Sable Monroe

There are some things you’re not supposed to say out loud.

One of them is this:

I hate my parents.

There. I said it.

People are more comfortable if I tell them I forgave.

They want the story where I found peace, where I let go of the anger, where I realized my parents “did the best they could.”

That isn’t my story.

When I was little, I loved my mother.

I wanted her attention.

I wanted her approval.

I wanted her to protect me.

Like every child, I assumed she would.

I loved my father too.

Children don’t arrive in this world hating their parents.

Something has to happen.

Then something else.

And something else.

Until one day, you realize the people who were supposed to keep you safe were the people you feared the most.

My father beat me badly enough that I still carry a permanent scar on the back of my thigh.

I remember the sting.

I remember the skin healing.

I remember looking at that scar for years afterward.

What stayed with me almost as much as the beating was what happened next.

My mother’s concern wasn’t that her daughter had been injured.

Her concern was that I now had a scar.

It made me less pretty.

As a child, I didn’t have the language to understand what that meant.

As an adult, I do.

My father wasn’t just violent with me.

He put his hands on my mother too.

Violence wasn’t an exception.

It was normal.

At least that’s how it felt growing up.

If I struggled with something, my mother would threaten to tell my father.

She knew exactly what that meant.

Fear became part of my education.

As a child, I thought all families were like mine.

As an adult, I discovered they weren’t.

I’ve met people whose parents truly love them.

Not perfect parents.

Parents who lose their patience.

Parents who make mistakes.

But when they realize they’ve hurt their child, they apologize.

They change.

They try to do better.

Those parents exist.

I know they do.

I simply didn’t grow up with them.

People often assume I hate my parents because of what happened when I was a child.

That isn’t entirely true.

I tried.

As an adult, I tried to have relationships with both of them.

I wanted to believe childhood was childhood and adulthood could be different.

Instead, I found the same manipulation.

The same disregard for boundaries.

The same willingness to hurt other people if it meant getting what they wanted.

My mother even tried to go around me by building a relationship with my daughter so she could learn things about my life.

To me, that wasn’t love.

It was another reminder that my boundaries didn’t matter.

Becoming a mother changed everything.

People always say having children helps you understand your parents.

For me, it did the opposite.

It helped me understand myself.

I looked at my own children and realized there were things my parents did that would never even cross my mind.

Not because I’m perfect.

I’m not.

I’ve made mistakes.

Every parent does.

But there is a world of difference between making mistakes and making cruelty part of your parenting.

That’s when I stopped asking myself what happened to my parents.

I started asking what they repeatedly chose to do.

And the answer made me uncomfortable.

Sometimes your parents are awful people.

Notice I said sometimes.

I’m not talking about your parents.

I’m talking about mine.

I know there are wonderful mothers and fathers.

This essay isn’t about them.

It’s about the two people who raised me.

People tell me hatred is unhealthy.

Maybe it is.

I’m almost fifty years old, and I’m still paying for things that happened to me as a child.

I’m still carrying scars they don’t have to carry.

I’m still unpacking lessons I never should have been taught.

So I’ll tell you another truth.

I don’t forgive them.

I don’t want to.

Part of me wants them to suffer.

I want them to know what it feels like to live with consequences they didn’t choose.

Maybe that makes me a bad person.

Maybe it makes some readers close this page.

That’s okay.

I’m not writing this so everyone agrees with me.

I’m writing it because it’s true.

I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not.

I spent enough of my childhood pretending everything was fine.

I’m done pretending now.