Children are dreamers. While our lives sometimes force us to adapt and leave our dreams behind, we shall not forget who we are. In this story, a mother smashes her daughters self-worth again and again leaving her validating herself in toxic ways. At the end of the day, she realizes what being enough really means.
Author: Uma Kurtagić
Warning: This article contains explicit themes of emotional and verbal abuse, body image issues, self-harm, addiction, and unhealthy relationships. Reader discretion is advised.
When we are little, the world tells us to dream, to imagine a future filled with endless possibilities. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” they ask, and the answers are always innocent and whimsical. A princess, a scientist, maybe even an astronaut. They all bring smiles to the faces of those who listen. They certainly brought a smile to mine, if only I had been given the chance to dream. I never had the luxury of imagining myself as a princess. My mother made sure of that. She stole away my childhood, piece by piece, before I ever had the chance to hold on to it.
This is for all the girls who never got to be little. For the girls who never had the warmth of a mother’s love. For the ones who, instead of being embraced, were constantly reminded that they were not enough. This is for the ones who were taught to seek approval instead of being shown unconditional love.
I’ve been told more times than I can count that I act older than my years. People say it like it’s a compliment, but as the years go by, I’ve come to understand it in a different light. To be mature for your age is to be stripped of your innocence before you’re ready, to have the weight of the world thrust upon your shoulders too early, to never know the safety of being a child.
It all began when I turned twelve, an age that should have been marked by curiosity and growth, not fear and self-doubt. I started to change. My body began to mirror the shift inside of me. I got my first period. I started wearing make-up. I developed crushes. I began to hate the reflection staring back at me in the mirror. I starved myself for days, convinced that ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’. The insecurity was overwhelming, but it was the only way I knew how to cope. And yet, my mother didn’t see any of this as a phase; she saw it as a threat.
The moment I started standing up for myself, the moment I began to form opinions and express emotions outside her control, she turned on me. I was no longer her obedient child, and that was something she could not tolerate. What followed was a spiral of verbal and emotional torment that would become my new reality. Words that no mother should ever say to her daughter: worthless, nobody, useless, better off dead, these became the soundtrack of my adolescence.
I lived under her constant bombardment, a barrage of insults that felt like arrows aimed at my soul. One day, I forgot to wash the dishes, and that became the justification for her rage. She screamed at me, berating me, and threw my clothes into a plastic bag, ready to throw it out on the street along with me, as if to make sure I knew how little I mattered. That moment became one of many. The pattern was set. I would stare at her, tears falling, my whole body shaking, unsure if the world was spinning or if it was just me. She never saw it. She never saw the hurt she caused. She never acknowledged the pain she inflicted.
By the time I turned fifteen, things had only gotten worse. I could see how toxic it had become. My attempts to reach out for help were met with dismissal and shame. I sought the guidance of a school psychologist, but when we sat together, my mother played the victim so convincingly that the psychologist, instead of seeing the truth, pitied her. And so, my mother continued to use me as her emotional punching bag. Each time she was angry or sad, or even when she was happy, her outlet was always me.
And that is when I began to lose myself. I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. I stopped feeling anything at all, because what was the point? I had nothing left to give. The only thing that kept me going was the faint hope that someday, someone, anyone, would show me the love I so desperately craved.
In my search for validation, I turned to older men. They never disappointed me. They made me feel important, wanted, cherished, like I was something special, like I was enough. For the first time, I felt like someone saw me, not the girl my mother had crushed, but the girl I was longing to be. But it was not long before those feelings turned toxic too. They became my new addiction. The attention, the affection, it was like a drug, and I couldn’t get enough. I needed them to tell me I was worth something. But then, one day, a line was crossed. That day, I felt filthy. I showered seventeen times in a row, trying to scrub away the shame, but no matter how much I washed, I could not rid myself of the feeling. I felt dirty, broken, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I turned to my mother for comfort, hoping she would be the one to tell me it wasn’t my fault. But instead, she blamed me.
And from that day on, I could not bear to be touched. I recoiled at the very thought of anyone’s hands on me. My body, my soul, everything about me felt contaminated. But I still craved something, anything, that would make me feel like I was still alive. So, I found solace in the fleeting highs of drugs. One joint led to another, until it was all I knew. Every day, I promised myself I would quit, but the truth was, the high was the only time I didn’t feel empty. I didn’t feel anything at all.
I spiralled so far down that I could not see a way out. I was too deep, too numb to climb back up, but too broken to stay where I was. I became everything I hated, someone who smiled on the outside, pretended to have it all together, while inside, I was dying. I sought approval from others, as if that would fill the hole my mother had left in me. But nothing worked. Nothing helped. I just needed it all to stop.
Now that I am eighteen, I see things differently. I have come to realise that my mother’s cruelty wasn’t entirely about me. It wasn’t because I was unworthy, or because I deserved it. It was because she herself was broken, carrying wounds she never knew how to heal. But that doesn’t make her actions right. It doesn’t make the pain she caused me any less real. Understanding this doesn’t absolve her, but it helps me make sense of it, and that is all I have left.
Through everything, I have learned one thing: the only person who can save me is me. I’ve learned to rely on myself, to trust that I am strong enough to rebuild, to keep going, even when the weight of the past feels like too much to bear. I am not the same girl who once sought validation in the wrong places. I am not the same girl who believed she wasn’t enough. The mistakes, the pain, the endless search for approval, they all shaped me. They taught me that I am enough, not because someone else says so, but because I now believe it for myself.
Cover image by: alba1970 from Pixabay
Edited by: Richard Mayer
