Wounds Unseen

Words may not have the ability to slough through flesh like a knife or a sharp shard of glass, but they can be used as weapons of emotional destruction. For me, a married woman's worst nightmare came to fruition when my mother-in-law stated her feelings about me with painful clarity.

"I don't care about you at all, Sarah. You are dead to me."

Her son and I don't talk to her anymore. We can't without compromising our mental health. Yet, like the aftermath of a large explosion, the impact of her words linger.

"Today is supposed to be a celebration of your wedding," she told her son, "but we feel like we are mourning your death. We hope you have a ‘shitty’ first anniversary. You two are a match made in hell."

Her words still haunt like the stubborn particles of dust that won't settle.

We are often told that "the truth lies somewhere in the middle," which may be accurate in most situations. Surely a dispute between two individuals can be easily resolved with communication—for others. In my case, however, a mushroom cloud erupted in my face, leaving me frozen, shell-shocked, dazed and confused. For a while, the proverbial ash caught in my nose and throat, rendering me speechless.

"You only used my son to have a baby," she accused, "because you were getting older, and no other man would have you."

These were words on a specific mission, words with the intention of inflicting pain—words that would, in essence, slice directly through the heart—for both me and the husband that I merely "settled" for. Her words continued relentlessly, not just to our poor ears. They continued in the form of an active smear campaign, which continues to this day. Or, at least, I'm told it continues through social media, of which I discontinued after the onslaught of her words wrecked my fragile spirit.

Her words, scanned across the blaring light of my cellphone screen, would cause something to click in the mechanisms of my brain, spiraling me into a dark mentality of despair, trepidation, and deep-seated insecurity. My sanity would be tested. The core of my being would shrivel, and I would feel this physically in my back as I began a habit of hunching. I was, in all honesty, a broken, disheveled shell of an individual, a walking corpse through this thing called life. I was a shadow, disconnected and withdrawn from others, lurking within my dark sphere.

I was already a socially awkward person before being weighed down by baggage. Now I had the added stress of not knowing who to trust; who believed and who didn't believe in my mother-in-law's narrative, that I planned to ruin her family by marrying into it? That I was the object of scorn by my husband’s entire family? That I "banned" her from seeing her grandchild for no apparent reason?

The damage to my brain from the emotional trauma was so immense that it would take time, therapy, and thirty days of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to render. My husband and I were indeed on the receiving end of a vicious, verbal assault by his mother, and then scorned for reacting against it.

"Please contact your parents," enablers pleaded with my husband. This would irk him to no end. "Their hearts are broken," they'd say.

What about our hearts? This wasn’t even a blip of concern for anybody—not under consideration as a flicker of anyone’s thought. We were not considered victims of this vile situation, not then and not now. We have been and still are the “monsters” who cut off a "poor" woman from her grandchild. I'm the villain, the “evil” daughter-in-law who tore the family apart. Yet, her loathing still catches me in quiet moments, occasionally even in times of joy. Sometimes, I can ignore it. Other times, its presence feels like a constant shadow that follows me wherever I go.

"Your mother-in-law hates you," a poisonous statement that tends to chant like a cruel mantra through my head. I shake it off, returning to enjoy the grandchild she will never be granted the privilege of knowing—the baby I "used" my husband to have.

If I could convey a simple message, I'd explain to my accusers that we didn't cut contact to hurt or punish my mother-in-law for her words. We did it to protect ourselves. Words can create wounds unseen.

In a final, lengthy email that dehumanized me to my very essence as an individual, there was a long list of my flaws—some truthful, some fabricated, but all hurtful. In the last paragraph, a bold prediction was made.

"He will leave you once he figures out who and what you are," she had said. This burned me like a white-hot branding iron to my heart. I wept and wept over this for countless nights. In the end, though, time provided perspective.

I don't think she anticipated that her son’s love for "what" I am would grow in time, not diminish. His feelings towards his mother would be met with increased disdain. Time has the power to reveal reality from delusion. Sometimes silence and distance from a toxic person is the best defense. Because certain words, when spoken, are simply too raw to rectify or to acknowledge with a response.

Though destructive, I have learned that some words can also be healing. “I,” “love,” “you,” together, make the most beautiful phrase. These are words that lift my soul, carry me from the burdens of past inflictions, soften the blow, deliver some semblance of peace to my core. My husband tells me he loves me every day.

I may never return to the person I was before I felt the impact of his mother’s emotional tsunami of harsh words, but “I love you” is a tonic and, when heard repeatedly over time, begin to chisel away at the emotional scars etched in the brain.

-S.J. Walker

S.J. Walker is a wife and a mother with a small scattering of published stories in dark fantasy. She is a hard-working writer, reader, and student striving to obtain her MFA in creative writing.