Photo by Lisa from Pexels via Pexels

It’s the late 2010s and I’m a teenager carefully watching my mom out of my peripheral. She’s paying attention to the TV and the animated man on the screen in a hilarious combination of suit, tie, and yellow beanie. He’s eating ice cream in a diner with a friend: a girl who’s made it very clear she likes him this whole season, only to be met with his awkward body language, stumbled excuses, and quick subject changes.

I’ve seen this one before, but my heart is in my throat when the companion asks Todd Chavez (Aaron Paul) if he’s gay.

Todd responds, “I’m not gay. I mean, I don’t think I am, but I don’t think I’m straight either. I don’t know what I am. I think I might be nothing.”

I click the next episode of BoJack without hesitation.

BoJack Horseman is a Netflix original animated tragicomedy set in a fictionalized version of Hollywood. Our cast includes a mix of humans, anthropomorphized animals, and celebrity cameos. As it aired from 2014 to 2020, BoJack went on to receive consistent critical acclaim and a dedicated audience who loved the balance between the wacky scenarios typical to adult animation and the honest portrayal of serious topics like substance abuse and depression.

When season four graces our screen, I finally hear the word that I’ve held close to my chest for years now spoken aloud: “asexual.” Todd Chavez, our wacky slacker sidekick, initially reacts with an aversion to the label.

But after some uncertainty and self-reflection, Todd embraces his identity in “Hooray! Todd Episode!” During a vulnerable moment, Todd comes out to BoJack: “I’m asexual. Not sexual.”

I share a look with my mother, the woman who’s known me all my life, who still knows me best, and hope that she understands.

*

Todd Chavez was one of only two asexual characters included in GLAAD’s 2017-2018 “Where We Are on TV” report, marking the first year the annual publication included asexuals in its data. While the publication notes that there was some asexual representation on television in previous years, “those characters were often relegated to one-off episodes, which did not allow for nuanced exploration.”

Seeking out asexual representation on TV was an often-disheartening exercise for a young asexual (commonly shortened to “ace”) like me. As a greater number of queer characters stepped into the spotlight, I searched desperately for the aces. When it came down to it, most of our “ace representatives” pre-2017 were only “ace-coded” characters, portraying some common signs of asexuality without ever encountering, exploring, or articulating the term. Asexuals would often recognize these signs or find the experiences of the characters relatable to their own asexual experiences, but we rarely heard our label spoken aloud.

Sometimes, it was enough to be the character left uncoupled by the end of the narrative—like Frozen’s Elsa—to be hailed as an “asexual icon” on internet forums. The ambiguity of the unlabelled asexual meant little repercussion for portraying common ace stereotypes like the logical and emotionless “robot” over and over again. Think The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper who says he “find[s] the concept of coitus to be ridiculous and off-putting.” Sheldon is touch-averse and sex-repulsed, but never uses the term “asexual” to describe himself. The lack of articulated labels leaves it up to fans to draw their own conclusions and, in more cases than not, leaves the writers space to retcon any common ace markers to suit their narrative needs. When the word “asexual” was actually uttered, it was met with a “fix it” attitude like House M.D.’s episode “Better Half.” (House spends his 44-minute run-time trying to disprove the claims of a self-identifying asexual couple, unfortunately succeeding when it’s discovered the man has a pituitary tumor that lowered his libido and caused erectile dysfunction, and the woman admits she was faking for her husband.)

Todd Chavez’s ground-breaking journey on BoJack was an important milestone for those of us looking to see our sexuality portrayed with positivity and a complex, comprehensive multi-season storyline on screen. When I showed my mom BoJack, already knowing where Todd’s journey would lead, I was secretly building a foundation for my own coming out moment.

As Todd comes into his own understanding of his identity—an asexual who is interested in romance, but sex-averse—the show demonstrates the variance in ace experiences. A couple from his Asexual Alliance group explain the difference between aromantic asexuals—those not interested in sex or relationships—and aces who enjoy dating. Todd’s childhood friend Emily (Abbi Jacobson) informs us that some asexuals do have and enjoy sex. As Todd’s dating life progresses, we see the struggles that arise from dating while asexual, such as Todd dating Yolanda (Natalie Morales) because they’re both asexual, even though they have nothing else in common.

The thing I dreaded most about my own coming out moment was having to explain to my family what asexuality means. I didn’t want to field questions, discuss the nuances, and be delegitimized because I was just an inexperienced teenager. One of the benefits of representing marginalized identities on screen is that representation bridges gaps in understanding. Pink Triangle Press’s 2024 PTP Pink Paper, a research report on Canadian 2SLGBTQIA+ media representation, explains, “9 in 10 media professionals agree that on-screen representation increases understanding and drives acceptance of 2SLGBTQIA+ people in society at large.”

In its delicate handling of my identity, BoJack provided the crash course on asexuality that I dreamed of. My mom was an apt student who was enticed by the series’ rapid-fire shifts between tense dramatic moments and silly schemes. By the end of the series, she left with something meaningful: some basic knowledge about a type of sexuality she wasn’t previously familiar with. All that was left for me to do was to point at Todd and say, “Mom, that’s me.”

Yes, I came out to my mom using BoJack Horseman. Turns out TV is a useful tool.

