I sat and waited in the hospital, waiting to hear from the team of doctors. My father, sisters, and I take shifts in the waiting room, making sure that there was always someone there, and that my mother was never left alone – even when she didn’t know we were there. We all use our own methods to pass the time. I work on a Wordsearch book; my dad reads the news; my older sister drinks coffee, goes down Google rabbit holes, or takes the occasional smoke break to prevent herself from pacing across the room; and my younger sister rotates in and out of the room, or loses herself in her phone. We are together, yet disconnected at the same time.
Aunts, uncles, and cousins come and go, keeping us company. To pass the time, my mothers’ siblings tell me about their pasts, and our lineage. As I hear these stories – of addiction, of mental illness, of continuous struggle – I see more of myself in them than I ever did before.
I hear stories of my grandmother, and how she never shied away from talking about these struggles to her children. She never let a person’s struggles define them; but her voice could only do so much. The cycle kept repeating. I see my own anxiety in all of my mothers’ siblings; in my uncles and their smoking habits; in my aunts’ irritation and stubbornness. We are linked by more than just blood – their battles are mine, my challenges are theirs. We are all a reflection of one another.
My mother and I are placed together as “sensitive” and “fragile” in conversation. My aunt, S, mentions my mother’s mental illness as “weakness” as she smokes during a lunch together. My older sister mentions how the family kept me in the dark before telling me what happened. I have to bite my tongue for the whole trip to keep myself sane.
We are strong, yet weak; tough, yet fragile. We are shrunken and placed into glass jars, too delicate to touch. We are coated in shame, our fire suffocated before they even had to chance to light up.
As I waited for the plane journey back to Vilnius to begin, I imagine how my mother must have felt growing up, as she went through her own struggles. Shame clung to her like an extra layer of skin, and she passed it down to me. I remember when I asked to go to therapy for the first time at 16; how she brushed me off. I remember my heart dropping to my stomach that day. I remember my sisters and father shrinking my anxiety attacks to hormones and sensitivity.
Shame clings to me now, even after all this time. The cycle repeats, and it grows. But I no longer want this to be the story of my history, or my legacy. A cycle only repeats when we let it – but it only takes one person to stand up and say, “No more.”
Leave a Reply