“How could you be so stupid?”

“You know you will never amount to anything, right?”

“Did you really think that was going to work? You are so worthless!”

Before you ask, yes, these poison words filled my ears from Beverly, my biological mother. Words and statements like these, echoing in my mind, in an endless loop, once referred to by one of my steady line of counselors in my teen years as a cassette tape. “The tape you continually replay in your mind,” Dick said to me once. After all the emotional abuse and years of counseling, I’d be able to stop hearing it. Most of the time. But like it or not, it’s still there, playing in the background like a subliminal message that won’t stop.

As a grownup, I’ve learned to ignore it, stop listening to it, and turn it up so loud that nothing else gets through. But who the heck said I had to listen to Beverly, or her abusive language? Who decides whether that message gets to live rent-free in my head? Me, right? The thing is, you listen to your parents as a child. You believe, rightfully so, that they are the ones who are supposed to protect you, watch out for your well-being, and keep you safe from falling off a cliff or walking into traffic. That’s not what happened with me.

I was ten years old and had a really rough day at school. Kids suck, and back then, there was no such thing as an anti-bullying policy. “Just come tell your teachers,” they said to us. But we GenXers lived by a strict code – snitches get stitches. So I never said anything.

Beverly told me, “If you ever need a hug, just come ask me. I’m your mom, and you can come ask me anytime.” I was on the verge of tears, ready to completely fall apart emotionally. I couldn’t take any more abuse. We were in the kitchen, and I asked, “Mom?” The tears filled my eyes before I could finish my ask. “Can I have a hug?”

The absolute look of disgust on her face? I might as well have tracked mud across her white Persian rug. Not that we had one, but if we had? That’s the look she had.

“Are you serious right now?” That’s what I got. “I’m busy right now. Just go away, Joe.”

Wow.

That was it. The messages were repeatedly fed into me, and getting a hug? That never happened unless it was on her terms. Never mine.

Years later, after spending hundreds of dollars of my own money on counseling, I’m unpacking what she destroyed in me. Good years. Hard years. Painful years where I made no real progress, and then some really fantastic years where I sat across from a therapist and said I think I can do this without listening to her. The thing is, the tape will never disappear. You just slowly stop mistaking it for the truth.

It was late. Probably sometime after midnight. Except for the green glow of the JBL playing ocean sounds, the room was dark, Pretzel snoring at the foot of the bed. Alissa was asleep beside me, and I was staring at the ceiling. Running the day through my head. What went wrong? What exactly did I say? Was it okay? Hurtful? Helpful? Did I say enough, or too little?

And there it was. Beverly’s voice. Right on cue. Filling the silence like it owned the place.

Who told you that you needed to listen? Who told you any of this was true?

It wasn’t loud. Or dramatic. A flash of lightning didn’t fill up the bedroom. Just a quiet question, rising up from inside me.

Who was it that told you that you had to keep listening to this garbage?

I lay there, the questions running through my head, Alissa asleep next to me. Soft sounds of waves crashing on a beach somewhere far from Jackson. Who said I have to listen to her? When I was a teenager, I stopped listening. Not just because I was a teenager. Sixteen was when I started, slowly, to understand just what kind of damage she did to me. What would I need to repair it? That was and is still unknown.

I don’t know if I’ve fully answered it yet. But I’m asking. That’s further than I got at sixteen. Bev? She doesn’t get to decide what I’m worth. She never did. I’m finally old enough, and now tired enough, to mean it.

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If you liked this one, here’s two more from the same place:

Acceptance — On choosing to feel it all instead of quitting, and what it looks like when someone runs toward you before you finish your apology.

The Woman with the Cleaning Cart Who Changed How I See Worth — I’d want to read that one before writing the summary. Want me to pull it up?