Unwanted

Graphene is a carbon compound that is extremely thin—the smallest layer that can be made with it is the width of just a single atom—yet has more than 100 times the tensile strength of steel. It is also incredibly fragile; the smallest disturbance can cause it to break. And unlike steel, graphene can’t be “healed” or repaired easily, if at all, once broken. It can only be rebuilt anew, starting from scratch. 

My trust is like graphene. Trust in people, in procedures, in institutions. When I trust I give my whole being to something, because I’ve always been an all-or-nothing person. But my trust is so very fragile. Once broken, it has never been repaired, only rebuilt. The rebuilding takes incredible time compared to the initial building of trust. I give freely of my heart at the slightest provocation of willingness to stamp belonging on it. When that trust erodes, it does not simply crumble. It burns down everything that was once part of its foundation, salting the remains of scorched earth so that all that is left is a tattered testament to the hope that once belonged. Anything further must be built elsewhere—the wounds of broken trust lay barren yet festering on the fields of my psyche. 

I suppose that comes from a childhood bereft of love or stability, where my very presence in the life of my mother was frequently described as an annoyance. I was only called an accident once, but once is all it takes when you learn that the person who brought you into this world wanted nothing to do with you at the time, and nothing to do with you at age of 10 either. 

If it wasn’t clear then, it certainly became clear the day I found myself choking on a hard-boiled egg I had taken too large of a bite out of. Sitting at the dinner table with my mom, pounding the table while I pointed frantically at my throat, she sighed that familiar sigh and told me to stop being dramatic. Knowing I was going to die if I didn’t do something, I rushed over to the sink while I still had the energy and began punching myself in the stomach, trying to dislodge the egg. I saw a video on the heimlich maneuver in school, and hoped to be able to emulate it on myself. Either through the act of beating myself up, or the adrenaline that caused me to be able to heave harder than I ever had before, I managed to cough up enough of the egg that I could swallow the rest. My mom sat at the table the entire time, and later chided me for not finishing my dinner. 

It wasn’t until I was 14 and moved across the country to live with my aunt on my father’s side that I began to learn what it meant to experience unconditional love. Perhaps that helped mitigate some of the damage. It’s possible that I would have been an entirely misanthropic, jaded pessimist without it as opposed to a somewhat misanthropic jaded pessimist without it. 

Growing up without love isn’t something that you really feel the absence of, because how are you supposed to know something’s missing if you never knew it could exist? Certainly I felt a yearning for connection, for touch, for someone to confide in; but I never imagined that those were things I was supposed to have. I thought I was just greedy for wanting what I didn’t have. Growing up without love is one thing. Couple that with repeated abandonment and you get an adult with an inability to express their emotions because of the ingrained knowledge that my emotions are disgusting, unwanted things that no one needs to or wants to deal with. Intellectually I know this to be wrong. But that doesn’t change the instinctive flinch whenever someone touches me, or the inability to even contemplate asking for help when I’m filled with despair. 

I was five the first time my mom made it clear I was a burden and that she was better off without me. She sent me back to Israel to stay with my grandmother for approximately six months, a time I have very little recollection of. I remember a classroom where I didn’t know how to make friends because I had already lost significant amounts of Hebrew, and I remember a playground with a Daffy Duck head at the top of a metal slide. I recall that I got sand in my eye at that playground, and my grandmother taught me how to pull my upper eyelid down over the lower in order to force my eye to generate tears to flush the sand out. 

When I was six I was sent to a mental hospital for children. Apparently I was unstable and violent. It might have even been true. I remember the drive to the hospital. I remember feeling despondent. I remember having to circle items on a colorful paper for what I wanted to eat the next day, every day. I remember fear, and loneliness, and not understanding why I was there. I remember lots of little colorful pills that I had to take multiple times a day; a nurse always reaching into my mouth to feel if I didn’t actually swallow. I remember being strapped to my bed by the nurses after I bloodied my head by banging it against the wall until the reverberation of my brain in my skull was such that I could focus on that instead of the all-consuming wish to not be alive if life was nothing but fear and sadness. 

I don’t remember how long I was there. A few weeks? A couple days? Three months? Time had little meaning when I wasn’t allowed to see the sun, and even at six I was already on the road to complex trauma wreaking havoc on my memories. I have huge blank spots where memories of my childhood should be. Snippets of glimpses of half-forgotten recollections are all that remain of my first 13 years on this earth. 

