‘I lived for the wonderful side of her’
On the good days, Louise Beech adored her mother. On the bad, she wanted nothing to do with her. In the end, she had to make a choice
My mother once said she wished I could be in her head for 18 seconds and I’d know how she felt. I would understand her deep depression, her difficulties, her. She was – at the time – in a care home, recovering from attempting to kill herself by jumping off a bridge eight months earlier, aged almost 71. I was cutting the toenails on a foot of a leg that would be amputated a month later. ‘But we could say that about being inside anyone’s head,’ I responded.
What she didn’t realise was that I’d spent a lot of time in her head already – way more than 18 seconds. I’d lived a whole life in there trying to figure her out, attempting to locate the unconditional love that other mothers naturally seem to have for their children. Sitting at her feet, aged just six, I had studied that head, wondering why she was always so sad. I had taken on the burden of her depression and got anxious when I couldn’t make her smile – this was to the point where I was then unable to eat, hiding food and flushing it down the toilet later. My happiness depended on how she felt.
Her jump from the Humber Bridge, a bridge I passed most days while on my daily walk, wasn’t my mother’s only suicide attempt; there were four in total that we know of. Her first came when I was nine and we had finally got a council house after my parents’ divorce. My twin sisters, Claire and Grace, were five, and my baby brother, Colin, was one. We were split up the day after; my brother got fostered, while we three girls were taken by a social worker to live with our grandma in Stockton-on-tees, 90 miles from home. I didn’t know what had happened, only that my mother was ‘ill’.
And yet, the distance from my mother’s head didn’t lessen my efforts to get into it – or the anxiety of not knowing when we would see her again. I wondered if she was thinking about us or if she missed me; I wondered if she was sad. I remember throwing the covers off at night to try to freeze these difficult feelings.
She came to get us six months later with a new boyfriend in tow – one she had met in a nightclub. I tried to figure out why she hadn’t come sooner when she was well enough to have met this new man.
She seemed better: she laughed more. Knowing that she was happy, I could relax.
But it wasn’t long until things started to go wrong. The boyfriend was violent and, one day, hit me. When he was dragged away by police six months later, I couldn’t understand why my mother seemed sad.
She started drinking – this would become a pattern each time a boyfriend became unsuitable. For the next four years, women came round with folders each week to check on us – I later learned they were social workers.
When my mother had first started drinking at home, we had found it exciting. After a few drinks, you could see how her mood lifted and she would become vivacious and fun. But then night would fall, and like a werewolf in the light of the moon, Other Mum arrived. When she was drunk, she wasn’t there, and in her hungover state the next morning, she would be even more fractious. She frequently left us alone to go out. Having to care for us became an inconvenience – particularly when we asked for something, needed her or were ill.
And yet, when she shone her brightest smile my way, gave me some longed-for attention or made me laugh with her rich sense of humour, I would have done anything in the world for her. I lived for this wonderful side of her, for the woman who captivated people with her witty tales, who lit up a room and made the sort of brilliantly drawn observations that could make you sick with laughter. Sometimes, before she left to go out for the night, she
would take me into her confidence, revealing her friends’ troubles to me, sharing her great plans for life and telling me how she ‘lived for love’. I once wrote a poem about how much I loved her, about our similarities and differences. It began: ‘If I were you and you were me.’ I remember her writing me one back and the happiness it brought me.
During my teen years, my relationship with that head of hers grew ever more complex. I would spend hours trying to work out how to try to change her. I loved her and hated her; I wanted her and wanted to run away from her. At times, she could be unnecessarily unkind: she criticised how I looked, and, when I came home drunk for the first time aged 18, she made me feel ashamed. When I told her I felt anxious and depressed, she dismissed me, saying I didn’t have a clue about such things.
As an adult, there were times my mother supported me – mainly when I gave birth to my son, Conor, now aged 20. She’d had me at 22, and, in that moment, seemed to understand what I was going through. She was drinking less then, but when my sisters had their children a few years later, she arrived at the hospital drunk and was sent away by staff.
When my mother jumped off the Humber Bridge in 2019 – by a miracle surviving a height of between 40 and 50 feet but enduring horrific injuries – my sisters, brother and I rallied around her, doing everything to ensure she got the care she needed and making sure someone was always at her bedside. We fought for her to get an appropriate place to live afterwards, and a year later, once she was relatively well, life resumed. Then one day, in the middle of a conversation, the subject of her old boyfriend came up and my mother insisted that his inappropriate behaviour towards us as children ‘never happened’.
For me, this was the trigger point. I realised I’d spent a lifetime making allowances for her and convincing myself that she loved me in her own way, but this rewriting of history was the limit. I had prioritised her happiness over my own, always tolerating, forgiving and overlooking her behaviour, but now I could no longer cope with how it affected my mental health. And so, at the age of 50, I finally ended my relationship with her. Although I wanted her to be happy, I knew that her happiness was not my responsibility – not at the cost of my own.
It’s hard to explain the curious loyalty you will always have to your own mother. I used to fear admitting that my mother wasn’t like most and ending our relationship. There’s a taboo in speaking badly of the most revered of women: she was the one who gave me life; who was the first to hold me. Did I have a duty to stand by her no matter what she might do?
Think about when the most intense romantic relationships end: there were great times that make you long for that lover again, but they may also have behaved terribly, cheated on you or lied. You yearn for the good times, still loving them, but you know what they are and that they will hurt you if you go back. With your own mother, it’s more painful. You will always wish for that relationship that will never be because you only have one mother. There is no other mum that will come along.
Now that I’ve detached from my mother’s head, I feel free – although the strangest place to go is still my own. I wish I had a mother – my mum. My brother tells me that Mum is safe and that’s enough for me, for now.
Sometimes I can’t help thinking what a gift she has wasted – that if she had loved us more and had given us a chance, maybe she would have found that pure love that she was always searching for. And that maybe I would have that love, too.
‘I USED TO FEAR ADMITTING MY MOTHER WASN’T LIKE MOST’
Eighteen Seconds (Mardle Books) by Louise Beech is out 27th April