No Longer My Mother’s Daughter
I recently found a journal entry I wrote in February of my sophomore year of college that was a question directed to my mother: “What do you need from me?” A year later, I had added underneath: “Can you even see me?” Even as a child I don’t think my mother and I understood each other.
I was temperamental, sensitive — the most anxious toddler she says she had ever met. I was afraid of almost everything: going to sleep, doctor visits and vaccines, throwing up, food that was not white or beige.
Until I was 13, I slept almost every night on the floor of my parents’ bedroom, next to our dog. I couldn’t bear to be in the dark by myself.
Most of my behavioral education was conducted through bribery, because I couldn’t be convinced to be “good” otherwise. If I slept in my own bed, my mother would sing me lullabies.
