Medical Drama

By Jessica Lake

I saw a clip from a medical drama.

A wife, bruised and battered, was defending her abusive husband. Expectedly, in the episode, the young son kills his father to save his mother. And he screams at his mom:

“How could you go back to him?”

That screaming question bothered me.

Because I knew the answer.

And I thought, what kind of person would do that?

And the answer was:

“I would.”

To understand where I learned this, you need to understand my mother.

Only as an octogenarian did my mother let slip a few truths. She was christened Marta, which she jilted for the American Virginia. Her first language was Spanish. While she was a child, her Spanish father and Sonoran mother died of cancer. They left behind three siblings of one mother and three siblings of a second. The large family was shuffled between relatives.

Eventually, they found a place to live and set up home. The older brother was the breadwinner. The older sister was AWOL.

A 12-year-old Marta became mother to a family of six.

She cooked, cleaned, budgeted, shopped, and comforted.

Whatever else she learned during those years, caregiving became inseparable from family.

My mother kept returning to my narcissistic dad, Edward. There was no physical abuse, but sooner or later he would prove that she was not part of his delusion.

And she would return.

Perhaps because it was familiar.

Truly awful, but with a pinch of good.

Home was no home with Edward.

I did it too.

I feared my brother. He had tormented me throughout my childhood.

Years later, we were at the same college. He asked me to live off campus with him.

He told me all the wonderful things we would do.

I said yes.

There was really no consideration.

He was my brother.

He needed help.

I was in a position to help him.

What else was there to consider?

I didn’t think about the cost.

And the cost was significant.

That semester, he tormented me. He was just as scary and dangerous as ever.

I also lost a year of opportunity on campus. I didn’t understand what I had lost until my senior year, when I lived there alone and thrived.

But there was something even stranger.

My brother went home just about every weekend.

So I went home too.

Home was dysfunctional. Going back kept me connected to the very system that was bad for me. Had I actually reasoned about it, I could have figured that out.

But I didn’t reason about it.

I went home.

Every weekend.

I didn’t need a reason.

Then my brother asked me to live with him again.

I said yes.

My father did something similar.

Sometimes he would ask:

“Do you really need to be paid this week?”

Notice the question.

Not:

“Can I pay you later?”

Not:

“I owe you the money.”

Do you really need it?

He had turned my wages into something discretionary.

And I accepted the question exactly as posed.

Did I need the money?

No.

“No. I’m fine.”

Question answered.

He never made it up to me.

He simply took the money.

And I said okay.

What did I do with the money I did receive?

I gave it to my mother and brothers.

For years, I understood behavior like this as servitude.

I am no longer sure that is quite right.

Look again at the question my father asked me.

Do you really need it?

My own claim to the money was not enough.

Ownership was not enough.

Fairness was not enough.

The question was need.

And if someone else needed something while I did not, the problem seemed almost embarrassingly simple.

They needed.

I could provide.

What else was there to consider?

Apparently, not me.

I often invoke the Book of Job in my writing. In its pages, I find a difficult idea about divine love: to love God truly is to love without condition. Comfort or suffering comes from His hand, and Job is ultimately confronted with the limits of his standing to demand an explanation.

Whatever place such devotion has in a relationship with an omnipotent God, transferred to human relationships it becomes dangerous.

A parent, spouse, sibling, or lover cannot rightfully demand unquestioning devotion from another human being.

Yet that was remarkably close to the rule I lived by.

Love meant obedience.

Need created obligation.

My own needs could wait.

And if I had no immediate need at all, my claim seemed to disappear.

That is different from saying that I wanted to suffer.

I didn’t.

It is different from saying that I enjoyed servitude.

I didn’t.

The disturbing possibility is simpler.

When someone I loved needed something and I could provide it, I often failed to recognize myself as an equally legitimate claimant.

He needs.

I can help.

What else is there to consider?

For much of my life, apparently nothing.

Love between spouses, and between parents and their children, cannot be servitude.

There must be two people in the room.