My father was unchanging. He was neat, calculated, and controlled. Like a compressed spring, coiled and ready to launch. My mother drove him crazy—she always had—and that’s what he had liked about her. She was a volcano, messy and artful, leaving burnt chaos in her wake. She was uncontrollable.
In unconscious juxtaposition to my father, my mother longed for continual change. She was always rearranging the furniture in the living room—moving the paisley chair under the window, switching the lamps from one side of the sofa to the other—whereas my father preferred that everything remain in its designated place.
After my parents thought we were asleep, they would rendezvous in the kitchen to discuss my mother’s behaviour. This was a biweekly check-in, designed to diminish her position both as a mother and as a wife.
Sitting alone at the top of the stairwell, my feet dangling through the wooden railing, I would listen to my father’s report.
“You can’t even get out of the fucking bed,” he’d shout with strained control. “What’s wrong with you?”
My mother would remain silent; she knew it was a rhetorical question.
Through these one-sided conversations, I learned how communication worked. You simply listened as someone explained to you all the ways in which you weren’t good enough. You didn’t defend yourself, you didn’t have an opinion. You simply accepted the abuse, because that was what you deserved.
I thought people belonged to other people. I had no concept of individuality, or doing things simply for the sake of being happy. I thought a woman’s purpose was to serve her family, and keep her mouth shut.
I always hated the nighttime. The darkness, the uncertainty. It was all too overwhelming. While others slept, I moved around, waiting for day to break so I could see clearly again.
My own patterns were an unfortunate concoction of my parents. I had messily braided care into control. I was a walking, talking contradiction, wanting to be both managed and unmanageable. My father couldn’t accept this polarity, and after I left home, he simply stopped taking my calls.