*

Since BoJack, I’ve encountered more asexual characters in the media I love, though many of them aren’t as widely visible as the ones found on television. Most of my favourites come from books or indie content on the internet with a limited audience. On TV and popular streaming services, especially in Canada, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

In GLAAD’s most recent “Where We Are on TV” (2023-2024), they reported four asexual characters across streaming and cable: Sex Education’s O, Heartstopper’s Isaac, Heartbreak High’s Cash, and Big Mouth’s Elijah. At four characters, we see double the total from Todd’s ace-debut year—all of them found on Netflix, two carried over from the previous year—and still pitifully in the single-digits. The 2024 PTP Pink Paper report omitted data on asexuals as there was not sufficient ace representation in mainstream Canadian media.

A greater number of characters only have their asexuality confirmed by their creators rather than shown on screen. According to SpongeBob SquarePants creator, Stephen Hillenburg, in a 2005 People Magazine interview, he “never intended [SpongeBob] to be gay. I consider [him] to be almost asexual.” SpongeBob is asexual! Who knew? Many other creator-confirmed aces can be easily-missed by audiences, buried in interviews and old social media posts. The aces are out there—more of us than you’d think—but where are our storylines?

It’s tough work seeking out asexuals on screen. Alongside intersex and Two-Spirit, we’re still one of the most underrepresented queer identities on mainstream TV. Nearly a decade after he said “asexual,” Todd Chavez is still important to me, still my favourite character in western animation. He gave me the courage and the resources to express my pride and come out to my family by bravely embarking on his asexual journey. As the next generation tunes in to their favourite shows, I hope they find their Todd.

Image by Hendra via Adobe Stock

On October 7, 2023, I was just about three months pregnant. As a genocide unfolded before our eyes in the weeks that followed, I reflected a lot on the parallel lives mothers live on both sides of this dystopian world.

Like many others, my social media feed exposed me to countless images of the Israeli military’s atrocities in Palestine. Images of shrapnel seared into the bodies of innocent Gazans are seared into my brain like scars: a woman silently mourning as she tightly hugs a child-sized body bag. A damaged incubator containing shrivelling babies. A girl hanging limp over the window of her destroyed home. Wide-eyed toddlers shaking uncontrollably as they begin to process the trauma that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Many of these images were censored, black squares politely asking me whether I still wanted to view the photos that they concealed. Apparently their contents were too heinous to set eyes on, and yet not heinous enough to end in reality. There was always the occasional image that slipped by uncensored. In those moments, I wished I had not logged on. I cried often. I was pregnant, but these tears were not hormonal. They were human. I often had to force myself to move away from the screen to limit the horrors I was viscerally absorbing, as if to protect the baby that was living through me.

It was an unusual time to be pregnant, to be growing a new life as I witnessed the lives of others being ended so mercilessly. Over the span of three months of genocide, 20,000 babies were born in Gaza. As I planned for my son’s future, over 16,000 children were killed, futures completely obliterated. Of the nearly 1.1 million children in Gaza, those that survived now faced malnutrition, disease, physical disability, and psychological trauma. As I received excellent care in Toronto through regular prenatal appointments, I read about the horrific and life-threatening conditions that 50,000 expectant mothers in Gaza endured, birthing in unsanitary conditions on rubble-filled floors with limited access to medication. As I felt the pain from the stitches of my C-section for weeks, I remembered the mothers who were forced to have emergency C-sections with no anesthesia. I cannot conceive of their unfathomable pain and the trauma that will forever be bound to the memories of how they welcomed their babies into the world. As one mother from Gaza, Um Raed, told Al Jazeera, “Since the birth, I’ve not known whether I should be focusing on my contractions or on the sound of warplanes overhead. Should I be worrying about my baby, or should I be afraid of whatever attacks are happening at that moment?”

Though my pregnancy felt challenging, my baby boy arrived, healthy and present. When I caressed and gently wrapped his little body in soft swaddles, I kept getting intrusive flashbacks of those babies whose tiny bodies were maimed before their first birthdays, and of those who did not even reach this milestone at all, wrapped in white shrouds. While I had the privilege of enjoying my baby’s first winter through a festive holiday season, I also got chills thinking about the infants in Gaza who have frozen to death.

I often wondered about the purpose of bringing new life into this world full of anger and injustice and pain. But if there is anything I have learned from the Palestinian people, it is their deep-rooted resilience, one that stems from the same faith that I share with them as a Muslim, but has been put to the test in ways I can’t comprehend. They provide us with an important lesson on finding purpose in a world littered with inhumanity: we all have a responsibility to be active agents, building a more just world for all. From the articles and poems we read and write to the dinner table conversations we partake in using the knowledge we choose to seek, from the silent donning of a keffiyeh to the ways in which we raise and speak to our children about the world and its people, we all have, within our own skillsets and capacities, in our respective spheres of life, the ability to partake in this global, growing tide of activism.

Over the course of a year, we contributed what we could. Never has the world been so vocal in its support for a free Palestine. Boycotts have proven successful, careers have been put at stake, and a new media outlet, Zeteo, has emerged, questioning the status quo and bringing challenging conversations to the forefront so that we no longer have to tiptoe carefully around the subject of an ongoing genocide.

Despite the signing of a ceasefire deal 465 days later, we will continue to learn, speak, cry, create, call out, and call it like it is. In doing so, we will watch the tide continue to rise, from the river to the sea, in all ages and stages of life, until injustice is entirely swept away.

Current photo of the author.

Trigger warning: self-injury, suicide

When I was 18, a psychiatrist kicked me out of her office in my hometown of Montreal. A framed Sigmund Freud witnessed my humiliation. I’d raised my voice, confessing that I’d scratched up my arm again because I was “fucking sad.” My psychiatrist told me to go to the hospital. She couldn’t help me, she said.

