Here is a memory I haven’t thought about in a long time, maybe a decade or more, maybe 20 years: My mother has put a CD in. She’s playing a song by The Carpenters, singing along to snatches. There’s sunlight in the house, shining on the white cabinets, the linoleum floor, and all I can see is her smile and the music. Maybe I danced with my sisters to the music- I cannot recall. This memory is old, faded, like a scrap of a sepia photo found torn out of a long-lost scrapbook.
This memory feels like it belongs to someone else, even though my sister corroborates- our mom used to love The Carpenters. In more recent years I can only recall her turning off any music that dared to enter her presence, and grimacing for photos in a hideous mockery of a smile. But somehow, there it is, this memory: she is with us, she loves us, and she sings that our love has put her at the top of the world.
I don’t know anything about the Carpenters. I know that there’s more to the memory I cannot recall, perhaps a movie or TV show that featured this song, that inspired the retrieval of a CD. When I queued it up on Spotify a few weeks ago, it was because I’d heard a different song from a local band whose intro reminded me powerfully of a song I hadn’t heard in decades. And so here I am, listening to Top of the World and fighting back tears.
Earlier this year, my mother kicked me out of her house.
Those who read this blog in the mid-teens, before I privatized most of my posts, will know that I’m transgender. This blog used to be my diary, secrets and gender thoughts furtively published in the hope that I was not alone. Today, I’ve got other outlets: a commonplace notebook, a secret, private Discord server, even a few failed attempts at diary posting on Tumblr (note to my readers: do not do this).
Somewhere between that shining golden memory of Karen Carpenter’s words on my mother’s smiling lips, and early 2021, that love turned into something sour. That love became a demand, a prerequisite that I be the kind of person she wanted me to be. Somehow, what should have been at most a strained relationship became a battleground. I was not thin enough, good enough at school, Catholic enough, feminine enough. I should “look nice” and watch what I eat. I should go to confession. I should pray the Rosary every night.
The rift between us became an impossible chasm when I went away for school; without her to micromanage, to prevent me from activities that weren’t allowed in her house, like meeting other trans people, dating a person of ambiguous gender identity, or visiting other houses of worship. With these experiences I realized something I hadn’t fully grasped before: I do not need to live my life accepting hatred for things beyond my control.
Did I want to be trans, as a teenager, when I began to realize that living my life as a woman would only ever be a raw wound? Of course not. In her house I spent my nights in tears, sobbing silently in a room I shared with both my sisters, begging God to fix me. But no matter the God I prayed to, I woke up every day certain of one thing: I am not a girl. Whatever my gender identity, it is not the same as my mother’s. Eventually I came to the conclusion that God’s answer to my request was simply “no”, and I stopped praying. Not out of spite, but out of an acceptance that the answer would not change. (There are other reasons to pray, but whether or not I intend to pray again is material for a future post.) And with my acceptance came wave after wave of peace, and the ability to move forward.
Outside of my mother’s house, I began to accept that while God wouldn’t hate me for my existence, the church I was raised in very much did. With every carefully non-confrontational epistle on the validity of trans identities, I felt even more strongly the rejection of myself from the community I’d been told I could always turn to. And so I began to explore other religions, began to ask questions about ways I could exist and grow into myself without binding myself to the person my mother expected when she originally found out she was pregnant with me.
I no longer speak to my mother. Her most recent attempts at contact have included links to transphobic talks given by televangelists that I refuse to listen to, and articles about how I owe her forgiveness. I don’t know if I will ever forgive her for how much she has hurt me over the years, for her voice in my darkest nights and her words of constant, hateful vitriol. When I talk to my father, he reminds me that when he married her, she was a pleasant, kind woman and a joy to be around. I don’t think I will ever be able to let go of the hurt attached to this knowledge.
Once upon a time, my mother was a kind person who loved me, who dressed me and cooked for me and dried my tears. Once upon a time she told me that all she needed would be hers if I was here. Today, as I listen to this song and remember this moment with a heavy heart, I wonder if I will ever be able to remember her with fondness, or if she will always be a memory of sadness. I wonder if she misses me. I wonder if we will ever reconcile. And though I’m done reaching out, I hold onto the hope that someday, maybe in the distant future, she might reach back.
I have opinions. So sue me. 