Today is my mother’s birthday and it’s a tough day for me. That’s why I’m writing this.
It makes me think of Bushra Rehman’s book, Roses in the Mouth Of a Lion and the feeling of freedom and possibility that the story invokes in me.
The novel is a coming-of-age story about Razia, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants, who lives in Corona, Queens. When she realizes she’s a lesbian she is torn between the traditions of her family and living her own life.
In one chapter of the book, Razia goes to Central Park, for the first time, with her friend. Later she goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, again for the first time, this time with her girlfriend.
In those chapters, I was brought back to the first few times I went to New York City by myself and with my friend Rolando when I was sixteen. I don’t remember the details of the trips, just that we went to Greenwich Village and there I found a sense of belonging for the first time in my life.
Part of it was that I was anonymous in the city. I didn’t have to worry about meeting anyone I knew, so I felt I could be who I really was without judgment. But there was also something about the city itself, it seemed like anything was possible there.
This was in the early 80s and the Village was filled with all different kinds of people. There were punk rockers, artists, trans people, hippies, people in business suits, and people in drag. And no one turned their head to look at any of them as they walked by.
But mostly I felt free. Free from the ties and obligations of my family. As if there really were other ways to live in the world than I had been living all of my life.
It’s taken me over forty years, but I now feel like I’m living that freedom.
It’s not the same as the feeling I had when I was younger, the feeling that came back to me reading Rehman’s story of Razia. Which is why it was so delightful to experience it again. That freedom had an innocence to it. A sense that I could run away and be instantly transformed. Or that someone would come and save me.
But I know now that isn’t how it works.
For most of my life, I felt as if there was something heavy and dark, just over my shoulder. An anchor weighing me down. A darkness waiting to fall. And although I’ve been working on it for years, since I got divorced when I was in my early forties, it is only through therapy recently that I could see how damaging my birth family is to me.
At the same time, I became aware in a new way of my mental disorders. The panic attacks I’ve had at least since second grade. The dissociation which made me feel as if I were observing my life instead of living it. It often stopped me from being able to experience emotions, or make decisions.
And the constant underlying fear, that kept me from taking responsibility for my life and reacting to it instead of making good choices for myself.
To gain my freedom I had to leave the family I was born into behind. Yet I have not been able to completely leave my mother. I call her once a week.
I know in some ways it would be easier not to speak to her at all, but it’s not something I’ve been able to do. My mother is 94 and not in the best health. I feel for her and a part of me still wishes I could be in her life more.
I was stunned when my therapist suggested the people in my family were triggers for the emotional abuse that I experienced as a child. Abuse that I still don’t completely understand.
Which is one of the reasons it has been hard to identify.
It’s not as if I can point to a single or recurring incident. The family is a system that I’m not a part of.
I have found that when I don’t have contact with the people in my birth family, I don’t experience panic in the same way. I don’t dissociate at all. I am confident and know what is good for me and what is harmful and trust myself to make decisions.
And irrational fear no longer stops me from living the life I want to.
Now I only feel that weight or sense of doom when I falter.
When I go back to my old way of thinking, to what I was taught. The idea that family is everything and will always be there for you. Instead of what I know to be true for myself, which is that for me family is dangerous.
While I was reading Roses in the Mouth of the Lion, more than once I heard myself thinking, “Run, Razia, run for your life.”
It’s something I’ve said to myself many times over the past ten years, as I struggled with the idea of never seeing my siblings and mother again.
The last time I visited my mother it triggered me so badly that I vowed never to do that to myself again. I feel guilty and sad about the way things are, and at times doubt that I will be able to keep my promise to myself.
But when I trust myself and understand I feel the way I do for a reason, and I choose to protect myself, that sense of freedom soars inside of me.
And now when I hear that voice in my head, saying, Run, Maria, run for your life, I’m not only running away, I’m also running towards myself.
Which is the only place I can ever really go for the answers I’m looking for. As much as my therapist or anyone else tells me what they believe to be true, I am the one who has to make the decision, act on it, and take responsibility for it.
I have made those often hard but good decisions to create the life I have now. A life filled with love, creativity, animals, and community.
Jon knows me better than anyone ever has and we both want the same for our lives with each other. We’re dedicated to our work and support each other in it. The farm and our animals are nourishing and a source of our creativity.
We encourage each other to be our best and true selves.
So I have more than just myself to protect, I have a family and a life that I love.
