Open Letter to the Mother Who Abused Me

I had my final nightmare about you last night. Because today I release all the resentment in my heart. Today, after trying and trying and trying, I forgive you.
Because today I finally realized I don't need you to admit how you treated me was wrong.

I remember the pain, the vulnerability. I remember my head slamming against walls. I remember seeing a chunk of my hair on the floor next to me. I remember being hunched in a corner as each blow landed, not feeling any of them over the sting of your words.
SELFISH.
BITCH.
NO GOOD.
SELFISH.
SELFISH.
SELFISH.
I remember you yelling for hours. I had to look you in the eyes until you stopped. Sometimes you would just stare at me for minutes at a time, with this absolutley horrible grimace on your face. You looked exactly like you wanted to kill me. When I would break eye contact I'd receive a blow. "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" But you weren't talking. You were burrowing your hatred into me through your eyes. I had never felt so unworthy, so unloved, so hated, than when you looked at me like that. I'd rather be hit.

I remember coming to you so broken, asking why you hated me. I remember your voice imitating, high pitched, mocking me, "Poor Magyn, mommy doesn't love me, my life is so horrible. Grow up."

To this day you won't admit what you did was abuse, or maybe even happened. Maybe your subconcious has blocked so much of it out. But I remember the witnesses telling me I wasn't crazy. Begging me to speak up. I comforted my sister who went through the same thing with you after I was no longer in your grasp. She felt the same emotion: hatred.

Today I revist wounds I haven't in years. I speak my pain to the world so I can let it go. And today, I forgive you. Because I know hurt people hurt people. I know pain is a pattern, and it's my responsibility to break the cycle.

I know you felt pain in more ways than I could ever imagine. I know you were just a child when you had your innocence taken from you. Your body sexuallly ravaged by one of the few people on this planet whose sole job is to protect you, your own father. Years and years of the same abuse. I heard the stories. I get sick to my stomach just thinking someone had to go thru what you did. My blood boils when I think of my "grandfather." (That's not what I call him in my head.) I feel my fists clench and my face twist into a grimace. And when I look in the mirror, I look exactly like I want to kill him.

Pain is a cycle. It wasn't me you were hitting. It wasn't me you were burning your hatred into. It wasn't me you were calling selfish. It was him. It was the pain you had never released, manifesting itself. It was all the hurt, the resentment, finally breaking out after years of being buried. After you told yourself you were fine, that God took the pain from you, and you had forgiven him. The truth is, that nasty wound found a way to release itself, and it was through me.

And I am so grateful that I have awakened enough to recognize the pattern and to stop it. I am so grateful I have learned about repressed emotions and trauma and how they affect the human psyche. I am so grateful I can forgive you. I am so grateful I can now think of you as someone who was wounded, and not my abuser.

I am grateful for this journey, even if it brought me pain.
Because it also brought me so much STRENGTH, so much understanding, and so much growth. I let go of all the resentment, all of the fear, all of the vulnerability, all of the feelings of unworthiness and hatred. I let go of what no longer serves me and replace it with forgiveness, with kindness, with love.

And so it is.