Phone conversations with my mother often involve me being guilted or even sometimes reprimanded for not calling as often as I should. Usually, in these cases, I roll my eyes and apologize. I love my mother, with absolutely no doubt, but there’s a tendency on her end to forget that I’m an adult and I’m studying, and unlike before I actually am usually not at my phone’s expense all day. 

I’m a relatively independent person; I was raised that way. My adoptive mom isn’t entirely okay with this, and I do try to understand–she brought a teenager into her home and the teenager doesn’t let her actually take care of her, which is probably hard for someone trying to understand a stranger. But all I’ve ever wanted was to be treated like an adult, and that’s especially what I want now. My mom knows this and I think she tries to understand as well, but when she calls and yells at me for making a decision I thought was appropriate, it’s hard to see myself in the lens of an adult who can actually be somewhat successful on her own. I’d never been perceived as an adult, and that’s all I ask for from anyone now: to treat me how my experiences reflect.

I contracted Norovirus on January 23. The virus has shown an uptick in Pennsylvania recently, and specifically in the residence of college students who all use the same bathroom. I woke up at 2 A.M. that day with the worst stomach cramp I’ve ever experienced; I don’t remember why I went to the bathroom, but I remember standing in the stall begging whoever could hear me to make the pain stop. I didn’t stop vomiting until 5 P.M. that day (I think I threw up 17 times in total) and I had a fever of 102 until the next day. I probably got 5 consecutive hours of sleep.

As I cried in agony in the bathroom stall, all I wanted was for someone to take care of me. I wanted to be treated like a child; I wanted someone to come in, hold up my hair, and rub my back as I retched. I wanted someone to soothe me to sleep and help me walk from my bedroom to the bathroom. I yearned for any mother or any father to come in and insist I eat a saltine and sip my water every 15 minutes. I wanted my mom to let me lay in her bed so I didn’t have to walk that far to the bathroom. For the first time in years, I wanted someone to treat me like a child and for the first time in years, no one did.

The traumatized brain is a particularly strange phenomenon; sometimes, everything makes sense, and most times nothing does. When I call my mother on the phone, all I want is for her to understand that I’m an adult (and I have been for a very long time), but when I’m vomiting on the bathroom floor, all I want is for her to treat me like I’m five. I’ve been taken advantage of in every regard possible my entire life, and in turn I was an adult in a child’s body, but now that I’m an adult in an adult’s body, I don’t quite understand why I treat myself as a child. Why, when I’m expected most to be an adult, do I crumble and infantilize myself? Why, when I’m encouraged to be childish, do I act as if by letting myself be a kid for once I am committing a crime only I can convict? 

I do hope that one day, the inner child begging for someone to take care of her when she’s sick gets what she needs. I hope she doesn’t have to pry love out of her parents. And I hope, one day, she and I can coexist, me in her, her in me.

and to the little girl who lives inside of you – may she always remember that she is loved, seen, and sacred.

-amy ahlers