Motherhood
I sat in the delivery room for ninety minutes after you were born, just looking into your eyes and having you look back into mine, our hearts were winding around each other, forging a bond that I always thought could never be broken. Your father and I loved you with everything in us. Even after he and I could not stay together we tried to make it as easy on you as we could, spending equal time with each of us and us always encouraging your love for the other. I adored you.
I never had that, I got tired of watching my father punch the crap out of my mother pretty early on, and her being emotionally absent as a result of it. I hated watching him punch her then take whatever money we had and go drink it. I was glad when he left when I was nine. Even though I never really wanted children I knew if I ever had them I would not treat them the way I was treated. It was pretty hard trying to make a home for you and your sister given the bootload of insecurity I had from my own upbringing. But I read and I got counselling, whatever it took to make sure I was doing the best job I could. The cult and your father's poor treatment of me made it extra difficult, but I am a fighter.
After your Dad left I didn't even look at another man for nine years, because I just wanted to look after you. You were always a strange little beast, quiet and passive and shy. In kindy the school rang me and told me when your only friend played with someone else you would stand in the bushes and cry. You didn't find someone else to play with like most other people would have, like I would have. Even then you were too fragile to deal with anything that didn't go the way you wanted it to. I was equally as fragile, but I learned early that no one would come and fix it up. Oh, I thought they would for decades, some days I still do. Just doesn't happen.
I loved the years we spent together between seven and sixteen. Sure, the shit hit the fan when I had the relationship with Josh, I know that was hard on you as it was on me to. What I didn't get was why you didn't tell the people at school who gave you a hard time over it to go fuck themselves. Again, you are all avoidance while I am all confrontation.
When you lost your virginity to that prick I could see already where things were going to go. Why did you not see if he had a girlfriend first before you jumped into it with both feet. Men do that shit, I have always told you that. So, okay that just sucked and I was livid he hurt you. Then when you met that other guy who you fell for then later found out was married, I was really pissed off. AT YOU, for not guarding your heart, for not telling him to fuck off, for letting him dig a hole in your psyche so deep you still cant get him out of your head five years later.
You had the perfect opportunity to work through it when you started uni and met someone else but you wouldn't do it. You wouldn't see a counsellor. you wouldn't stop contacting him, you wouldn't let him stop fucking you over and over and over until there was almost nothing left of the girl you used to be. You let him obliterate all the kindness and softness in you. Even after three years with the uni guy you couldn't let him go.
So after the uni guy you met someone else and after two weeks you were talking about marriage, and you wonder why I called you a stupid slut? When he left you after six weeks suicidal and I came to pick up the pieces, you acted like you were suprised he went. Did you think screaming at him like a psycho bitch was going to secure his love for you? Did you think everyone was going to put up with the same shit you throw at me?
So after a couple of months off you went overseas to visit your sister. You drove her nuts for three months with your self absorption and your refusal to lift a finger to help her, and spent the whole time criticising her husband and tell her how dumb she was.
You come back here and tell me how dumb you were to act the way you did with men, because some guy you met there told you. Apparently you go temporarily deaf when I mention it. Your time at uni made you lose every filter you have, every single vestige of kindness or sweetness in you has completely gone. Oh, you can still manage it for cats of course, but they don't require any effort. I let you and your bf live here pretty much for free, I loved you and cared about you and what do I get in return.
Well the same as everyone else really. Either disinterested silence or a mouth full of abuse. Now you have someone else to parasite off you don't talk to me at all. You come to my house when your sister was visiting and you let go with a further stream of abuse, and I let you have it with a fury I never havm e before. You say you don't have to listen to it and scamper off back home. Haven't seen you or spoken to you since.
Well we have been listening to it from you and we won't anymore. You can dish it out but cannot take it. I cannot for a million years work out how I ended up with a person like you for a child, unless of course you are channelling my own lazy self centred mother.
As I sit here, on mother's day, feasting on my lunch of harden the fuck up, washing it down with a chaser of suck it up, I realise there is not a damn thing I can do about it. Oh of course I cried for four weeks after the fight we had, felt suicidal etc. But what does it matter? Can't make you behave decently, can't make you get help,can't make you see past the end of your own nose. You broke us apart, something I never thought could happen. You smashed us with your anger and your fury and the belief that good old mum was there to take it out on.
You were such a sweet, lovely little girl and I adored you, but now you are gone forever, and I will never, ever see you again. I miss you.
2 Comments
Recommended Comments