Six to seven I lived with my mom again. I took a short bus to and from a special education school where the class sizes were small and there was a padded room next to the entrance for those of us who used our bodies to communicate instead of our words. I spent quite a bit of time in that room. I remember one day in the playground, one of my classmates Eddie approached me to tell me that he liked me, but couldn’t be seen playing with me because the other kids wouldn’t ever let him hang out with them again. That was the last time I tried to make friends with someone at school for many years. 

When I was seven my mother decided she couldn’t deal with me anymore, again. She dropped me off at a foster agency where I was placed in a temporary foster home until a permanent one could be found. I went through a succession of homes for several months before finding a permanent one; a family of five. Mom, dad, older brother, and two younger sisters. They said they were excited to have me join their family. I was given meals at different times from the rest of the family. Mostly confined to my room, I wasn’t allowed to play with the sisters, and the older brother was 13, so far too old to want to socialize with a seven year old. I read a lot of chapter books I was able to check out from school, but most of the time that I remember was spent laying on my bed in my room, staring at the ceiling, wishing that today was the day my social worker would come visit for the month because at least then I got to talk to someone else. 

When I was nine the foster care system decided that they were tired of paying money for someone else to take care of me when (according to them) my mother was a perfectly acceptable parental figure and they discharged me back to her care. She came to pick me up in a taxi, and I thought it was so cool because it meant that we wouldn’t be taking three different subway trains home, and by then I knew that taxis were a lot more expensive than trains. I thought it meant she cared. Maybe she did. 

From nine to 11 I grew. I recall once my mother telling me that I’d never be too big to take a bat to when I struggled out of her grasp. She made me pancakes with butterscotch chips for my birthday that year. One day, after following her around 4th avenue for what felt like miles, but more than likely were only five or so blocks, we entered the grocers. She picked up one of those hand baskets that people who lie to themselves about how much food they’re buying use. I complained about being tired, and in a fit of pique she swung the empty basket at my head, smacking me firmly in the face with it. I remember feeling grateful it was empty at the time. 

Shortly after my 11th birthday, my mother informed me that she was sending me away again, this time to a residential treatment facility upstate. I asked her why. She told me that she couldn’t deal with me anymore. I lived there for two years, one month, and 11 days before they too forced my mother to take me back. 

There are days when it’s so hard to breathe I wonder how I don’t pass out from the strain.

The last time I spoke to my mom was April 28th 2015, when she called me to inform me that my grandma had passed away. I hung up on her because she followed this news with how inconvenient it was for her, and I couldn’t deal with managing her emotions while trying to process the news. In the months following, I called her many times, and left many voicemails. I sent text messages, and even tried emailing. She never responded. I suppose me hanging up on her was the final nail in the coffin of whatever feigned affection she might have had for me. 

The head and the heart are fundamentally unequal organs. I can recite chapter and verse how reaching out to friends and loved ones during hard times is the right thing to do. I can lecture on the necessity of leaning on other people when one can no longer hold themselves up, because humans are social creatures and no one should have to deal with death alone. I know that many of my friends would love for me to call them and tell them I need help—I need support. I know that if I just reach out my hand, someone will be there to grasp it and help pull me out of the mire I find myself drowning in. 

But my heart is fearful; my arms feel like molten lead. My fingers curl inwards into poorly-made fists that I tuck under my armpits while I hunch into myself because showing other people how I feel is scary. Letting myself be vulnerable is terrifying. None of the experiences I’ve had as an adult of opening myself up and being held by well-intentioned people has ever washed away the experience of being 5, or 6, or 7, or 11, or 13, or 25 and being shown time and time again that I’m unwanted. That my feelings don’t matter. That crying is a sign of weakness that’s punished harshly by a world that doesn’t believe that people who look like I do are allowed to cry. 

I will forever be the crying six year old banging their head against the brick wall, blood streaming down my face, unable to vocalize how I feel because experience has taught me that there’s no point. Even at 35 when I know in my head that it’s not true, that I am worthy, I don’t feel that way. 

I open my mouth to beg for help. All that escapes is a pained cry, muffled by the fist I shove inside to cover up any more sounds because it’s easier to bottle it up than take the chance, however small, that I’ll be told yet again my feelings are inconsequential. I don’t know how to trust the actions of people who care for me, because I’m forever the child of seven being shown with the actions of multiple families that my presence is nothing but a burden. Why would it be any different today?