I Used To Pray For You All The Time
Last night I had dinner with my mom who I haven’t seen in about 10 years.
“Why’d you leave?” I asked.
“He got so bad,” you replied. I knew that was the reason.
“Then why did you never come back?”
“I was so afraid of him.”
Coward, I thought.
I also completely understood but still— I was your baby.
“I didn’t think he would be like that with you, you girls were so young,” you went on. You have absolutely no idea.
I was 5. You looked at me when I was so small, knew exactly what he was like, and had it in you to walk out.
No one told me that you weren’t coming back.
I prayed for you to come back and made every birthday wish that you would. I stopped praying for you and started praying for strength in my late teens when I accepted you weren’t coming— that this was my life now. I believed God would make something of me. He would bring light if I survived my dad and by sheer will, I did.
Between the appetizers and the main courses, I considered telling you things I needed you to know except I also felt too nervous.
Maybe I ditch it. What’s even the point?
It’s too heavy and I’m all grown up now and I turned out okay.
My heart was shaking I felt scared because I hate talking about it sometimes but I collected the courage and I told you how hard it was for me to grow up in that house.
I told you how I wanted to die.
I told you how you leaving hurt and traumatized me— teaching me the biggest lie: everyone leaves.
I told you that everything I amount to is because of him. My discipline, work ethic, emotional intelligence and drive is because I grew up with structure and standards and strict routine and that I was lucky to grow up close NYC to taste my liberation and future career dreams as a child.
I told you how today, him and I are okay. How I have extended compassion to his inner child knowing grandpa attacked him and his spirit, too (this came after tremendous innerwork myself)
I told you how he laid his hands on me since the day you dropped us off and he was unpredictable and how worse he got when sister left and I was the only one left in the house and he was merciless.
As I shared these things, you sat across from me saying “wow” and poking at your food. You didn’t extend your hand or empathize or get up to hug me.
I was convinced you’re selfish and you didn’t care. You don’t have a single maternal bone in your body.
“I’m sorry, I can’t go back and change the past, Kaila,” you said, barely looking at me.
I didn’t know where to go from there. My body felt lighter but it was counterbalanced with my heart that was heavy with disappointment.
With a flight out the next morning, I checked into the hotel downtown alone. I cried in fetus position and considered calling close friends but I didn’t. I eventually curled up under the covers on the king bed, propped up my laptop and turned on Pirates of the Caribbean to soothe myself to sleep.
I went to sleep thinking, what a disappointment.
In the uber ride to the Albuquerque Airport to fly out of there, I realized I don’t know if you cared or not— but you had made peace about your decision to leave us.
You. made. peace.
While I had held on.
We talked about happiness and you said that you were happy. Unconvinced, I asked you again and you said yes.
Happiness isn’t a purpose of life in the Korean culture. It’s important but not as important as your career and honoring your commitments to yourself and your family. I’m still carving out who I’m meant to be in this world but I needed you to know that I was made in the darkness of his hurt and his rooted unhealed trauma— know that my childhood was not sunshine and rainbows but I still believed there would be a light eventually in my life.
For a long time, I thought you’d be that light that would come into my life.
So I used to pray for you all the time.
