Unimportant

“Beautiful,” she said. “Perfect,” she added. “My perfect, beautiful baby girl.”

Her words were branded into me, as if to promise it to be so. And I was born, naked and vulnerable to the cold world ahead of me.

When does defending your child go too far? Would you defend them if they robbed a bank? Would you defend them if they got into a fight at school? How about if they sexually molested your other small child for years? Can you defend that? My mom could.

“But that’s my baby, too,” she would say. “How am I ever supposed to choose between my children?” she would ask.

She would ask that without knowing that she was already choosing him by not choosing me. She made a case for him to be innocent, and for me to be a slut. I was only seven or eight years old.

“She asked for it,” he would tell them.

“Why would you do that?” asked my mother and his stepmother.

Because this has been going on since I was three. This is normal to me.

I stood in the doorway in silence, crying because I didn’t know how to explain the nuances of sexual abuse that I didn’t understand myself. I was also crying because I was being called this word that I knew was bad, but I didn’t know what it really meant. Slut. My mother said it with a hardness in her tone, emphasizing how awful this word must be.

I wasn’t sure what exactly I did wrong. Wasn’t he wrong, too? Didn’t he do the thing they said was bad on that video in school? Why am I in trouble?

Because he manipulated them to believe it was your idea, your doing, your fault.

I wasn’t allowed to see him, per court orders, until I became a legal adult. For two years, my mother spent every other weekend visiting with him in private, outside of the house. She followed the rules. I thought it was all over.

“But he’s your brother, Aim,” my mother started. “Why should I have to leave the house when I’m not the reason this is going on?”

It was always about her, ultimately.

“We will watch you closely. Nothing will happen. This is ridiculous—he’s your brother!”

But they didn’t watch. Things did happen, worse than before.

My father became complicit with whatever my mother wanted. This is the point in my parents’ marriage that I remember really getting bad. My father didn’t want to have her son in our house. He wanted to kill him for what he did to me. And my mother made a case for my brother. And my father let it go because he didn’t want to lose her. And no one protected me.

This was when I started to realize that my mom wasn’t who she put herself on to be. That she did things for her personal gain. Even things that were nice, she did because she got something out of it. My mom was the least bit selfless because she felt like the world owed her something. But she never stopped to think of what she might owe the people in her own world. They’ll never be repaid.

When I was fifteen, my older brother—who had moved back in illegally when I was thirteen—got into a physical altercation with my father one night. One of them called the cops, and then everything changed. We got investigated. They called DYFS on us. My father had unregistered firearms that were seized. They checked the fridge to find alcohol and mostly condiments. They found asbestos in the walls in my room. There were dog feces on the floor from Gretel, our Dachshund.

We lived in a jungle. At that point the house felt evil. It was also as if we were all sectioned off and were entirely different species from each other, all living in our respective territories. Everyone was desperate for attachment and connection; everyone distanced themselves from one another and stubbornly chose not to look past themselves. The house ended up becoming a jungle. Everyone had a territory and to invade that space meant conflict.

DYFS was there for hours. My older brother was laughing on the phone with his friends about us being taken away. He was part of the reason we were, because he was there illegally.

There were terms under which we could be reunited. One of them was keeping adequate food in the house and alcohol out of reach. Another was cleaning the house top to bottom. And the hardest one for my mom was getting my older brother out. This took months. In the meantime, we had stayed with my uncle for a weekend, a youth shelter for a few days, and then landed at my grandparents’ house after my DYFS worker finally found out their info. (My mother wouldn’t give it up to begin with.) Those three moves happened within two weeks.

We were finally reunited sometime in February, after being removed on November 30. My younger brother stayed with my mother up until he moved out, but I was removed again after being hospitalized inpatient for an eating disorder that had been developing over some time. With everything going on out of my control, I almost think it was gonna happen anyway.

My school sent a letter home, which I intercepted, saying that I wasn’t allowed to come back next year unless I sought treatment for my eating disorder. Against my will, because I was a minor, I went inpatient immediately following the end of the school year. I had to quit my job because they couldn’t afford to be short a staff member during the summer season. Everything was happening so fast.

During my stay there, I talked about some of the things I had experienced that year with being taken out of my home. I didn’t talk about what did or didn’t happen outside of what was documented that night. No one knew about the abuse or neglect other than there only being alcohol in the fridge. Everyone thought these things were resolved since they needed to be proven to DYFS and the court before allowing us to move back.

The treatment team at the hospital didn’t think it was a good idea for me to move back home because of my mother. I told the therapist how my mom was competing with me when it came to not eating. My mother would ask me constantly, “Did you eat today? How much did you eat? How much do you weigh now? Do you weigh less than me yet?”

One weekend afternoon I went to take a shower. I was my sickest weight at the time, right before going into treatment. My mother came into the bathroom while I was in there and flung open the curtain. I immediately covered myself as best as I could. She looked me up and down, then said, “Pfft. You’re not even that skinny,” and left the bathroom. I cried while I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair.

Clearly my mother was unhealthy, but leaving went against my goals. I wanted to go back to my school, as it was my only safe place during that time in my life. My grandparents weren’t willing to take me back, and no other family could take me in. I went back into foster care upon my discharge. It was too far away for my goals.

While I was in foster care, my mother allowed my older brother to take my place. For the few years I was a ward of the state, my mother kept it a secret. My grandparents were in on the secret and helping by taking him out if I had a home visit. Luckily for my mother, she only ever had one visit with me per placement, so she didn’t have to hide him often. I didn’t find out he was there until I ended up moving back in with my mom when I was 18 and my options were her place or a women’s shelter. I chose what I knew.

I couldn’t believe I had been lied to this whole time. My relationship with him was worse than ever. We got into physical altercations frequently. My mother expected me to find a job right away and contribute to the bills, same as I was doing before I left. I was the second parent, but in a lot of ways, I was the only parent.

I started looking for a job. I moved in just before Halloween. Two weeks later, my father passed away. My mom was separated from him since I went back into foster care. The last time I had seen him was five months prior at my high school graduation, after I had to beg my mother to give him a ride. Everything stopped.

I stayed with my mom and fell back into our routine of things. I got stuck in that routine for a few years. I had finally had enough in 2014, and I moved out for good because she had threatened to have my older brother move back in when he had finally moved out two years prior. After he drained her bank accounts, stole her debit cards multiple times, and manipulated the crap out of everyone constantly, she was going to let him back in. I told her, I’m tired of being put last. I do more than anyone in the household, for the household, and if no one can understand how being around one of my most decorated perpetrators affects me, then you don’t deserve what I’m bringing to the table and you’ll be sorry I left.

I found the apartment I’m still in now. I had three years of not having to go through that all the time. Then she got sick and role reversal was in full effect. But my entire life, I have not felt loved by my mother. I have not been prioritized, protected or cared for. I could be used for her benefit but she refused to benefit my well-being in any way.

In the end, I was never what my mother wanted. I was what she needed, and for a long time, she was what I needed. And now I’m moving on to create purpose for myself in other ways, and to learn how to heal a gaping hole that my mother wasn’t able to pour her love into.