My mother wasn't and isn't the nurturing type, and probably never will be, but that doesn't mean she didn't cover all her bases as "Mother". I was never hungry, never dirty and never missed school unless someone was dead or dieing. But what about the other things? The listening, advice giving and the general love a mother is supposed to show her child? I sometimes felt like she was punishing me for something with stares when I made a joke, the brush offs when I try to hold her hand when we went out and the the all round non-existent conversations we had. But all that changed the day she left my father.
Not for the better mind you, she just became less robotic and more animated and vindictive, which assume was always her true self. I was only 8 years old but I could've told you she was unhappy with my father. I mean, he isn't a talker, he lives off facial expressions and threats. My mother grew up in an environment where family was everything, my father grew up on the streets where his motto was basically a 50 cent song phrase "live free or die trying". So when we moved in with her mother and siblings in the country, I think part of me died that night. The part where sympathy and love goes hand in hand in situations where it is called for.
I learned a new word that week, CRUELTY. The bullying I went through in school was mild to what went on in that house. Everything but sexual abuse was dished out, not for some of the creatures in the area's lack of trying. This is where I actually add in a 'thank you' to those girls who believed they had the right to torment me at lunch time, if it wasn't for them I probably wouldn't be here today. I learned a lot of coping mechanisms through those girls, mainly the ones of diversion and invisibility. Distract the idiots with something shiny and make yourself scarce. The reason I say this is because through all that the one person who was to make sure such things didn't even happen, not even in my dreams sought her new found happiness and freedom at the bottom of a rum bottle. Nothing, and I mean nothing can make a person hate the sight and smell of alcohol for years than cleaning it up after your mother empties the contents of her stomach onto you.
Nothing changed over the years, I just got better at living on my own and living in my head. I figured out I had a love for writing on a day that was probably supposed to be my last. It was after school at a friends house, we were doing homework and doodling when my aunts passed by and saw me. Considering we were only 10 and thought Pokemon was the coolest shit ever, when they told my mother where they saw me you could've sworn I was taking off my uniform piece by piece and swinging around on a pole in the yard for my friend's entertainment. Sadly to say, that's not what first sparked the hatred in my heart for my mother, it was the fact that she believed them and to show her utter devotion to her family she practically slave whipped me with branches from a Tamberand tree. It was painful, and I had had enough.
Around that time I had an obsession with lists. I had a list for everything, so I would be in order the day my father decided to come for me and take me away. FYI, he didn't. So I got a pencil and a copy book page, sat down and started to make a list of reasons why I should end my life. The list was long, trust me, a person could hold in so many sobs and tears.
Through the listing though, my mind started to wander after I ran out of salted water, I started to analyse the why's, the how's and the when's. The when's turned out to be "when will I stop crying? When will I go numb? When will I be able to leave this place?" That evening, that list turned into a three page essay on what I was going to do in my future and how I was going to do it.
When I finally lifted my pencil from paper, I felt so good, it was the first time I noticed my surroundings, the first time I felt free... My hand is shaking just remembering and typing about it. Yes, writing saved my life, it may sound stupid to you but people have lost their lives for less. I continued that pattern whenever something bothered me or someone. When I couldn't understand something I would break it down with words, when I had that flutter in my chest when a cute boy talked to me I all but scribbled away an entire book, when my dreams were so life like and detailed the words just poured out of me, but when my mother got a stroke my writing became a waste of time...
This is where I realised, my mother stopped being my mother a long time ago and became an obstacle I had to overcome. When I saw her on the hospital bed the tears came, normal reaction, right? How long did I cry? Honestly, about 5 mins, then I just sat there and stared at nothing in particular. In a moment where I was supposed to be sad and confused, I was so calm I scared myself. All that planning, all that studying, flushed down the drain because I was suddenly given the role as daughter and her, mother. It was hell, no not hell, the infamous PURGATORY.
She yelled, cried and was all round disrespectful. Saying things like "useless" and "a waste of time" whenever my brothers and I didn't do what she wanted, so she would call up her family members and have them do it, but when you invite cockroaches into your home, why expect them to act human? They emptied that kitchen so fast I was amazed. So when they realised they have played their part as helpful family member long enough and left her to the dogs, her entire demeanor changed. She suddenly wanted to be my friend.
But I had no heart to tell her that ship has sailed, women like her have no backbone of their own to stand on, the validation of others is what keeps them alive. So when she realised playing on the sick card, and my non-existent love and sympathy wasn't enough to keep me in that house, she called my father.
I would have told him to shove it when he told me to stay because she is the woman who gave me life yadda yadda, but he was in my grand plan, my list I made that fateful day to be-rid myself of those people. He was the one who was going to get me to that imaginary place in my head where I am standing on a mountain in a power suite, my degree in my arms and the wind in my hair. So I sucked it up and I became the person she wanted, everyone wanted. Talkative, funny and helpful.
The day I got the opportunity to leave was and is the best day of my life. I sped out of there so fast no one knew I was gone for months. To this day she has yet to say a simple sorry, a simple thank you or even a simple I love you, would do good with helping douse this inferno in my heart. But she is ever the victim, the one who got wronged.
Because of her, connecting to people on an emotional level is basically a dream, I have seen and heard so much that the problems of others almost always seem stupid and a waste of time to me. I cant handle crying women or girls, I break out in hives. Whiny people, men in particular make me so angry its like their very being is a nuisance. I'm so un-emotional, people automatically tell me their problems on the bus like I have a neon sign on my forehead saying 'therapeutic robot'.
So, who so ever is reading this, especially the professor who told me to write from the heart and maybe I would find the root of my animosity and set it free, so my writing would have more debt rather than being flaky and blase, I ask you, how do you forgive the very person who killed your humanity?
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