Old Wounds

My relationship with my mother was always complex. When I was little, she worked nights. I learned to keep quiet during the day, as to not disturb her sleep. She had a stressful job; I knew because the only time she engaged with me was to tell me about it.

She once detailed an incident in which she had to negotiate with a man who was stood on a tree branch with a noose in hand, threatening to jump. Being as young as I was, I'm not sure how I knew that the man was attempting to end his life, but I did. I don’t have many memories of my mother being present during my formative years, with the exception of my older brother’s birthday parties.

Somewhere along the line she transitioned jobs and started working during the day. This change made her responsible for dropping me off and collecting me from school. Some days I would sit outside student reception until the afternoon bled into the evening, despite a single road separating my mother from me. She worked at the psychiatric hospital across the street. Strange how the founders of a school would choose to build on a rubbish tip, beside the largest inpatient mental health facility in the state.

I didn’t know it then, but a seed had been planted. A sense of unimportance to those who were supposed to care for me most. I felt like a burden, an inconvenience at best.

I was a rainbow child. Prior to conceiving me, my mother had lost three infants to stillbirth and was told she could no longer fall pregnant. My mother seemed to face many obstacles bringing my brother and I into this world. It was as if life itself was resisting.

My brother was a sick baby. He suffered from Kawasaki disease, a rare condition that if left untreated, can cause serious complications such as weakening the blood vessel walls in the heart. I showed less enthusiasm entering the world than my brother but escaped early illness after an emergency C-Section due to the umbilical cord being wrapped around my neck.

I grew up thinking that my brother and I weren’t supposed to have been brought into this world. That if it was our birthright to breathe, we wouldn’t have had to fight for it.

My mother regularly dumped me on another family, one that was friends of ours. They had a daughter one year older than me, so it seemed convenient. She was my best friend during my early years. Most of the memories we shared were pleasant, but I can’t think about them without other images eclipsing, obscuring the light into shadows.

One day we were having a bath together, I picked up a wooden body brush with hard bristles and dramatically started scrubbing it against the cheek of my bare bottom. An act of physical comedy designed to make her laugh. I guess it was something only a six-year-old would find funny and the year gap really did make a world of difference because she didn’t laugh.

Soon I wasn’t laughing either because her hands were wrapped around my neck. The next time my mother was getting ready to drop me off, I told her what happened. I cried and pleaded with her not to take me there, but I didn’t have a say in the matter. I drove that memory so far down, but the feeling of deserving physical safety was a privilege I was no longer entitled to.

My friendship with the girl who had been quick to anger returned. It was as if nothing ever happened. Soon I was hiding in that friend’s house until my mother found me because I didn’t want to go home.

I never did feel loved or cared for by that woman. She put all relationships and attachments above her children. Although my brother never saw things this way. Maybe his circumstances were different as we are seven and a half years apart.

For all I know he could have had a better childhood. I often neglect to think that two people can live under the same roof yet have vastly different experiences. We may be estranged now, but I know the memories that we do share haunt him. I remember us being chased away from what was supposed to be a home.

We took the bus home from school and my brother had discovered red wine bottles in our bin, external to our apartment unit. My dad wasn’t supposed to be drinking, and he denied that he had been. Slurring turned into swearing and a verbal altercation broke out. I won’t disrespect my brother by referring to our shared biological father as “our” dad, I know that isn’t what he would want. My brother couldn’t even stand the smell of red wine because it reminded him of the alcohol-stained carpets of “homes” we once occupied.

A stench that seemingly made the air so dense with its aroma, that it was hard to breathe. I was too young to be conscious of what was taking place, but I knew there was a sense of urgency to get out of whatever we had gotten ourselves into. We ran, and we were pursued.

Fleeing from a scene that may have looked like a crime, we managed to cross a busy road while dodging stones thrown at us. My dad had found a new use for the decorative stones that lined the entrance of the apartment complex. I know it’s not uncommon for people to dream of being chased, but looking back I wonder if this is where my nightmares emanate.

I don’t remember feeling scared or threatened in my childhood within my family dynamic. Maybe my nervous system had grown used to all the conflict. The only consistency was instability. Events that any licensed therapist may label as traumatic, were my normal. I can’t recall how the events above were resolved.

I remember brother giving me a piggyback ride all the way down the road to his workplace, a makeshift safe house. Beyond that I can’t say, but knowing the patterns of my family I’m sure everything was swept under the rug.