My Mother, the Ocean

Editor's note: this piece is written from a client's perspective, not the author's own.

I'm twenty two and alone. It is so hard for me to break into friendships, to form relationships, to trust. I've come to a place where I actually understand my behaviors. I'm looking for others to fill the love I lacked in childhood. I reach out any way I can, pulling on the people around me. I'm often needy, or too timid to take the steps a relationship asks of me. And so people turn away. And I'm left searingly alone. Again.

I know what it's like to long for that unconditional love. The Mother who holds you tight, looks you in the eyes, and tells you, "It's ok to feel sad. I love you. You are perfect, and nothing can ever take that away."

I understand what it is to dream of that mother, the mother I never had. To do anything to get that love from her. You yell, you scream, you silence yourself, you push yourself to succeed, you climb into bed and don't get out. All in the hope that maybe this time she'll say what you need to hear. "I love you. I'm here for you."

I know I won't get it. Not this time, probably not ever. But still I fight, clawing up a brick wall, not ready to let go of the dream. The child inside me who was never held won't relent in her pursuit of what was rightfully hers.

I embody what it means not to have a secure base, and it hurts so badly that nothing can reach the pain.

I look inside for something to carry me forward, and there's nothing there. I had no parents to borrow a sense of self from, so whatever I build has no floor to stand on. It shakes back and forth without a foundation. And underneath it, the little girl, still holding the message that she is unworthy without that love.

I've been through the routines. DBT to hold the pain and sit with two truths at once. CBT to challenge my worthlessness and build something new. IFS to understand the parts inside me. EMDR to process my traumas. Medication. Hospitalizations.

I've gone the route of cutting my parents out of my life. Blaming them. Setting "boundaries," estranging.

I wish I could help you understand what it feels like. I wonder, sometimes, what a life would have been with the kind of mother so many of you had.

Can I show you what it is like for me, with the mother I do have?

I'm running through a desert, running to reach the ocean for a drink. But the more I run, the farther away it gets. I'm crying salty tears, spending what little water I have left, and still I won't give up on those embracing waters, even if reaching them kills me.

As the dehydration takes over, I slow down, and my vision starts to shift.

I'm running toward something that can't even help me. The ocean can't quench my thirst. Maybe it could have once, but by now the salt water will only leave me thirstier than before.

I don't want to look for another source. I refuse. It's too hard, too far, it takes too much strength. I'm exhausted, and I'm thirsty. Besides, the ocean looks so vast, as if it's the only thing large enough to fill a need as endless as mine.

But deep down, I know. I truly know that I need to find fresh water.

When I finally give in to the truth that I have to find the oasis, I trip and fall, scraping myself badly. The ground is muddy, and I have to climb over rocks and brambles to reach the water hole. When I get there, the water comes slowly. A drip, then another. At first it makes me thirstier than ever, and I ache for the dream of the crystal, unending ocean. This water is unclear and muddy, and I have to learn to purify it so I can take it in and absorb it.

As I work at it, harder and longer, I still pine for the ocean. It looks so much greater, like it holds so much more than this trickle. But I remind myself to focus on the water here, the water that is my only hope, the water that can and will sustain me.

And as my strength starts to return, I build a tent on the sand right beside the spring. I dig channels out from it with my hands until the water is running merrily down a dozen little streams, toward seeds I've planted, toward a new pond where birds come to dip. I build a fire to keep me warm, and I tend it, stoking it again and again.

And slowly, I begin to see the ocean more clearly. The ocean I once dreamed of. The ocean I believed had betrayed me.

It looks different now.

I no longer see it as evil, out to rob me of my chance at survival. It isn't taunting me on purpose, tricking me into believing it could quench my thirst. No. It's a body of salt water. When the salt went in, it lost its ability to help me drink. The power to give hydration, the natural state of water, that isn't in its hands anymore. It turned salty.

And I pity the ocean. It never got to know the meaning and the joy of being able to provide for someone else, to give the gift of life. Maybe it never had the chance. The streams that flowed into it were salty too.

Sometimes the winds come and the storms arrive, and the ocean breaks its boundaries, spilling tumbling waves onto the sand, wrecking sandcastles, upending umbrellas, sending the people on the shore running. Sometimes the water is choppy and hard to navigate. And sometimes the earth underneath the ocean trembles and splits, and a tsunami rises. The ocean loses its own foundation, and so everyone in its path loses theirs.

But once I know how to find clear water, and how to keep safe near the ocean's edge, I can actually enjoy the beauty of the salt water. I can watch the calm waves and marvel at the strength it takes to fight the same battle at the shoreline every day. Some days I let it lap at my toes. I dip a finger in and watch it ebb and flow. I paint it in vivid colors, then in soft colors, then in the colors I wish it were.

No.

It isn't evil.

It's just salt water, and it can't give me what I thought it could. It can't relieve my thirst. It can only offer the particular beauty and perspective that it holds.

There are days I wish I had an ocean full of the clear waters of love. I know it's ok to want that. And at the same time, I know that only I can find the clear water that will truly sustain me.