Jagged Lines

No one breaks on purpose

How far back in time do you have to go 

to find the thing that broke 

inside you? 

I knew the day I found my mother sitting alone at the dining room table, staring at nothing, that something had broken inside her. I knew even though I was only four - that more than genes passed down - because when she broke, I broke, too.

Maybe it’s like fine china, like a jagged line that cracked down the center of her and because I was holding her hand, it just continued down the center of me, too. Me, too.

They say that when a husband leaves his wife, he leaves his children, also, even if he just moves down the block, even if he never actually leaves them, even if he’s at all the games and recitals. I don’t know about that, but I know something broke in my mother when her mother died and my father left all in one week — and it was just the two of us, standing there, stunned. My mom at twenty-eight with everything she thought she knew in pieces without her mother to help her figure out the next right step — and me at four, holding her hand and looking up at her, needing her to have all the answers.

I know that when I tried to fix her in all the years that followed, it broke me more and made me feel I wasn’t enough, and worse - that I was stupid to think I might have been enough. I know that later, way later, I was drawn toward people who made me feel the same way: Stupid to think I might have been enough.

Can you really fix a break if it began inside someone else? If I glue myself together, but the thing that caused the break is still in rageful pieces, will I ever be whole, healed, shiny, strong? I wasn’t strong in my teens. When that guy grabbed me in the stairwell, I fought and got away, but I wasn’t so lucky the next time. My no was meaningless and the fact that I’d said no was meaningless, too.

Even my mother didn’t believe me, so what can you do? Even my mother didn’t believe me. How can you not be broken further? She knew I was not ready for the world, she thought I was too soft, but she threw me to the wolves, anyway, because she figured I’d have to learn how to fight my own battles eventually, or because she didn’t know how to save me. Maybe she thought the best thing she could give me was her rage, like some kind of twisted shield I would turn outward instead of inward.

I should have been fighting those battles with my own father, he might have been — probably was, certainly was — the cause of the break. He makes me sicker than any of the guys that came after because he should have cared and he should have known better. He was pushing fifty when he made me his confidante. What fifty-year-old man sobs in the arms of a four-year-old and thinks that’s normal or okay? I should have mattered to him, but no one mattered to him more than he mattered to himself. So I was shattered instead, and trained at the knee of a man who taught me all the men matter and all the girls should be gorgeous and skinny with big breasts and small asses and a sweet smile, ready to help. Rest in peace, Dad.

Here are things I know now: If you’re a twenty-seven-year old man and a fourteen-year-old child has a crush on you, your job is to walk (run) away. You would think this goes without saying but you’d be wrong. This happened right under my mother’s nose, at a restaurant she managed during the day and he managed at night. I guess he wanted to congratulate himself because he didn’t let things go “too far” but I am now the mother of a fourteen year old daughter, and I can say with absolute confidence and disgust, anywhere at all was too far and he was nothing more than a pedophile with a red Camaro. My mother sent me out on a date with him for my fifteenth birthday because she thought my crush on him was cute. I guess she thought she could trust him. I guess she thought he was her friend.

You (me, we) go out into the world and we’re taught the same lessons over and over again. I remember that oppressive office with the pipe smoke and the smug, shitty tone of a man everyone in my high school revered, telling me at sixteen how I was turning his history department upside down, because I had a crush on one teacher who openly returned those feelings, and the other (very married teacher) was sending insane, unrequited love letters to my house. Question: how can a man be paid to be the head of a department, how is that his job description when he blames a sixteen-year-old for the outrageous behavior of the grown men he hired?

Allow me to say now: fuck you, sir. I had no words to defend myself, no way to say you’re talking to the wrong person, because there I was, sixteen and mortified, and there you were with your beard and the patches on your jacket elbows and your stupid pipe like you were some exalted scholar, some big shot member of the academia instead of some nobody at a tiny private school known for catering to rich, not-very-bright students. God I’d like to kick you in the nuts, and I’m not violent and you’re probably dead or close to it. I didn’t tell my mom about you, because what would the point have been? You barely registered as a problem.

I don’t know how you go out into the world as a girl and have any hope at all if your mother is unavailable to you, whatever the reason. Maybe you get lucky and you have a strong aunt, or your mother’s best friend steps in. Mother-loss is real and it leaves a gaping hole full of all the things you absolutely need to know. Mother-loss is harder to comprehend (but certainly not harder to face) when your mother is there, but not there, or sometimes there, but usually not. Or when chardonnay is a higher priority than you.

Before we broke.

Maybe you’ve noticed these men don’t get a name in my story. The one who called me a “replaceable hole” and then sent me a friend request on Facebook years later, or the one who told me I wasn’t hot enough for him and he thought he’d end up with a supermodel. He who lied about every last thing, he who kept treasures from my childhood he swore he’d return, he who didn’t get in the line of fire to protect me, he who took advantage, he who doesn’t understand the sacrifices I made for him but stands in judgment of me now, he who took what he wanted even when I begged him to stop. Begged him. Some of them actually are the same person, and none of it matters because I have an answer to one question, and it’s probably the only one that matters:

We go back in time as far enough as we need to figure out when and where the break happened, and then we do whatever we need to do to put ourselves back together. We stop moving toward people who like to live inside our jagged lines and chip away at them, cruelty by cruelty, and we head toward the ones who think the brokenness makes us more beautiful, more wise, more full of empathy. The ones who can see how hard we worked to get strong, to find our voice, to say no when we need to and yes when we want to. The ones who understand no matter how hard we fought and how strong we are, we still need and deserve to be treated with care, with some tenderness.

I recognize at some point or another I have grown into a wild woman who has tried to prepare her daughter for this world, and who is ready to roar on her behalf at any moment. I’ve raised a son who will never break anyone because he doesn’t have it in him, he is not made of that hardened, toxic stuff. I recognize my mother’s broken pieces are part of what made her her, and me, me, and I forgive her for them. I gather them together when she can’t anymore, I sweep them up and carry them safely in my heart, in a little corner that’s the shape of the words: It’s okay, Mom, I understand now. 

There is no me without my mother, and for all the things she wasn’t, there were so many things she was. She was fierce and frightening if you crossed her. She was calculating when she needed to be. She found a way to keep a roof over our heads when no one else was there to do it. She was funny and she could be really kind and generous, occasionally to me, always to her friends. She lit up a room. She was not to be trifled with. 

And no one breaks on purpose.