This is a personal essay written by the author, sharing their individual journey and experiences. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this piece belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MyndStories. This essay has not been professionally vetted or reviewed for clinical accuracy. This essay contains discussions of childhood trauma, including parental physical abuse. Reader discretion is advised
All happy families are alike. But unhappy families are all unhappy in their own unique ways. Somebody said this somewhere. I could fish it out from the internet archives for your curiosity. I could cite my sources as it is expected of me.
But I’m in the mood to subvert expectations today. I will not do what is expected of me, what a good girl would do. I will not endeavor to be the good girl in any way, shape, or form today. I will use cliches without shame and quotes without attribution. Why? Because what I write here today is an exercise in defiance – against my own mind.
A mind caged for over three decades under a jailer who held many faces. Parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, best friends, lovers and abusers. Faces filled with love and fury, laughter and contempt. No matter what expression they wore, the edict has always been clear. Hide away. Diminish. Say ‘yes’ even when it kills you. Keep everyone pleased. You never know when or from where the next blow will come.
People-pleasing gets a bad rep these days. TikTok influencers call it selfish and opportunistic. In an age obsessed with ready-made authenticity, interpersonal strategies like this are often viewed with hatred and derision. Share your struggle, says the hashtag. Wear your heart on sleeves, says the Instagram ad for fancy shoes. Be raw, shed your armor, let us look. Learn how to be looked at. This curated authenticity is an armor of its own, but that’s a topic for another essay. What was I saying? Ah, people pleasers! Everybody hates them!
What many don’t get about people-pleasing is that it’s often not a ‘choice.’ Some of us have had the need to say ‘yes’ baked into the very matter of our beings, no matter the cost. I would not have said ‘yes’ to my ex-boyfriend’s marriage proposal the day after he publicly hit me if I was opportunistic, for example. Or said ‘yes’ to additional responsibilities at work that made me ill from stress if the driving force was mere selfishness. What do you do when saying ‘no’ to something, acting even a little in self-preservation makes you physically sick? Palpitations, sweating, racing heart rate, light-headedness – all physical symptoms, for something as little as the word ‘no.’
It took me 10 years to find a therapist that I could stick with, and one of the first things we worked on was my inability to say no, especially to certain people. Okay, not just certain people. (Say it. Write it out.) My mother.
There. I said it.
The amount of resistance I feel within myself while writing this is strange, considering my Ma and I are more or less candid about it now. We have talked about it. We have waded through an ocean of anger, guilt, and reproach to arrive at a place of softness between us. Yet I still struggle with contradicting her, ‘displeasing’ her, and telling her when she is clearly wrong.
My mother hit me when I was a child. Even as I write this, the jailer inside my mind goes, “So what? Loads of people do jolly well despite being hit in childhood. You are the weakling!” I aim an imaginary brick at their head and come back here.
So, there. My mother hit me. It wasn’t mere slaps. Her most-reached-for weapon was a broken badminton racket. It had a concentric circle pattern on its handle. I remember because I remember the impressions it made on my skin.
My mother didn’t hit me because I was being naughty or failed to answer a question or something immediate like that. She’d hit me because my grandparents complained to her about my behavior after she came back from work. I was not particularly naughty as a child but perpetually zoned out. I didn’t follow instructions, didn’t answer when called, or come to eat right the moment my grandmother called me because I was building sandcastles in my mind. It was ADHD, I know now. My grandparents were convinced it was insolence.
You see, they didn’t like my mother at all. They didn’t like that she was dusky, they didn’t like that she wasn’t into feminine hobbies, and they especially didn’t like that she continued to work even after my birth. The barrage of complaints my mother received from them always bore the same underlying message – your daughter is bad because you are a working mother.
These complaints would be launched at her the moment she returned from office. I’d sometimes listen from the bedroom door. Most of the time, the complaints felt distant, as if they were about someone else. I wasn’t being obstinate! I was just thinking about something else! I was just putting up a chair tent on my own. I just didn’t hear it the first time she called; my mind was weaving stories! The next thing I’d know was my mother’s hands raised on me in violence. She’d hit me, I’d run, she’d run after me, and after her frustration and anger were sufficiently cooled, she’d hug me tightly and cry.
Day after day, this routine continued. Me doing something wrong without understanding exactly what I was doing wrong. My mother being taunted and rebuked for it, mother hitting me in anger and then clutching me and crying. The wound and the salve. It was a textbook pattern of abuse.
Over time, the intensity and frequency of the hitting reduced. I do believe it was a result of my then barely-30 mother getting a better handle on her emotions and not because the mistreatment by her in-laws reduced. But I had, by then, caught on to the fact that sometimes there is no reasonable explanation for the hurt I am caused. So, I need to anticipate every situation, take care of everybody’s emotions, and manage my expectations according to the moods of others. These strategies helped me survive my childhood. They became habits suffocating me as an adult. These habits kept me in an abusive relationship far past any logical timeframe. They allowed toxic managers to take advantage of me in workplaces. They had me going back to friends who found joy in belittling me. They made me a people-pleaser.
It took me several long months of therapy to break through this pattern. The jailer is still there, but their voice no longer holds power over me. I spoke to my mother, and I forgave her. I forgave myself. Somehow, of the three, the last was still the hardest.
I have come a long way since. I have taken more control of my life. I have pushed at the constraints I had placed on myself before. I have become more accustomed to speaking my mind and taking up space. I no longer wilt in shame every time I act in self-preservation or cause minor inconvenience to others. (Okay, I still do, a little bit.) Most importantly, I have learned to care for myself without guilt or reproach.
So here I am. A little mean. A little hard-to-please. A little more practiced at saying ‘no.’
I like it here.
