***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 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.
Thank you for being brave and writing out your story. I see myself in many ways in your words. Continue to be strong and a self-advocate.
Thank you for your kind words of support, Stephanie. Writing about my experiences from so long ago has been immensely therapeutic and also makes me understand the person I am today due to the trauma. Although I will always carry the scars from my past, I am in the best place I have ever been in my life and for that I am thankful. Best of luck to you and your healing!
Wow, my story is extremely similar to yours – just some details are different – but not many! This has been a real struggle over the years as I have gradually been peeling down the layers of my life and what in the hell happened and why did it happen. Totally unconscionable! How can a mother be so hateful and unloving to her own child? I now know it’s her issues, not mine – but it doesn’t make it any easier to understand or comprehend, or deal with. My mother subjected me to a medical experiment when she was pregnant with me for money! She got pissed when I survived after being daily poisoned with synthetic hormones and I almost died a traumatic birth. She was pissed off because I survived. Maybe it would have been ‘easier on her’ if I would have died – all washed away – but it didn’t happen that way.
I appreciate you sharing your story.
Kris
Thank you for sharing this I experienced similar things and worst with my mother. I and my elder sister we dont have any similarities and I do wonder she might be from a different man and she loves my elder sister and tortured me throughout my life even till now. She ran away from my biological father didn’t let me contact him I just know his first name and he is no more and she met another man and she married him they both tortured me and after marrying him she did all the fraud crimes with people and when she was caught and sent to prison she didn’t even feel guilty and blamed her second husband and we were sent to orphanage and when I came back from orphanage and this people on bail I lived with them and figured out more that they like doing fraud with people and my mother is a lustful women and who cares only about money she made me work in 12 th std and till now she keeps on torturing me for money and times my husband too. Finally god gave me a husband who loves more a lot and after 2 year of marriage finally im moving to live with his family we couldn’t do it earlier coz he lost his parents and due to financial status as we both r not highly educated. My husband too saw the worst of my mother. I hate her and I never want to be like her not even a inch.
Hi, Kris, I just saw this message. It is just shocking how some women have absolutely no maternal instinct. Add to that not wanting their own children and the life-long issues we have trying to deal with that trauma.
I wish you well on your journey of healing. Thank you for responding.
Thank you for sharing your story. You are not alone as we share similar experiences. My mother never once said I was pretty, therefore I grew up thinking I was ugly. Took me decades to realize I am not, and even now, at 71, a part of me believes the lie.
I totally agree – my mom did also. She flaunted her ‘beauty’ in front of me while growing up with all the latest makeup and nice clothes while making me wear hand-me-downs and never teaching me about wearing makeup or even how to use it – to this day, I still don’t wear makeup and wear farm-like clothes – you know, tee-shirts and jeans. I’m comfortable in these clothes – used to it – I could change into more ‘feminine-like’ clothes, but when you don’t feel pretty and were told you were ugly, why dress up – it feels awkward at best!
Kris
Thank you for sharing this. It validates my own experience of having a mother who held so much contempt for me. I can only speculate as to whether she truly hated me. She, too, was extremely beautiful, making the madness of my hell somehow unbelievable (not that I would have ever told). Her abuse was so targeted and deceptively hidden, only close family knew. They, too, said and did nothing in my defense.
It would take a lifetime to understand it all. My self hatred. My endless battle to survive. This vast tragedy of trauma over millennium. It all goes back to her. This revelation may have been an epiphany that freed me; but it was a devastating truth to be reckoned with. My mother does not love me. For reasons unknown to me, she never has. Today I reclaim the truth of my narrative. Not the lie that leaves abusers free of their accountability to me.
I totally agree with you – it’s uncomprehensible, yet not surprising. I feel mothers who hate themselves, for whatever the reason, can’t deal with it so they pass it on to their children to make themselves feel better – really sick, but true. My mother used me as the scapegoat in the family and I could never understand why I was always getting in trouble and being punished, yet my brothers and sisters never did get in trouble. It’s taken most of my life to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I can, as an adult, now rise above it, but certainly did not make it any easier growing up. She always made me feel like something was wrong with me – innately and mentally/emotionally and physically. I had a tough time coming to grips with that negative core belief about myself.
Have a beautiful and adventurous New Year!
Kris