I wondered if she knew how helpless I already felt during our sessions. I wondered if she noticed how the frenetic sound of her keystrokes made me tense, or how I would hold my breath when she’d interrupt the logging of my despair into her laptop to look me in the eye. Would she again suggest that I was lazy? Could she tell my pupils dilated whenever we discussed my medication? I knew that she couldn’t help. What I didn’t know was that I had Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and for the next 17 years, help would be hard to find.

If you read an article on BPD, you’ll likely see the criteria listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5), the standard classification system of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in North America. These criteria can tell you that a person with BPD likely has significant impairments in personality and interpersonal functioning, such as unstable self-image often associated with self-criticism. That doesn’t explain what it’s like to spend most waking hours feeling hollow. The DSM-5 describes pathological personality traits, such as anxiousness, separation insecurity, and depressivity. That doesn’t tell you what it’s like to think you might lose your mind because someone you care about is an hour late. The DSM-5 lists impulsivity, citing “self-harming behaviours under emotional distress,” as well as hostility, manifested as “anger in response to minor slights and insults.” That doesn’t illustrate that despite improvements, BPD remains one of the most highly stigmatized diagnoses.

The professional stigma against BPD is only worsened by the performative one. Two percent of the North American population suffers from BPD. Yet mainstream representations of BPD consistently use the same characters bending to the same arc—a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman (think Girl, Interrupted; Welcome to Me) who has often been spurned by a male lover with whom she becomes violently obsessed (Fatal Attraction; Malicious; Play Misty for Me).

Through this lens, we only see BPD sufferers on their worst day. Context and history seem less important than presenting audiences with the hysterical woman, perhaps because it’s easier than trying to understand the complexities of the disorder. But these representations negate the individual narratives of those with BPD and reinforce the stigma. The stigma reinforces silence. The silence reinforces stigma.

I’ve been contributing to this cycle for nearly half my life. I have never publicly disclosed my BPD diagnosis until now, because I’ve finally realized that not saying something says something.

***

The reality of living with BPD is as unique as the person experiencing it. For me, it means a heartless voice in my head that screams You’re worthless. Sometimes the voice gets quieter, but it’s always here, buzzing in the background like white noise. BPD means being scared easily and often—frightened that I’m one panic attack away from losing a job or losing a writing client, or that something someone says or does, or that I see in real life or on TV, will trigger a downward spiral. (One time I couldn’t leave my bed for four days after binge watching the first season of True Detective.) I know others who have BPD. They hear the white noise voice, too—one that tells them they are fundamentally unlovable. They try to cope by using drugs, alcohol, food, sex, self-harm—anything, as long as it numbs.

We also contend with real voices of health care practitioners. One doctor told my friend with BPD that “everyone feels sad sometimes.” Another told a friend they would have to attempt suicide to receive in any help.

“‘Borderline’ has become almost pejorative in the healthcare system,” says Dr. Jonathan Petraglia, a licensed psychologist in private practice in Montreal, lecturer at McGill University, and my former classmate in high school. In Grade 11, Petraglia’s locker was right next to mine. We would see each other in the morning, though I don’t know if he ever noticed how tired my eyes always looked. After I emailed him about interviewing him for this piece, he became the first person from high school to know about my diagnosis.

The author as a teen.

While I’ve often thought my symptoms started to emerge when I was about 14, Petraglia tells me it’s not possible to diagnose BPD in children or adolescents. Warning signs in children include frequent crying, hypersensitivity to interpersonal information, and separation anxiety. (At 9, I missed my mom so much at sleep-away camp that I cried until I nearly vomited.) But these signs are not uncommon in many children. Research indicates that it’s a matter of degree, which can be difficult for a parent to assess.

The same can be said for warning signs in teenagers, since the criteria describes what a lot of people go through in adolescence, Petraglia explains. A good example of this is identity diffusion, characterized by a “deep sense of emptiness, of disconnect from people, of feeling unloved, of not understanding who they are, what defines them.” It’s why many teenagers hear: “You’re going through a phase.”

For a long time, my mother had come to this same conclusion. Recognizing the duration and consistency of this phase, and the distress and decrease in functioning it causes, can be difficult. As an adolescent, I was brooding. I worried a lot, listened to a lot of Tori Amos, and wrote tortured poetry. Then, I started cutting or scratching myself, sometimes more than once a day. I thought about death. I hid those things from my mom, from everyone. I dropped out of CEGEP, my pre-university program, with only one semester until graduation. I couldn’t study. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t do anything but make macaroni and cheese and smoke cigarettes. I put on 50 pounds in six months.

“You always seemed like you were okay,” my mom would tell me a decade after that first major depressive episode. By my late teens, I knew I wasn’t. I was sure I was a terrible person. The nurse who assessed me after a cry-for-help overdose said it was my fault. I thought she was right. I thought I couldn’t get better. Following a devastating break up, at 19, I tried to kill myself. Up to 10 percent of individuals with BPD will die this way.

The author as a child.

Following the suicide attempt, my mom confided her concerns about me in a cousin. He gave her the phone number of a psychologist, a friend of his. My mom met with him once, told him my symptoms. He told her it sounded like I had BPD. I read up on it: Yes. That was me. I began looking for help. Unfortunately, in Quebec, programs for treating BPD are not the “all-encompassing type of program you would need to treat personality disorders in a very effective way,” Petraglia says. Instead, small treatment programs are offered at a number of clinics and hospitals; but they are not intensive.

