My mother married someone she knew, on her wedding day..she should not marry. She almost…almost told the few there who witnessed it to go home, that this was a mistake. I was two or three months old. My name was Anne Marie Hickey. She married him for me anyway. So I would have a home and a father. So her own father would allow us to live in his home. Regardless of what I think about her politics or religion…I can relate to the sacrifice of what my mother did that day. I can relate.
And on the day she divorced..she forgot paperwork she needed in her car and ran out flustered and emotional about this day and while coming back up the cement steps of the court house fell and badly scraped up her knees and ripped her nylons. She walked back into that room with bloody knees and in that moment ended years and years of emotional abuse. It’s the most symbolic thing that could of happened that day..standing there with blood pouring from her knees while the person she was divorcing…laughed with the people inside that courtroom like it was just another day. It was not just another day for her. This was years of suppressing her instincts about right and wrong. Years of being belittled for finally getting the mental health help she needed by the one person who should of supported her the most. Years of begging him to get help too so they could be on the same path together. Years of a church telling her that what she was doing on this day was the worst thing she could ever do.
Imagine being told the worst thing you could ever do was to leave an abusive relationship. But I guess this is what an abuser would tell you. She had an entire childhood of practice of being in abusive relationships. Of course she stayed as long as she did. Of course she was very strong throughout all of it until she couldn’t be any longer. And as she stood there with bloody knees and ripped nylons..she did what she should of done years and years ago before realizing she could. She stopped the cycle of abuse. She ended it. She did the one thing she tried so hard not to do. That she was told she should never do. The one thing she knew would rip her family apart. By then we had all begun or own dysfunctional relationships and cycles of abuse. There was no need to hold this family together any longer. He had begun to drink again. He wasn’t home the way he used to be. She was looking at the rest of her life now and how she was going to spend it living in that house she grew up in where the abuse began for her.
I understand it now. I don’t feel anger anymore. I can only relate. I am my mothers daughter. I am. I learned at a young age from my mother how to be dysfunctional and abused and do it well. How to manage it all and keep a clean and organized home..raise children and clean up after their father. And to take it. To cry and scream and wake up the next day like none of it happened. Until that next day was 8 yrs later or 4 yrs later or 10 years later.
I am my mother’s daughter.
You Had To Be There… 