Letter 60: Our Half-Truths

When we grapple with weighted questions

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Happy August!

I’ve been waiting a long time to share today’s writer with you. She is an incredible human being.

I’ve had the fortune of knowing Suzy for over fifteen years. As her junior year, American Literature teacher, I got to sit with her, unpacking literature and writing for hours. I knew immediately that she was unlike most students. Listening to Suzy’s insights on literature, her understanding of human nature, and the maturity with which she asked questions about our world showed a depth of character I’d never seen in a person so young. I knew there was a reason for this depth, but I also sensed it was connected to deep pain and difficult experiences for someone so young. Our conversations that year about literature, and a little about her life, are ones that I still think back on. Teaching Suzy exemplified that teachers at their best are those who are aware enough to understand that we can learn just as much from our students, as they learn from us.

As you can tell, Suzy has many gifts; I’m honored and grateful that she’s sharing one of her sharpest—writing—with each of us here today. —Molly

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When I was six, I sat cross-legged next to the corner of my mother’s bed as she collapsed on its edge with no fear of teetering. This was our routine dinner position: her left hand deep in a bag of Cheerios and my right hand sticky and fiery orange with Dorito paste.

Though, when her depression turned to mania, she redefined the purpose of her bed. Our bagged and boxed dinners were replaced with a variety pack of men. Her late-night ecstasy rippled through the drywall so regularly that I thought our house’s infrastructure might collapse. I dreamed this would be our unique opportunity to rebuild our home – one that had a bedroom for me, a washing machine that properly drained, and cabinets so clean that maggots would have no success inhabiting. 

Suzy and her mother, Barb.

When I was seven, I stood by our paint-chipped mantel as a forced witness to her second marriage. This relationship was so insignificant that I don’t recall the man’s name. My memory only offers fragments of my tearful protest and inability to comprehend the ceremony, as he and my mother shared their vows in Spanish, his sole language and one I would never learn. Her choice to marry someone who only served her short-lived desires was a betrayal I would recover from. 

When I was eight, I lay in her bed as her new boyfriend changed his plans for whom he would caress. This very short moment entirely rearranged my relationship to my mother, to my body, to men, and to trust.

That night, with the sound of Selena singing in the background, I yanked his hand away and left the room with a new alert nervous system, one that I am still working to soften. I was a shaky shadow of myself in the following days. A friend encouraged me to tell my mother, and I did, at least I think I did. I can’t access that memory, but I do distinctly remember that she never did anything and it was in the nothingness that I felt most betrayed.

Because I was unable to escape his touch and my mother’s cowardice, I compensated by running in other ways. I became so distant – so detached – from her that sometimes I fear that my response was more damaging than the touch itself.

I emotionally abandoned our relationship and I spent most of my time with a close friend who regularly shared her home and meals with me. I tactfully curated a life that was survivable. To earn adults’ admiration and enduring support, I manufactured exuberance and let my potential dance on the surface. In return, I was offered free art classes, rides to school, and warm beds to sleep in. I meticulously rationed my food and my GPA quickly became my Green Card to a life I assumed was otherwise inaccessible. I learned to withhold my love as a form of desperate punishment. I became my own extended family and sleeping was my most reliable escape route. Most notably, I didn’t allow my mother the gift of knowing me.

It was not until I was 26 that I learned the truth. The truth is that my mother tried to kill the man who touched me. As a child, I couldn’t understand that her rage was for me when she chased him around our lawn with venom in her bones and a knife in hand. I could not comprehend that she would choose me over her romantic whirlwinds – that my safety and body were worth protecting. Instead, I assumed he had cheated and that her fury was in service to her ego.

For 18 years, I believed that she abandoned me when I needed emotional refuge and physical safety. Tragically, it was in my perception of the truth that I abandoned her. 

I’m working to forgive myself for not seeing the whole, messy truth. My developing brain could not understand the complexity of my childhood because the brain on trauma does funny things. It takes all those life moments—the pretty and the damaging—feeds them through a kaleidoscope, and spits out multiple and evolving warped images of the truth.

When I close my eyes, I see rotating snippets of my childhood: triangles of our house burning; hexagons of my brother’s heroin overdoses; diamonds of late-night intruders; and trapezoids of cut marks and disordered eating. I must exert significant effort to find the images of my mother and me making candles, glazing ceramics, choreographing dance routines, braiding my doll’s hair, and wearing matching floral outfits.

The stories I tell myself about danger and harm are far more three-dimensional than the moments of love and connection, an unfortunate symptom of hyper-vigilance. 

Suzy, age 8.

So what does it means when our trauma is organized around half-truths? Who do we become when our life narrative is full of holes and broken theories? What is lost when leaving is easier than staying?  I grapple with these weighted questions daily.

The only answer I have come near is acceptance. I must accept that my mother’s best was not enough; that the very large decision I made to leave felt like the only option; and that I was in the crossfires of other people’s pain, but rarely the intentional target, despite how it often feels. 

This December, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, one of the few things I share with my mother. When I received my diagnosis, she called to tell me that I would be okay. We talked on the phone that winter day for 17 minutes, the most we had spoken in decades. I cried after we ended the call. Not because I had cancer, but because the cancer had carved out a small space for my mother to be a mom, a role I hadn’t allowed her to own. I was vulnerable and she was comforting – a recipe we had never tried.

As I sit in these multiple, often incompatible truths, I feel comfort in knowing that I get to choose which ones to hold. I can stop rotating my kaleidoscope and instead rely on the reality in front of me: that I have a limited mother, but a mother nonetheless, who is desperately yearning to receive my love.

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Suzy’s Five Recommended Healing Practices

• Feel your emotions all the way through

  This may sound obvious, but our emotions only decrease in intensity when they are acknowledged and understood. We must feel them to understand their origin and the creative ways in which they protect us. Make a practice of feeling what you need to feel with observation and without judgment. 

• Be intentional about connection

  Healing happens in connection to ourselves and to others. Solitude and isolation are not the same; connection and company are also not the same. Practice connecting to all that you are and finding meaningful connections in your relationships. 

• Set healthy boundaries

  Oftentimes, upset comes from a crossed boundary, whether a personal or relational one. Get curious about your limits and what energies do and do not belong to you. 

• Move your body 

  Our emotions are physical energies that are stored in our bodies. Dance, do a downward dog, go on a run, take a boxing class. Allow the emotions to move through you instead of with you.

• Seek safety, not happiness

  Our brains are wired to keep us alive, not to make us happy. Practice nurturing safe relationships, developing safe thought patterns and belief systems, and being in safe environments. When you are safe and at peace, happiness will come.

With gratitude,

Suzy Fauria

P.S. Choosing compassion, reclaiming our agency, and when empathy is imperative.