I never knew such programs existed, but I did try everything else I could. For five years, I experimented with different medications, self-help books, modalities, psychiatrists, and therapists. One of the most marking experiences was the work I did with Lindsay Chipman, a licensed psychotherapist I saw from 2005 to 2009. Throughout that time, we never specifically discussed BPD. “Back then, I wasn’t interested in relating to you as BPD,” Chipman says. “I really just wanted to get to know you. And I think that’s really important when working with any patient. We’re not relating to the diagnosis,” which, she explains, doesn’t speak to any of the underlying dynamics that are creating any of the symptoms.

She’s not the first person to tell me this. A therapist to whom I’d disclosed my BPD diagnosis also didn’t want to focus on it, fearing the label might impede my progress in therapy. Some people with BPD find the label helpful; it helps them understand themselves better. Others find it forces them to pathologize what is actually very normal, human behaviour.

Chipman says BPD traits exist along a spectrum. She refers to the DSM-5’s list of criteria for the disorder, which she prefers to call a “character structure,” as “everything and the kitchen sink. You could fit many people into that category.” For instance, one of the most common traits of an individual with BPD is black-and-white thinking, or “splitting,” where we categorize things as all good or all bad. “We all do that,” Chipman says.

It’s also helpful to remember that at some point, the pathological behaviours that comprise this cluster called BPD “were absolutely necessary for (patients with BPD) to have their needs met…It’s just that their adaptiveness has expired.”

Chipman treated me until I came off my medications, Effexor and Seroquel, at the beginning of 2009. From 2009 to 2013, I was more functional than I’d been in years. I still occasionally had panic attacks, but I blamed it on graduate school, where I was studying English literature. I medicated with a more socially sanctioned method of self-harm: excessive alcohol. I thought I was fine.

***

Following a move from Montreal to Toronto in 2013, my symptoms re-emerged with a vengeance. I was in denial about it. Then, in November 2015, I had a dissociative episode. I dropped off my dog at a groomer, but something was off. As I walked, the sidewalk felt as though it was pulling me in, like the concrete was quicksand. About 72 hours later, I felt it again: I fell to my bedroom floor shaking and crying. I was convinced that if I left my spot, I would die.

I was too scared to tell anyone what had happened. It was too humiliating. I was a grown-up. I should be over BPD, I thought. What would people think if they found out? What would my family say if they knew I was self-injuring again? Would I be considered a lost cause? What would my friends do? Would they Google it and decide to never speak to me again? How could my doctor help? Would I get moved around the system in Ontario, the same way I was in Quebec, the same way one of my friends with BPD got misdiagnosed and tossed around in Manitoba?

Sobbing, I finally called a friend. Whether this was BPD or not, it was not a phase. It was not going anywhere unless I forced it to. 

My friend recommended I look into the services offered by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). I learned about its Borderline Personality Disorder clinic. For a year beginning in January 2016, I was part of an outpatient research study, where I received Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). Designed by Dr. Marsha Linehan, psychologist, author, and professor at the University of Washington, DBT is widely considered the gold standard for treating BPD. It involves seeing an individual therapist for one hour per week and group therapy for two hours per week. DBT was originally developed to treat suicidal behaviours, but was subsequently expanded to treat BPD and other complex mental disorders that involve serious emotion dysregulation. This treatment was easily the most emotionally brutal and effective therapy I’ve ever received.

During each individual therapy session, I would present my therapist with a diary card on which I’d tracked my daily fluctuation of emotions, my urges to resort to maladaptive behaviours, and whether or not I’d engaged in them. I had to assign a number to the strength of these urges, zero being lowest and five being highest. If it sounds tedious, that’s because it is.

In group therapy, I learned skills from four different modules: interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance/reality acceptance, emotional regulation, and mindfulness skills. Every week, group members shared how they practiced the skill we learned the previous week. We often cried together, but it wasn’t confrontational or confessional in the way I’d imagined. Instead, it was a compassionate support system, vital to my recovery.

One week, one of the group members coming off of medication started to cry. I started to cry, too. I was empathetic: Withdrawal makes everything too loud, too manic, too much. I told her she was doing much better than she realized; the fact that she was in group that day was proof. She smiled and thanked me—and I wondered if perhaps this pain can be used for good.

Dr. Carmen Wiebe, one of my group facilitators, has been working at the BPD clinic since 2002. After I completed the program, I asked her if moving to a new city would have been enough to trigger someone’s symptoms. “Moving is definitely one of life’s big stressors, so it certainly makes sense,” she tells me, though it’s not as clear-cut as that. It also depends on what the stressor represents and whether it overlaps with previous triggers.

“BPD tends to be a waxing and waning disorder,” Wiebe explains. “The symptoms intensify and de-intensity over time.” It’s true. Sometimes BPD feels like an ever-looming spectre.

When I ask if these symptoms will ever go away, Wiebe says it’s complicated. “It depends on which symptom,” she responds. “The behavioural symptoms like self-harm and anger outbursts and other impulsive behaviours can go away completely.” Having emotions that are easily prompted and take awhile to resolve can also go away, or at least become more manageable over time.

That said, the outcome of treatment varies greatly depending on the individual. And access to treatment is unfortunately less than ideal. Given the prevalence of BPD and that CAMH’s clinic is “kind of tiny compared to a lot of other services… we are completely unable to meet the demand.”

CAMH’s BPD clinic treats approximately 280 patients per year. These patients included my fellow group members, Chantel, 33, and Elliott, 23, to whom I grew close. I heard my story in theirs. Misdiagnoses, getting tossed around the system, wrong medication, invalidation. “I’ve always been told I’m broken, or sensitive, or wired wrong, that I’m dramatic or crazy, untrustworthy, because I’m ‘classic Borderline’,” says Chantel. After suicide attempts brought them to CAMH’s emergency room, Elliott and Chantel both entered the DBT program.

