Nonfiction / Melissa Fite Johnson
:: Unhook Myself from Old Definitions ::
- Unconditional love
Formerly: the ideal, the dream, Donna Summer song, Tupac Shakur song, what I owe my mother
I was 22 and still living in my childhood bedroom. My father had been dead six years. My boyfriend Marc and I were playing Nintendo when my mother and her boyfriend (off-again when he got a girl my age pregnant, on-again when that girl miscarried) came home. My mother walked to my door and knocked, asked if Marc and I would look at her boyfriend’s photographs. He wasn’t a professional photographer, but he took senior pictures of his daughter’s female classmates for free. I said no. She slammed the door and walked away. Marc started to say “Maybe we should—” when my mother returned and threw open the door. I knew what her contorted expression usually preceded, but since I had company, I was surprised when it happened. When she morphed. Her voice low and drawn out, she called me a piece of shit, the middle finger of each hand raised and shaking.
Marc and I went to a bar after that. In our booth, I confessed my fear that what he’d seen must have scared him. That he would leave. He looked down at his drink, then directly at me. He said he didn’t think he was ever going to leave. We were eight months in. That was twenty years ago.
The next day, my mother acted like nothing happened, like she always did after one of her episodes. She told me she loved me, then prompted me to say it back.
- Guilt trip
Formerly: minor annoyance, road trip comedy starring Seth Rogen and Barbara Streisand, acceptable means of achieving a desired result
After Marc and I had been together a few years, we decided not to have kids. He suggested it, and once I got past my Midwest confusion—“What would we do instead?” I asked; “Whatever we want,” he replied—I realized it wasn’t disappointment I felt, but relief. I’d never been able to picture myself as a mother. Maybe because I was trying to picture myself as my mother.
I told my mother about this decision in the car. I don’t remember where we were going, only that I was driving and I’d picked this moment so I could watch the road instead of her. She said I was killing my father a second time. I was the only one who could pass on his genes.
- Daughter
Formerly: best friend, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, sole support system, my most defining title
My therapist says to write a letter to my younger self. “Which one?” I ask her. “Any of them,” she replies. “All of them.”
To myself the day I was born: There’s nothing wrong with your face, even though your mother is considering plastic surgery already, her first instinct not to marvel but to pin your ears back so you match the girl in the magazine clipping.
To myself at seven: There’s nothing wrong with your voice, deeper than other girls’. When your mother forces you up an octave, calls the house to make sure you don’t slip into your natural voice, please don’t feel guilty about forgetting to be someone other than yourself.
To myself at sixteen: You’re allowed to mourn your father however you need. When you ask her to stop leaving his letters on your bed because it’s too much, her response shouldn’t be, “Fine, bitch.”
To myself at nineteen: It’s OK you told your mother about your boyfriend, about the rape. You should be able to trust a mother. Her instinct should’ve been to hold you, to help you. Not to say “At least my boyfriend never raped me.”
To myself at 30: You are not a bad daughter, even if she tells her friends she never sees you— despite Thursday dinners, despite Sunday matinees, despite daily emails. You are not a bad daughter, even if nothing is ever enough. Marry Marc. Find your dogs at the shelter. Make the most peaceful life you can imagine.
To myself now: I know hardly anyone will understand. People still tell you she’s the kindest person they’ve ever met. But they don’t know her. You’ve spent your whole life keeping people from knowing her. You don’t have to be silent anymore, to protect her anymore. You never did. This is your story to share, your life. And you are allowed to leave.
From the writer
:: Account ::
Earlier this year my therapist said my mother was the stereotype of an emotional abuser—manipulation, cruelty, denial, grand gestures and love bombing. It felt like relief, hearing that. Feeling validated and seen. I’ve been feeling a lot of relief (and grief, to be fair) this year—breaking free of my mother, finally talking and writing about these formerly hidden aspects of my relationship with her. My mother has never owned or even acknowledged her behavior, so it would’ve been impossible for her to tell me to keep it a secret, but somehow I always knew my job was to pretend it away, even to myself. So I rationalized, I called our relationship “complicated,” I focused on the good. There was a lot of good. When she was her best self, she was one of my favorite people to hang out with. As I’ve gotten older and more secure, though, as I’ve understood what love should look like, I’ve stopped being able to pretend. I’ve stopped wanting to. I used to be afraid that if I told people about this side of my mother, they wouldn’t believe me, or they’d think I was exaggerating. I was even more afraid that if I ended my relationship with her, people would think I was a terrible person. But I’ve started confiding in more people about my mother, and I’ve been startled to learn how many people I admire and respect are estranged from family members. And even though it terrifies me to be this honest about my mother—on some level I still believe I’m breaking our unspoken vow of silence—I actually think it’s really important that people try to be more open about emotional abuse, which can feel so ambiguous. It’s too easy for people to doubt their own memories or feel like they deserve to be treated this way. For years, that’s what I did, and that’s how I felt.
Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches high school English in Lawrence, KS, where she and her husband live with their dogs.