The Secret Life of Bees

If you want to watch the movie-don't read this. I'll spoil(kind of) the ending.

Sometimes movies get you, and pull you out. This one, surprisingly, did. I say surprisingly because I am white and have no idea how it feels to endure the struggles of a black woman. But I do know what it feels like to be a young girl, standing in front of your parent, wishing they could be something other than what they are and love you.

Standing in front of my mother at the train station in Tacoma was something I try not to think about. To have this fleeting moment where we both really could escape together, just the two of us, and run away forever, only to get on the train alone was beyond devastating. She didn't cry all day while helping me pack, she didn't cry while we sat across the table from each other at lunch, and she didn't cry while we waited for the train to arrive. As my mother was consciously choosing to send me away she did not cry until I sat down in my seat across from a stranger and looked at her through the window. I was 12.

She had dragged me back with her after two months away, to return to Robert and all that he was. I was with them for two weeks. Two weeks of being locked in the apartment and staying in the "guest room" as I was not good enough to have a room, sleeping on the floor because I was not even good enough to sleep on the couch in the guest room. One day he pulled me out of the guest room and sat me at the table. While he smoked cigarette after cigarette he made me read a letter. When I first looked at it I was shocked. I had no idea what to think. That was MY writing. My writing in red ink on school paper. What did it say?...I don't remember writing this?...these are not my words...it was a story I had copied for him from Chicken Soup for the Soul or something. A story written by a young woman about how she had been harsh to her step-father growing up, how he had punished her in turn, and only later did she realize that he loved her all along. I had copied it for him while on a trip to the beach with my mother and grandparents about two months before we left him. As I sat there trying to figure out what was going on he said "eat it."

..."what?"

"You heard what I said. Eat it. You wrote that to me and I carried it around in my pocket for months, showing everyone I worked with, and it was all lies. Eat your words....oh, and while you're chewing-look me in the eyes. I want you to know what you're doing."

I turned to look at my mother who was sitting three feet behind me on the couch, but she just waved at the paper with a smile on her face. So I ate it. I ate two pages of three before he told me that was good enough and to go back to my room and read. He had given me a book by Leo Buscaglia and told me to read it before I could go on with my life. That I needed to learn how to love before I could be a part of the world again, until then-the world would go on without me.

This short two week period before moving in with my grandparents has been on my mind a lot recently and I can't shake it. I haven't spoken to my mother since July, and now I think that all of the mess is starting to surface....again. Over and over and over I will go through this for the rest of my life because of the choices she made. I have spent years in therapy, and while I have forgiven her each time I have begun to hate her again, it never goes away. I can truly and deeply forgive her, but then time will pass and the hurt comes back and I have to forgive her again. And again. And again. All the while she continues to cause more damage and hurt with what she does now...

But in this movie there is a girl just like me. Confused, broken, hurting...She feels like the loss of her mother's love has made her unlovable. Then someone will cup her cheek and tell her that she is completely lovable, that she is surrounded by love. Since leaving my mother God has always sent someone to show me love. When my Papa retired and became and alcoholic again-he sent Nathan, Peter, Travis. When my grandma got tired of me, and started to spend all of the child support on gambling trips to Vegas, Reno, Laughlin-and instead blamed everything on me and called my caseworker to put me in foster care-God sent me Margo. When I moved back in with my mother and Frank because I had no where else to go after my grandma said she didn't want me, and my mother did some irreparable damage and I started throwing up everything I ate to feel in control...He sent friends to tell my mother so she could listen outside the bathroom door after dinner, and Jason to hold me after she continued to tear me down. When Jason and I finally ended our relationship after years of him lying to my face and discovering him one day with his pants around his ankles in front of the computer-He sent me Eric Murphy. When I moved back and needed to heal-again he sent me Margo and Melissa. When I was ready to be loved with no need of it-He sent me Andrew.

God has never failed me. He has always sent someone to hold me in the ways that He cannot in this life for Him. The time that Andrew took me to the top of a waterfall overlooking the gorge, on a night with a meteor shower, I knew that it was God's gift not Andrew's. That God gave me Andrew to show me how much He loves me. I know God loves me. I know He surrounds me with love. I know I know I know I know.

But-I cannot shake that feeling of never being enough. Of absolute despair that day she gave me up. The way it only got worse when she only came to one court hearing and then gave up. How much it hurt when my birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving would pass without so much as a phone call. The day I was crying in my room and Papa just came and sat with me while I cried, when he put his arms around me and just said "you are loved." How I will never be able to put this all down in a way that is fluid and sensible enough to show them all, even my mother, that through everything I love them enough that I would die for them. I would rather die than to have my mother's life cut short before she can learn to love the Lord. I know that God had to create a heart in me like this to understand His love. For me to understand how much He loves me. To know that I have hurt Him more than my mother has ever hurt me, and He loves me the most. It's just frankly, a really shitty lesson.

I will always feel like an orphan. I think that is why I want to adopt and foster. I want to show as many children as possible that they are lovable, that they are worth it, that someone authentically and unconditionally loves them before it is too late. I have considered our life with adopted children from many different nations, most of them girls, as infants and babies. Today I had this vision of Andrew hugging our daughter from India when she comes home in high school and a boy has broken her heart. I cried because I know that she will be so lucky to have a father like Andrew, and that he will be everything a father should be. I love him all the more for it. I love God all the more for healing me through Andrew's love. Andrew's love for me, his family, our future children, and his commitment to God.

I am the luckiest girl in the world above all else.