While we began treatment at different times, the first few months were challenging for all of us. “I had a lot of issues at first,” Elliott, who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronoun they, recounts, “especially concerning the fact that I was one of the few people of colour, and I felt very surrounded by white folks… it was very hard to open up and connect.” Chantel tells me that she’d struggled to get into the program for a year, during which time her then-girlfriend had become her caretaker. At the beginning, the program was “a band aid covering up too big a scar.” Her partner left her a month or two into Chantel’s therapy.

Things evolved for all of us, though. The “seemingly very easy skills” took some getting used to, but they eventually helped Elliott manage their emotions and symptoms “far more effectively.” Moreover, “the group started to become a place where I knew everyone understood what I was feeling,” they tell me. For Chantel, it was a matter of adjusting her focus inward. “It’s taken me a long time to do the program for me,” she says. “I can still be willful as fuck, but I can see myself trying… not to save a relationship, or convince my parents I’m not going to attempt to kill myself. For me.”

After my graduation in early January, I admittedly felt lost without my therapist, my group, my facilitators. I had moments of dark, troubling thoughts. I was surprised to find out that even though I’d finished my program less than two weeks prior, the most the clinic could offer me by way of support were recommendations to other services. I could not receive any more coaching.

I understood the possible rationale. Other people need help. The clinic needs to minimize therapist burnout. I was also angry and sad about it.

Then a funny thing happened. I noticed that I wasn’t hiding. I was reaching out to friends for help. I noticed that for the most part, I didn’t have any strong urges to self-harm, self-medicate, dissociate, or avoid my life. I noticed that somewhere in this 17-year tangle of trying to become a better person for others, I’d decided to start living.

For me.

Illustration by Jori van der Linde

For a long time, no one understood why I hated my mother. After all, pop culture, Hallmark, and general wisdom tend to all agree that a daughter shares her deepest secrets with her mother. With her, I was supposed to feel safe, comforted, supported, and so deeply loved.

I can’t ever remember feeling that way about my mother.

I know it wasn’t always like that. From age four to 12, our family shuttled between cities, moving from Gaborone in Botswana, to New York City, then to Dallas all before settling in Toronto. It was me, my mother and father, and my two sisters. During that time, we often lived in crammed apartments, but mostly we were happy to be in each other’s company—at least it was nothing like the round-the-clock terror I would come to experience. I remember simple, joyful moments like watching chameleons change colour, playing skip rope, or singing at the top of my lungs to Celine Dion songs with my older sister, Asha, and younger sister, Tarana.

My family decided to settle in Canada in 1997 because our family’s visitor’s visa expired and we felt Canada had more relaxed restrictions. Once in Toronto, Ammu, my mother, developed a closeness to me, but spurned Asha. For reasons neither I or my sisters understood, Ammu invested in attacking and creating stories about Asha, who was 16, and her “relations with several men.” She used me to get information about Asha’s day-to-day activities. As a kid, I didn’t realize what was happening—at first. I gamely informed on my sister, telling my mother Asha visited with male friends after school, not realizing that what seemed normal to me was ammunition for my mother.

Asha figured it out before I did. She also realized something else, too. “Don’t you notice,” she asked me, “that every time you tell Ammu something, you’re suddenly not allowed to go out and play with all the other kids?” I did notice. I had also started to notice that she twisted my words and embellished what I told her. One time she told my father, who I call Papa, that Asha couldn’t visit her best friend, who lived on the eighth floor of our building, because “a lot of bachelors lived there”—a fabricated story presented as fact. Asha had been regularly visiting this friend, without issue, for years. My mother cut it off on a whim. Oftentimes, it felt like she was manipulating us because she enjoyed it—she was like Regina George from Mean Girls. We had no idea what would trigger her or when.

Once Ammu lost control of me as an informant, our home went on immediate lockdown. It was a confusing, depressing time. I couldn’t understand why my mother was out to get me and my sisters. Under orders, I’d come home straight after school to clean the house and do my homework. Unlike other kids I grew up with, I wasn’t allowed to linger after class, play outside, go to friends’ birthday parties, or attend sleepovers. I had no freedom.

I often overheard Ammu on the phone telling her relatives in Bangladesh that “I got stuck with these daughters that don’t do anything to help me.” I would cry to my friends at school, confessing my mom’s lies, manipulation, and suffocating control. Even then, I knew my peers found it all unbelievable—it was so far removed from their own lives—but I didn’t know what else to do. I felt heavily misunderstood, and by my early teens, I became angry.

At school, I earned a reputation as a rude girl. I wasn’t a bully, and I wasn’t popular, but I was aggressive. It was a ripple effect and the stone drop was my home life. My parents argued often and violently, my mom’s own anger spilling over. One time, as they fought, my uncle, who happened to be at the house that day, noticed me crying. Trying to resolve their fight, he brought me into the room, still crying, and said to them, “Look at what you’re doing to your daughter.” They were baffled and asked me: “Why are you crying?” As they dismissed me, I dismissed everyone around me.

I grew to hate myself. Both of my parents constantly told me that I was incapable of being smart. My hair was too curly. My butt was too big. My nose was too big. I was chubby. I saw myself as both ugly and invisible. Aside from the abuse, my parents ignored me. I hated them. As a Muslim family, my mother forced me to do my daily prayers—even as I grappled with my religious beliefs. I would sit on my mat and pray to this supposed God to get me the hell out of there. If he was real, I hated him too.

And yet, I wanted to love my parents. I yearned to figure out a way to control Ammu, so that I could turn her into a good mother, just as she yearned to control me.

