As I have mentioned before, my relationship with my daughter has been strained, at best, since she came back to Canada after having spent a year overseas when her father kidnapped her and her two younger brothers. After the year she spent there, she came back a different person. She had received a thorough brainwashing and was convinced that nothing that was in any way, shape or form related to me was any good. She was like a horse with blinders on, like someone who has tunnel vision. All she wanted was to get away from me and get back to Hungary.
Understandably, this was heartbreaking, but at first I thought that all she needed was time. I thought that all I had to do was to be myself and she would remember that I was her mother and the love would return. The relationship would be all right. I just had to show her that everything she had heard about me over a year was untrue. I was convinced that the difficulty would pass and that she would become my daughter again.
Little did I know how deep the brainwashing went. Daughter wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. She ignored my existence. She locked herself up in her room. When she absolutely had to, she answered me in one-word sentences. No matter what I tried, it was no good. I knew deep down I had lost her and I didn't know how to get her back. In the process, I was losing myself, too. My self-esteem plummeted. I had thought that I was a good mother. Now, I didn't feel like a good mother at all. I felt like a failure. I felt myself regressing to the person I had been before I left her dad, the person who had plastered on a happy face and smiled even though her heart was breaking. I was good at that. No matter what their father did to me, I smiled and made sure the kids felt that everything was all right. I wanted them to feel secure in who they were, in their family. For a long time I kept up these appearances until one day I realized, I was raising them by myself anyway, why should I stick around and live with all this stress? That is when I moved out, and found that I could raise them myself, as I had done before, but now the stress and tension were gone from my life. I flourished. I was the happiest mom in the world. My smile wasn't fake any more.
When I finally got Daughter and my two sons back after a year of court procedures, I was so ecstatic that it took me a while to realize that Daughter was not the same. So I was stuck plastering on the smile for the boys again, while I racked my brain for a solution to regain my relationship with Daughter, who seemed to be waging a cold war against me.
How can I not have made a good enough impression during the first nine years of her life that none of it stayed with her? She didn't show an ounce of emotion or attachment to me. I tried everything I could to let her know how much I loved her. I tried to plan all kinds of activities based on her interests. I remember when we traveled to different cities, how she had been so happy to go up the CN Tower in Toronto, to walk in the Vieux Quartier du Québec, to visit beautiful churches and eat in the revolving restaurant in Montréal. Sure, she was happy, but it had nothing to do with me. She was enjoying herself with her brothers, but she never once thanked me. I felt like she was using me and I felt like such a loser.
Meanwhile, her father brought out the big guns. I can't even get into all the manipulation that went on when he talked with her. So many times I wanted to put an end to it. My lawyer said that I had every right to limit their telephone conversations because even though Daughter was living with me, she was always on the phone with him. She would withdraw to her room, out of earshot. But I wanted to be a good mother. I didn't want to cut her off from her father. After all, I left him because I couldn't stand to live with him. I brought the children with me because I couldn't stand to live without them. It wasn't because I wanted to take them away from him, even though essentially that is what I did. I just wanted MY freedom, and I sincerely believed that the children would be better off away from all the friction and conflict.
But although he was half a world away, her father still influenced Daughter immensely. Essentially, she became his informant. Every little thing that happened in our home was reported to him. He blew everything out of proportion, magnified it a hundredfold, then sent the child welfare people to look in on us. Eventually, I relented and had internet installed at home so instead of talking to her father privately on the phone, Daughter could only Skype with him on the computer in our kitchen. It seemed like a good solution, but it was actually so much worse. In essence, I had him here in my kitchen every time he Skyped with her. I found myself tiptoeing around so he wouldn't hear me. I didn't speak. I waited for them to finish talking before I took out a pot or a pan or anything that could make noise that would tell him what I was doing. It was a terrible feeling.
No matter how badly I wanted to have a good relationship with Daughter, she was unresponsive. I would spend hours at night staring at pictures of her, of her beautiful smile, and it broke my heart because I knew that her smile had nothing to do with me. It had to do with anything BUT me. She wasn't smiling at me, she was smiling at the camera so she would have the pictures as souvenirs of the things she had done and the places she had seen.
The thing that broke my heart the most is thinking of how Daughter was living here while she wanted to be elsewhere with all of her being. It pained me so much to think of her stuck in a place that she didn't consider her home, living only for the day she could escape. She often cried in her room because she was homesick for a home that wasn't mine. She probably felt like she was living with a stranger because she didn't ever take a step in my direction. I wondered if she wasn't lonely for the mother that she wasn't letting me be. It broke my heart and in the end I conceded that I would have to let her go.
Eventually, she would be old enough to choose for herself where she wanted to live, and if she left like that, there was no way she was ever going to come back, not even to visit. Despite all my misgivings, like what kind of person she would grow up to be without my guidance, without my modeling good values for her, without my being there to influence her to be open, loving and accepting of people, I came to see that even if she didn't turn out to be the lover of her fellow man who I had wished to help her become, she would at least be happy. And that is all that, as a mother, I really want for her right now. If my daughter is happy, why should I gripe over the fact that she only wants to wear brand-name clothes or turns into an uncharitable snob? (Because I really do fear for who she will grow into in her father's custody.)
Working with our social worker hasn't brought us any closer together, not until the social worker said it was time to think about letting her go (something I have been secretly admitting to myself, but had been terrified to voice out loud.) This week, we had our first session where we tried to talk to each other. I must say that Daughter didn't have much to say. She did have questions, mostly about why I left her dad. We both came out of the meeting with tear-stained eyes and I had a migraine headache for the rest of the day, I had cried so hard. But, ultimately, I communicated to Daughter that I would let her go, not because I wanted her to go, but because I didn't want to continue to hurt her by forcing her to live with someone who she didn't feel she loved.
I must say that I am rather proud of how I handled yesterday's meeting. Daughter had a lot of questions about her father, and a lot of the answers to those questions would have forced me to say bad things about him. I replied as generally as I could, without going too much into the specifics, and sometimes I outright said that I was not going to tell her what she wanted to know because it would force me to say bad things about her father. I have always told my children that one of my values was to not talk about someone behind their back, especially since they were not there to defend themselves, and I was rather glad to have a chance to show Daughter that I actually practice what I preach. I told her that I thought it was wonderful that she loved her dad, that it was important for her to do so, and that I didn't want to mess with that. And I also made it clear to her that I was letting her go because she wanted to go, not because I wanted to be rid of her, and that she could always, always come back. It was probably pointless to say this since she has no intention of coming back to live with me, but I wanted her to know this just the same.
Daughter's departure is still a ways off, but it is looming over me like a big, black cloud. I have asked her to at least finish off the school year here, but I recognize that she will have to be in Hungary by September for the beginning of school. I want to at least have the summer with her, which is important for the boys too. But she wants to be in Hungary by her birthday, which is at the beginning of July. I hate to think about it. I wish time would slow down.
Despite my growing feeling of doom and failure, I do have one positive thing to report. Since I told daughter that I would let her go, she has begun to open up to me a little. Today she was downright chatty, and whereas in the past she would clam up the instant she realized that she was actually talking to me, today she went right on talking. It's almost as if she had years and years' worth of stuff she had to say. It was actually kind of funny, and heartwarming in a bittersweet way. I hate to think that I have to lose her if I want to find her, but I am trying hard to think of this as something to be thankful for.
