Cleaning Out My Closet

“I’m sorry mama, I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to make you cry, but tonight I’m cleaning out my closet!”. I just recently listened to this song and if you really pay attention to the lyrics, you can hear the pain and anger that Eminem experienced growing up. It made me pause for a moment and think about cleaning out my closet. The actual symbolism behind those words. I’m sure you’ve told your children to clean out their closets on numerous occasions. If your children are anything like mine, they will clean their room, but then throw all of their junk in the closet. The closet is just a storage to hide all of the things they don’t want their parents or company to see. This makes me think about life and how many of us have things stored inside of our “closets” that need to be cleaned out. With this whole pandemic last year, it really took a toll on a lot of people, myself included, but even more so, my daughter. One day in particular, my husband needed to get the flashlight he had let her use and ended up going inside of her closet to find it. She was very paranoid about him going in there and he found that rather odd. I mean of course as a preteen they want their privacy, right? What if she was embarrassed from the junk stored inside? Or maybe she had some snacks or stuff in there that wasn’t suppose to be? Our children can be very sneaky when they don’t think we are paying attention. They feel like their room is the only outlet away from everyone!

Growing up, there was no such thing as privacy in my parent’s house unless you were using the bathroom or changing clothes. I didn’t understand until I had children of my own the reason why it’s so important to know what your children are doing at all times. Okay, back to the story about my daughter’s odd behavior. So my husband thought it was strange how she was acting and so he and I had a conversation with her. Long story short, she thought that he was going to read her diary that she had hidden in there. It confused us because my husband was only looking for his flashlight and to be honest, he wasn’t concerned about the cleanliness of her closet at that time or what else she had inside. After probing and questioning her about her behavior she broke down and told us that she had wrote things inside of her diary that she didn’t want us to know about. Now, as a mother and a woman, I can definitely understand the importance of having a diary and expressing myself on paper. I had a diary growing up and would write about everything and yes, a lot of stuff was VERY very personal so I could only imagine what she must’ve wrote on those pages. We sat there guessing about what could possibly be so bad that she was afraid for us to find out. Is she having sex? Was she touched inappropriately? Does she have a boyfriend? Did she write about how much she disliked us? Did she take something that didn’t belong to her? I mean question after question being asked until finally we told her that unless she opens up to us, we were going to read what she had wrote.

Those forbidden words she must’ve entailed in her diary that only she knew about was now about to be exposed! The look of horror on her face as her little round cheeks turned red and hot tears poured down her face. The fact that she was now in this overwhelming emotional state had us even more curious. We gave her a moment to weep before asking again, “what did you write that is so bad?”. At this moment, we had to gain her trust so that she would be comfortable enough to confide in us with something so unbearable. “How can we help you and understand what’s wrong if you won’t tell us?” “There is nothing that you could do or have done that would make us stop loving you!” “We are your parents and we want to help”. I mean, just thinking about that day makes me tear up because my baby girl was in so much pain that the only thing I wanted to do in that moment was make her feel better. I felt hopeless, desperate, and I knew that I could’ve easily just grabbed the diary and read it myself, right? But, I wanted her to know that although that was a possibility, we wanted to build that bridge of trust so that no matter what she goes through in life she can ALWAYS come to us! Finally, in a meek voice, just above a whisper she said, “I wrote about wanting to kill myself!”. I think time paused for a few seconds because my heart dropped and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! In my head I was screaming, “No, not MY child!”. How dare this situation show up on my front door? I pray, we’ve gone to church, I tell her she’s beautiful, I even took notes from the movie “The Help”. “You is smart, you is kind, you is important!”. Why the hell didn’t any of that work?!

In that critical moment, we just grabbed her and hugged her allowing her to melt into our arms. My heart felt like it had broken into a thousand pieces! How could we have missed the signs? Why didn’t we see how bad she was hurting? Did we do something that made her feel this way? Once she calmed down we talked to her and tried to get to the root cause of everything. She expressed how she had been feeling like that for awhile and she shared some other things with us. That day was a wake up call for me as a parent, I didn’t want our daughter to be the next tragic story on the five o’clock news. A part of me felt this unbearable guilt and shame. I had been focused on my own problems, work, assisting them with distance learning and things around the house that I blocked my vision from seeing her! She was right in front of me screaming, “I’m here! I’m hurting! Hello?! Please come talk to me” that I couldn’t see it! I thank God that it took my husband going into her closet to find out what was hidden so deep inside! The dark, ugly monster hiding right in front of our faces this whole time. All we had to do was open the closet and see! I will say that she is doing a WHOLE lot better. She comes to us and talks about a lot of things. We frequently check on her and make sure she’s okay. I’m telling you from one parent to another, please check your children’s closets! I mean it, not just the physical ones either, but get to know them on a deeper level! Talk to them and see what’s going on! They could be getting bullied, feeling isolated, or just going through depression! Our children need us today, please don’t wait until it’s too late!

My Closet by Alicia S. Azahar

I need to clean out my closet, but I don’t want you to see,
Everything inside there that’s not suppose to be,
I’m trying my best to close it so that none of it spills out,
But my closet’s just too full, so I have no other route,
I had no other choice, what else was I suppose to do?,
I didn’t want to use your’s and overwhelm you too,
There’s so much hidden in there that I didn’t want to share,
I know you have your own stuff and probably wouldn’t care,
I don’t know what’s all in there, but I can tell it won’t be long,
Before my mess’s exposed and you see what doesn’t belong,
I need to clean out my closet, but I need a little help,
Normally I wouldn’t ask, but I can’t do it by myself,
I know you have your own mess, but mine is getting worse,
The stuff I hid inside there has now began to hurt,
My closet’s way to full for me to pretend it doesn’t exist,
There’s a lot I stored inside, too much to go down the list,
I need to clean out my closet, I can now no longer wait,
Before it all consumes me and by then it’ll be too late!