Even though I wanted to leave my house, it seemed impossible. For Muslim Bengalis, it simply isn’t culturally acceptable. My parents, like some (but certainly not all) members of the Bangladeshi community, don’t believe in young, single, and unmarried girls living on their own—a belief that was drilled into me. By the time I’d turned 20, a young woman living independently was something I’d only seen on TV or in the movies. None of my friends had moved out and most couldn’t understand my urgent desire to leave. Mental abuse wasn’t on their radar, and my curiosity about leaving home was seen as a potentially dramatic decision. I didn’t take the leap because I believed that I couldn’t. The cultural mentality was too strong and my mom’s abuse was too scarring—a powerful mix.

It was also incredibly isolating. It felt like everybody believed I should tolerate the mental abuse and neglect. Many people suggested or outright advised that I forgive my mother regardless of the pain she continued to cause. I was told she was the only mother I had and that I was lucky to have one. I felt like I couldn’t go to anyone for help. I was a very angry bird trapped in a cage I thought I didn’t have the key to.

Then, in my early 20s, I finally got the break I needed. In 2010, Ammu and my younger sister, Tarana, moved to Bangladesh. She had been hanging around with the wrong crowd after school, smoking, and had tried to run away from home twice. Trapping her there was my parents’ solution. And selfishly, I was reaping the rewards of their departure. My mom was gone.

Without her there, I became unexpectedly close with my dad, a man I didn’t really know or understand. We shared our fears and traumas of my mother. Before then, she’d forced me to wear the hijab, despite my misgivings. While I didn’t feel connected to her Muslim faith, I recognized that wearing the hijab was a choice that symbolized a devotion to Islam. I felt like a liar donning something that represents something so meaningful. Now I finally could take it off., since I never wanted to wear it to begin with. I also dropped out of university to go to college instead. I grew into myself at a rapid pace, feeling at ease in my home situation for the first time since we arrived to Toronto.

It all disappeared the next year. My father received an offer to work in Nigeria and Asha decided to experience living and working in Bangladesh. The only person that wanted to stay was me. Tarana and Ammu were to return; I wasn’t allowed to stay home alone. My fall back into depression was sudden. Now that I knew I could have a better life, I didn’t want to go back to an abusive one—one that didn’t even feel like my life at all. I was withdrawn and quiet.

When Asha and my father came back the next year, my rebellion began full swing. I became committed to leaving my house—even if I didn’t see how I could. There was no one to guide me in the Bengali community. I didn’t know where to look for help and I felt trapped in my own anger. And I felt so alone. But I was determined to leave.

In November 2011, I hit my limit. I was in my room and Ammu was in the hallway, badgering me from a distance, recounting an old, favourite story of hers about a personal wrong. Exhausted, I finally stood up for myself and told her that she could keep talking but that I would not listen, not this time. My cell phone rang, then, and I reached to answer it. She realized I meant it. In a flash, she sprung at me, raging. Before I could even register what was happening, she was choking me. Asha heard, then came running in and grabbed her away from me and out of my room, locking the door behind her.

***

Later, when I told people I ran away from home, they wouldn’t really understand. “How could a 23-year-old run away from home? Don’t you mean you moved out?” I explain; sometimes they understand and sometimes they don’t. I realize that many of those who ask these questions don’t understand the cultural pressure I faced, or my parents’ mentality—both of which decree a woman living alone is unacceptable. They’re confused because, by the time I moved out, I had a well-paying job. I could move into an apartment and wasn’t forced into homelessness. To add to it all, my older sister came with me. From the outside looking in, my story didn’t seem traumatizing enough.

While my mother could be violent, she was predominately an emotional and mental abuser. This seems to be difficult for people to understand or even believe—something I find not only offensive, but appalling. In the years I’ve spent living alone and sharing my story, I’ve discovered that mental or verbal abuse by parents towards their blood-related children isn’t treated as seriously as spousal or partner abuse. As a society, we’re more concerned with possible parental physical and sexual abuse. It has to seem outrageous for us to acknowledge it hurts. Take, for instance, the ads that appeared in Toronto’s subway system earlier this year for Covenant House, a long-standing youth shelter in the city. One, in the style of a cross-stitch hanging, reads, “Home, shut up or I’ll knock your teeth out, home.” It’s powerful and important. But, I wonder, how do you convey the nuances of emotional abuse on a subway ad? Why does someone have to have scars or be raped or even dead for abused children and teens to receive care?

The general public sees severing ties with an abusive spouse or partner as an acceptable act. Yet, when I spoke to most people about my decision to sever ties with my abusive parents, the immediate response from friends, and even some mental health practitioners, was to forgive and rebuild with them. What most people failed to realize is that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to rebuilding with abusers of any kind. They also failed to understand the psychological implications of re-establishing a relationship with abusive parents after having cut ties with them: how it can stall a healing process, while further instigating depression, rage, and a slew of other mental health issues.

I’m hoping this will change as more people speak out. I was heartened to see, for instance, that former Edmonton Oiler Patrick O’Sullivan addressed his father’s emotional cruelty and abuse in his new book Breaking Away: A Harrowing True Story of Resilience, Courage and Triumph. Even though his career as an professional hockey player brought him great success, he was always looking over his shoulder in fear after games. “There’s a lot of people that don’t even know it goes on, it’s a very private thing, ‘it’s not my business anyways.’ A lot of people don’t want to know because it puts them in a tough spot. They think they saw something, they’re not sure, they don’t want to know anymore. That’s got to change.” At 31 years old, he has trouble sitting still and sensory triggers can immediately implant a memory of his abusive father.

