Dear Momma, I used to get this recurring nightmare, that I would lose you in a crowd one day.
Momma I know it annoyed you when I followed you around everywhere.
“Your tail is here”- your friends teased you. But I was so scared to let go off you, lest I may lose you. I would get this recurring my dream that you would board a bus at crowded bus-station, without noticing I am left me behind. In my dream, I run after the bus trying to scream your name, but my voice isn’t loud enough and the bus goes away.
This dream haunted me for most of my early years. I would, sometimes, wake from this nightmare and try reaching from my end of the bed. But my little hands never went beyond my little brother Z, whom you had always put between us (on and off the bed). I would stare at your moonlit face from that distance and self assure myself back to sleep.
Trauma of being separated from you
You know although our conscious mind doesn’t remember our early childhood, our subconscious does! May I never forgot that you left me behind once. Oh, no. Not willingly. I know you would never do that. Aunt Sweety told me about the day you were being taken to the hospital got Z’s birth. Apparently I was forcefully taken away from you while you were leaving home.When you were at the hospital I supposed to have cried all the time. And nothing would pacify me. I was only 1 and half years old and I was seeing your side of the family for the first. Aunt Sweety said, after crying for hours, and being handed from one person to another I finally calmed down on Aunt Sweety’s arms. Then wouldn’t leave her until you were back. She seems to be very fond of me because of than one incident. She also remembers me calling her mumum, because sometimes baby-me thought she was you, only to realise it was your sister.
Imagine the trauma I went through! But that’s not it right? You came home with a new baby after being away from me for 3 or 4 days. I must have wanted to hold you tight, but you had a baby to attend to. The new baby must have kept you busy, while I waited to tell you I missed you.
I was 1 and half years old. But I wasn’t your baby anymore. Z was always between us. Until we grew bigger and moved to the “Kids-room”.
You know, during some afternoons, I would find you napping on our bed, with no Z around, I would climb on you and wrap you in my little arms, and you would chase me away, for disturbing your sleep. It was the closest I got to you.
I know now that you would never abandon me
Momma! I know you are a super mom. As an adult, after so many experiences, I know now that you would never abandon me. I know if you boarded the bus without me, you would stop the bus and come back for me. Always.
I now know, that when it got crowded, you held my hand tighter than I held yours. And besides the day, Z was born and another time you left us with Grams, you never really kept me away from you. I know.
But ma, I was a child!
I needed my mumum to put me to sleep. I needed mumum to cuddle with me. I needed to be the part of little joke you would whisper into Z’s ears, that made him chuckle in the bed just before we slept. I didn’t just want to be treated as your other child, sometimes I wanted to be treated as your child.
May be I needed to know that you still love me and your priorities hadn’t changed. May be I needed to be treated like a baby sometimes, and not just as Z’s older sister and protector, who honestly wasn’t really that much younger.
May be that’s why they say you should keep at least 3 years gap between your children. I wish you had given me another year or so I wouldn’t go up to be this clingy adult who fears losing the people she loves.
Oh momma, you have brought me up to be really a fine woman. And I now see that we did have our moments together. Like the time you gave me shower and kissed my head over my wet towel. Or How I would lay my kitchen set, by your kitchen cabinet and imitate you. You brought me more kitchen toys to match your actual kitchen.
I have held on to this grudge for really long, it’s time to let go.
I am no one to forgive you momma. But I need to tell the little me inside my brain that I am forgiving you. Because the little-me has held on to this grudge against you for loving me less for a long time now. I am finally accepting, I may have noticed your affection for Z but totally missed our time together.
I am healing
I had build this huge wall around me, made myself unloved, because a part of me felt people I love never returned the love I had for you. I am now ready to accept that in my shortsightedness, may be I must failed to see that mother, as caring as you, would never hold back her love for me.
I needed to write this to you as a part of my healing process and also to ask for forgiveness for being a difficult teenager. If you had perhaps taken me to a child-psycho-therapist of sorts may be I would not have grown into this big ticking bomb of emotion — always read to explode. There is no way I can go back and be a better child. But it’s time to erase the bad memories from my mind, and truly let go of my fear that you will abandon me.
But the way, thank you for never letting go off my hand.. So finally when I came back to my senses you are still here. I am grateful.
