My Earliest Memory

I was 2 years old, in the car with my mom and my 8 year old sister, and I was inconsolable. What had started as sadness and mild frustration (about what, I don’t remember) quickly became overwhelming anger and grief. I expressed my feelings as big as they felt inside me. My mother told me to stop crying, but I didn’t know how, nor did I want to. It felt good to cry when I was upset. 

I continued crying harder and louder and could tell my mother was getting frustrated and impatient. After a few minutes her patience broke and she yelled at me to get me to stop. I cried harder. I could feel her anger building but didn’t know how to change what was happening to me. I felt trapped, alone inside my tiny body with these huge feelings and no one to help me feel them… or stop feeling them. After tolerating my screaming tantrum for a few more minutes, my mother screamed back, “If you don’t stop I’m going to pull over and leave you on the side of the road!” I didn’t understand but I felt her rage and cried harder. 

Then, my mother pulled over and got out. She walked around to the passenger side, opened my door, and unhooked my car seat. Screams of sadness turned into screams of terror as I realized what was happening. I understood that the person I needed in order to survive was going to abandon me here unless I found a way to stop crying. Unless I could force myself to stop feeling. My mother set the car seat on the ground facing the wheel of the car. The image of that wheel was burned into my memory as my vision narrowed and my survival instincts kicked in. My inarticulate screams became a desperate plea, begging her not to leave me here on the side of the road trapped in my car seat. She swore, hit the car, and screamed “F&$K!” She did not comfort me. 

I do not remember her lifting me and my car seat back into the car, though I know it happened. I do not remember how I calmed myself down or how I internalized the threat of being abandoned. I didn’t even remember this part of my story until I was 25.