Over the years, I have met adult victims of parental abuse, and a lot of them share similar experiences to mine. Regardless of heritage, the feelings of loneliness and being misunderstood because of abusive parents, and particularly an abusive mother, are common. We victims have a deep understanding of one another, and I’ve shared more than one high-five with other survivors because we’ve made it to the other side, alive and mentally healthy.

I once asked Asha how many times she thought of calling the Children’s Aid Society in our youth. She admitted, “Many. The only reason I didn’t leave was because I knew I’d get separated from you guys, especially if we went through the foster care system.” She’d sacrificed her own mental wellbeing because she wanted to make sure that Tarana and I weren’t alone with my parents or split up in foster care or shelter systems. If she had called, though, we wouldn’t have been alone. In 2014–2015, the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto worked with more than 21,000 children who called because of physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, caregiver capacity, and caregiver-child conflicts. The latter, which is what I experienced in my upbringing, is one of the things children are least likely to call in about, according to the CAS’s 2014–2015 annual report.

As a teen, the only time I ever seriously thought of leaving home was when staff from Covenant House did a presentation at my high school. The information stayed lodged at the back of my brain, but I soon learned how doubly traumatic it can be to live in a house of strangers who come from their own trauma. It scared me enough that I eliminated that option from my mind. If I were to be free, it would to be in safety, not another abusive environment. I wish it had been easier for me to find out more, solid information.

Public education around the solutions and processes of running away from home needs to be more prevalent, louder. Children of abuse grow up in a contradictory and confusing emotional world. Some children also normalize parental abuse until they are exposed to a different relationship dynamic—like when, one day on the subway, I saw a woman and her daughter share stories and giggle with one another for the first time. My mind was blown. I couldn’t even think of being that physically close with my mother. When kids don’t understand that what they are facing is not safe, someone has to be the voice that speaks out for them.

***

Asha decided to leave with me after the choking incident. Together, we moved to an apartment in the west end of Toronto. On an April morning, while my mom was away at work and my dad was living in Guyana for another international gig, my sister and I woke up at 7 a.m. sharp. Nervous, we called our movers to confirm they’d arrive on time. We’d also prepared emails that announced we were officially leaving home. They were crafted months in advance, and sent that evening to my dad and my younger sister.

For my mom, we had prepared a printed letter, sealed in an envelope. It took months to edit and keep concise, on the advice of our counsellor at Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic. We’d come to the clinic earlier for help: it had a counsellor dedicated to supporting women that run away from home. We were to hand the letter to Ammu and leave immediately after we gave her the news face-to-face. The letter said that she had pushed us to do this. It indicated that we would be safe and that we would not be in contact with our family for at least three months or until we were ready. It was a memento of closure for us, and a piece of evidence in case of an emergency. The paper trail was important, according to our counsellor, should the police need to be involved in the event that my parents escalated to violence.

We took out the empty boxes we had hid in our closets, taped them and stuffed them quickly. We didn’t have to be that urgent, but we were filled with anxiety. It felt like my mother could come home at any moment. We put our clothes in garbage bags, and the movers took our furniture as we watched our rooms empty in the quickest hour of my life. After leaving our things untouched in our new apartment, we headed back to my parents’ place to get my dad’s car. We picked up our mom from work and told her we were all going to our family friend’s apartment. She was giddy from the surprise.

As I parked in my family friend’s garage, my heart was beating loudly in my chest. I called a cab as soon as we arrived. In the 15 minutes it took for the cab to get there, I told Ammu that we were leaving. It didn’t even feel like I was in my body, but I somehow managed to tell her that when she returned home, we wouldn’t be there, and that our rooms would be empty. We began to gather our things and leave for the door as she grabbed us, begging us to explain more. We said nothing. I was so scared I thought the room was spinning. The family friend told her simply, “Let them go.” The door shut, and we heard her wailing.

As I jabbed the elevator button, I grew so nervous hoping she wouldn’t come out of the door trying to do something. We headed to the elevator and I felt numb. It was a defence mechanism I’d used ever since I was a child, exposed to my parents’ public fights. I remember thinking, “This is it, we’re all alone.” I felt like no one would support us, and I also felt sad that I was cutting ties. I didn’t want them as my parents, but I did want parents. I felt orphaned.

The cab ride back to our new place was silent. I hugged Asha tightly and we listened to a CBC Radio Show talking about abuse. I asked the driver to please change the channel. We met a few friends at a restaurant. We ate a warm meal, even though we didn’t feel hungry. Our phones rang all night, voicemail after voicemail. One was from the family friend asking us to move my dad’s car from their parking spot. Another was from my mother, demanding to know why we did this to her. A third was from my dad in Guyana demanding we go home right now or else he would kill us.

I laid on the bare mattress of the new apartment, scared and crying. I had never felt so alone in my life, and anyone I could call would not understand. I wish I knew at the time how empty their threats were.

I wish my friends understood how hard of a decision it was to cut the umbilical cord, instead of viewing my actions as selfish. I wish more people in my life at that time understood how painful it was to not be understood—or even to just be heard.

***

As I write this, it has been three months since my last visit to my parent’s house. While the process of separating from my parents has been full of up and downs, I am now experiencing adulthood and zero dependency on my parents, and it feels exciting and scary all at once. While I feel mentally, financially, and physically healthier and safe, I am sad that I feel I have to do it alone and without the support of my parents. While I feel stable, it’s still daunting to carve out a self-created stability, in all respects, all by myself.

