***TRIGGER WARNING – The following article discusses childhood abuse.

I always knew I wasn’t wanted. From as far back as I can remember, my mother told me that she had gotten pregnant with me a month after my brother was born and how she felt about that.

“Morrene, when I found out I was pregnant with you, I cried and cried. I was so depressed! I didn’t want another baby!” were the words I heard often throughout my childhood. And those same cruel words followed me into my adulthood with my mom’s frequent reminders. It never occurred to me to be hurt by those words, probably because I had heard them so often throughout my life.

It wasn’t the fact that I knew I wasn’t wanted that hurt me but the abusive way that my mom treated me during my childhood. From sexual abuse to verbal abuse to physical abuse, I suffered it all at the hands of my dysfunctional mother and the various sick men she brought into our lives.

It has taken me years to realize that I had a target on my back from the moment my mother found out she was going to have another baby.  And to make matters worse, the fact that I am a female really stacked the odds against me in my mother’s eyes.

My mother was a very beautiful woman. With high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and beautiful brown eyes, she was absolutely stunning. But that beauty was only on the outside. Inside of her was a cesspool of black, murky sludge, churning and bubbling with toxic hatred and venom. My mom was a very jealous and highly competitive woman, especially to others of her own sex. I don’t think my mom ever saw the beautiful woman reflected in the mirror when she looked at herself. 

In addition to the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse I suffered, my mother did everything in her power to make me feel and look ugly when I was a child. My mother was a kitchen shop barber who had no training other than cutting her own hair over the years, and whoever was brave enough to sit on the kitchen chair let her start snipping away. She also used to cut my hair and my brother’s. I got the same haircut as my brother: hair clipped close to the scalp, short bangs, and hair high above the ears. Due to the fact that my brother and I were so close in age, we were often mistaken for twins. And to make matters worse, I often had to wear my brother’s hand-me-down clothes when I outgrew mine so that made me look even more like a boy.

“Oh, look at the twin boys!” people would often say when they saw us side by side. Every time I heard those words, I hung my head in embarrassment. I didn’t want to look like a boy. But sometimes, after a closer inspection, I would hear, “Oh, wait, is that a girl?” But it didn’t matter. At that point, the damage had already been done. Every time I heard those hurtful words, shame, and humiliation flooded my body. I felt as if somehow I were to blame for my appearance. Often, I was bullied by the mean kids in school who laughed in my face.

“Is it that a boy or a girl?  It’s a Shim!  Shim!  Yeah, that’s you, ugly girl!”

“Oh, my God, look at that haircut!”

“Damn, she’s ugly!”

Those words hurt me to my very core. And the few times I told my mother about the bullying, she had no compassion.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Morrene, you will fill it out someday, so stop your Goddam complaining!” was my mom’s response.

I envied the girls in my class who had long hair. I was desperate to look like a girl, but I had no idea how to make that happen. The few times I asked my mom if I could grow my hair out, she refused.

I felt ugly in every way possible, a piece of garbage not worthy of love or kindness. But that is the lie of child abuse, that it’s all our fault, and I bought into it hook, line, and sinker. Every bad thing that was done to me I absorbed like a sponge and turned it onto myself with humiliation and anger. By the time I was nine years old, I had learned to hate myself.

When I started to develop and turn into a young woman, that’s when Mom’s hatred of me really showed its true colors. Now she had competition, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit. Slowly, I was turning from an ugly ducking into a young woman, and that started a whole new level of abuse, both from my mother and the mean girls at school.  

“You’re not as pretty as you think you are!” were words I heard often from Mom during that time as she looked me up and down in pure hatred. I never understood why my mom would say such mean things to me. I never felt pretty during my teenage years. Every time I looked in the mirror, not once did I see the attractive young woman that I was becoming staring back at me. All I saw was pure ugliness, inside and out.

I never talked about my childhood with my mom when I became an adult. It was just too painful for me to face. But one question I asked her was, why did you cut my hair so short when I was a kid? Her response? “It was easier for me to manage.” I thought that was curious because my mom didn’t bathe me or wash my hair; I did. But I didn’t say anything to her. Deep down inside of me was still that little girl terrified of her mother’s cruelty.

I kept my mother in my life for many years, long into my adulthood. Unfortunately, my mother never got over her hatred of me, her jealousy, and her competition. But I tried. I so desperately wanted a loving mother in my life, but that was not to be.

In my early 50s, I finally was strong enough to confront the abuse I suffered from my childhood. At that time, my relationship with my mom ended. My mother took absolutely no ownership of the trauma she inflicted on me during my childhood. Although I still yearn for a loving and supportive mother, I have finally come to terms with the fact that it was never meant to be for me in this lifetime.

Photo by Saif71.com on Unsplash

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Morrene Hauser

Morrene Hauser currently lives in Central Ohio. For a little over 30 years she ran and operated her own business as a court reporter. Upon retirement Morrene started writing about the many wonderful animals she had while growing up and the powerful impact they have had on her life.  Morrene also writes about mental health.