In Christine Ann Lawson’s Understanding the Borderline Mother, there is a chapter called “Living Backwards.” It focuses on how adult children of parental abuse can move forward by first understanding their mothers and then recreating the self. In many ways, I feel as though I’m 17 years old and experiencing my life, not 27. Sometimes I get mad thinking, “Why did it take this long?” I can confidently (and sadly) say that there are more victims that I can possibly personally speak to who are still affected by their parents’ abuse. It is much rarer to connect with adult children who have moved past their lives as victims into a more stable existence, and that alone is scary.

Overall I feel so much healthier. But it took four years of therapy and seeking out my own education on meditation, self-growth, and self-love. I took initiative because I didn’t want to move through the world in my traumas as so many adults do. I feel proud of the courage I take everyday to do what is safe and healthy for me. For the first time in my life, I am my first and only priority. Unfortunately, there are a lot more people who don’t have this experience because of fear, confusion or the way the world around them misunderstands parental abuse. We must strive for clarity and understanding in a broader context to give a voice to children and youth living in mentally and verbally turbulent homes.

I can only hope that other survivors, like me, actively search for the key that will unlock the cage they are in so they can finally fly to their freedom.

Surveying a life of writing, motherhood, and activism, Renee Rodin’s prose is both understated and unflinching. When grappling with heartbreaking grief at her father’s cancer or a horrific encounter with violence, there are no grand pronouncements about life—only pain and the recognition that it doesn’t go away, but simply takes on more subtle textures over time.

The collection is also full of the whimsy and fire that follow those who abandon themselves to art and activism: the charmingly blasé way Rodin ran famous Vancouver bookstore R2B2 Books, or the time she ran into former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell and chose to lean in and hiss, “You’re bordering on fascism.”

Not all of it works. Some stories, like “Neighbourhood,” veer too far toward abstract tableau, and the rhetorical excesses of ’60s and ’70s leftism flicker when neighbours who cut down a tree are labelled “Imperialists!”

Rodin ends with an inversion of Hemingway’s famous six-word short story (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”). She lists the 31 (and counting) people who have used a wicker basket Rodin herself carried her children in. The piece is titled “Wealth,” as if a life spent writing and struggling for social justice—and extending the fruits of those lessons to others—affords one just that.

Despite the morbid theme, Choy’s tone is as consistently and uniquely charming as anything in his body of work, including Trillium Award-winner The Jade Peony. Choy walks his reader through the ravages of illness, incapacity, and subsequent recovery like a personal museum filled with curious knick-knacks.

The writing is certainly indulgent; Choy basks in his own pettiness with candor and self-satisfaction, and even manages to evoke September 11th as a motivation during his physiotherapy. It’s enough to make you cringe—but the flip side of this navel-gazing is Choy’s accounting of the moments of joy he encounters on the journey back to health: friendship, poetry, even the small victory of relearning how to open a plastic pudding container. It’s the descriptions of his friends that provide the book’s best passages and his ammunition against the nagging and presumably lifelong disapproval he suffers under his ancestors’ imagined judgment. Through Choy’s eyes we see love that offers dignity to even the most hopeless of situations, and the value of family in all its incarnations.

Photo of Frank McCourt, Courtesy of Kent Meireis Photography Blog

I first read Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes when I was 14. My family took a road trip from Saskatchewan to Ontario — 1,800 kilometres, 20 driving hours, and about 40 pounds of gummy bears. Anyone who has travelled across the country in a minivan with too many bodies and too few roadside stops knows the mortal danger this poses to familial love. Mine was no exception.

While discontent stewed in our stuffy van, I instead buried myself in the tribulations of a desperately poor Catholic family living thousands of miles away in Limerick, Ireland. In the McCourts I felt I had found the enviable foil to my cranky, sweaty, all-too-ordinary family. There could be no more dignified love, I believed, than one resilient in the face of poverty. Here were people with none of the things I had — not snack food (or any food at all, most of the time), terrible 90s cassettes, or the minivan that contained them. And yet they held together, and even managed occasional moments of grace. When Frank watches his brother Malachy walk down the street, his broken shoe flopping off his foot, I thought, “That is the purest love I have ever seen.”

“The happy childhood is hardly worth your while,” McCourt wrote, with characteristic wryness. Yet, as I grow older and re-read passages of Angela’s Ashes — one of three books plus a children’s book that he wrote — my sense of the book’s message has changed. Frank McCourt was too shrewd a writer to suggest that terrible, grinding poverty is noble. The moments of grace are the book’s exception, and the many moments of shame and despair, the rule. To be poor does not create dignity; it erodes it.

When the news came that McCourt had died on Sunday afternoon, I felt the shock and sadness that will be shared by many. It reminds us how remarkable it was that he faced the assaults of a difficult life and still boasted not one but several professions. A teacher, a (Pulitzer Prize-winning) writer and a humanitarian. How many of us can truly call ourselves even one of these?

But for me Frank McCourt remains, above all, one of the few people who had the courage to tell the truth about poverty. Poverty is ugly, malignant to the human spirit, and for far too many, inescapable. “Misery lit” critics call his brand of literature, underscoring the awkward balance such memoirists strike in turning bleak truths into fine art. If beautiful books about the poor are written, it is not because poverty is beautiful. It is because poverty must be shaped in a more appealing, even slightly fictionalized mould, or we would never read the depressing truth.

When I heard that McCourt was ill and not expected to survive I mourned both him and the first novel on which he was reportedly working. He was a rare and much-needed voice. I hope we won’t eulogize a remarkable life at the expense of acknowledging that his childhood was not the kind anyone should have to endure. The greatest tribute we can offer Frank McCourt is to ensure he has no successors.