Mother

I don't want to resent, nor live my life blaming you for any turmoil my character may cause in my now peaceful life. My frustrations, as they should, have come from things I have done, but also from things those who have loved me have done. You have to understand control is all one wishes to claim in this life, even though intemperance is inherent from the moment we open our eyes for the first time and fight the very air filling our lungs with a cry of pain. It is here in this forced existence that one would realize, if they could of course, that control is but an illusion. I have not had it easy. Some things were natural. I didn't ask to be born sick, nor add to your stress as you tried to figure out how to care for a demanding diabetic infant. In my childhood development,  I took my time understanding those around me and how my illness, my attitude, my body, my beauty, my mouth, affected the sensibilities around me, since the response to unpleasant things has always followed my presence and so, I too have been controversial. I learned how to tip toe around various systems, sometimes simultaneously, as to not get noticed, and therefore keep out of trouble. I bore double standards to my presence so those around me could feel less inadequate.  I was taught to be this way because of how the world had treated me, but most importantly, how my own family had decided to deal with the ever-ready dissenter taking space at their dinner table. In this life I, as most in this place will, have waited for suitable acknowledgment that will never come. The warmth of healing that encompasses a person after love has scarred has not developed within me with confidence because those who were responsible for gifting me love did not wish to do so. You and pop have never acknowledged any shortcomings, have barely accepted apologies, have never wished to speak of the past, and therefore cannot heal within the same space as myself in any vital subject. Healing is a beautiful growth if given the chance to bloom, but both parties must be truthful and willing to open wounds. I do believe it is possible to forgive even the most heinous of sins, that bonds are the strongest with those who stick together and acknowledge that the flaws in the human design are not foreign to ones own partialities. This is why I believe there are truly good people here that do ridiculous things, stuck in an inhibiting cycle, in a particular moment in time. This is every human, in my view. We are always learning, and right and wrong isn't always so black and white. It is with the deepest understanding of another's pain and how I took part in inflicting that pain that I have always approached you, mother. Both you and father, even after the beatings, the circular arguments, and the ever closing argument of, 'my money my rules.' It becomes impossible to tell at this point, whether or not a bond was ever formed between you and I, past a financial one, as I grew. What I have observed in myself is, parents who condition their love and offer conditional safety that can be revoked at any point will likely learn later in life that if money isn't an issue, fear may no longer exist, may be outgrown as it has within me. The fear instilled to keep control of a child does not always keep said progeny mentally wilted, prepared to be propped however the patriarch decides, or in my case, the matriarch. We both know pop cracked the whip ma, but you made the command.    
   
I remember your stance every time. You would escape to the kitchen after what I perceived was a discussion on how I would be dealt with. I would be ignored for days after. Father, I think, took liberties with his punishments only when I grew older and therefore bolder. It was later in life that I weaved together father's mind set. I was in my teens the first time father joked of "getting them before they're too old," so that ideals could be properly instilled in a youngling. But that is another chapter for another book full of chatter that's been buried deep within me, churning through my waking musings as I navigate through the scars left throughout the terrain of my ideals. The ideals I was so eagerly beaten over after rejecting such unscrupulously rigid and absolute deliveries that were rooted in subjugation. Subjugation came with just the right amount of love in order to keep loyalty alive. Hope of a good day, alive to ponder the next. I pieced father together further as I realized he tried to break me like he broke his horses growing up, or Jake the pit bull. His modo was always the same, show the animal more love than cruelty and you'll have a friend for life. The problem is, with these ideals sentience and free will was never taken into account. Cognitive reasoning and a desperate search for truth ensured I'd stay sane enough to be able to watch you and father. Watch how you interacted with each other, my siblings, the friends you coveted so greatly, but most importantly, I compared all of these things to how you interacted with me. Had I never cut ties with you, I never would have reflected upon my past so deeply, so fearlessly. For after I lost you and father, after I had been kicked out of your life for the third time, did I realize I did not have to come back. I did not have to debase myself on endless, fruitless apologies. I was an adult. The sad reality is, the thought that I could not rely on you or father to help me navigate this world free of judgement in response to a mistake made by my part, or in revealing a mental illness, I could find no solace in a relationship with you both. With the pregnant emphasis on money and how it gave you and father power over us, my sister and I, how could I find any value in our relationship when I no longer needed you to eat?  
   
 I find myself sitting with a new mother, a new father, and we argue. We argue of things that can be terrible, say things that can hurt terribly, yet we hug, we cry, we change. I have seen a violent man hate me until he loves me, more fathers that came in such plentiful numbers, and many mothers to show me what God would be like if she existed. So many mothers have I had and I can only partially thank you for that. I can thank you for giving me Sonia, my babysitter and toughest preceptor in life. She raised the small rebel in me, feeding me knowledge in the face of the ignorant actions taken by a hapless child instead of raising her hand in fervent, righteous anger in response to deviations in routine. Father gave me his grandmother in my youngest years, too, providing me with the earliest mother I would ever connect with as a child that didn't offer me cruelty. The rest of the adult presences in my life composed an endless list of vultures you and father allowed to pick at my flesh as I crawled with aching life, they came from within in the form of a 'loving family.'    
   
I have made many mistakes, I have apologized more than anyone ever should in comparison to the original 'sin', and as the record stands I have never been forgiven for a single infraction inflicted upon you and father. Always, there is a wave of guilt and repressed anger waiting to pummel me at the sight of any stirrings that I may be defiant to your or father's wishes. Past evidences proving my lowly character, even if I was only a toddler when they were committed, were cataloged and sequenced into a string of the rotting pearls that became my fashion. How I lived my life was used as an extension of your gift of said life, therefore my actions would always reflect your stature.    
   
I care not for this. I am not yours to heal, to hold accountability for, to direct. There have been many offensive words to leave me, but none more offensive to you or father as these as they escape my lips now:

I am my own person.

You two will never see this. The reason being that despite all of the favors done for friends in the name of 'good will' and 'tithe deposits' while we were left starved, despite keeping a roof over my and Angela's head under duress of pain, despite the violence we both grew to integrate into every decision we made as children, one of the most problematic facts I have had to come to terms with is that you and father lack humanistic qualities required to feel basic empathy when it comes to your own children.  
   
Healing starts with humility. It all starts with accountability, yet it is always me who has to bear humility, humble myself, understand, when you have never even let me speak. Most unfortunate occurrences in my life have been spun into a narrative where you and father are the victim. Never once has my pain, my burdens been granted as mine because you do not believe in sharing 'embarrassing things' with one another. The narrative constantly has to revolve back to how my ailments affect you and father.  
   
You would, then, have me hide parts of myself to spare father's feelings. To this day you ask this of me.    
   
So I reply to the notion of being loved for only the parts I show: I do not wish to know you if you do not care to know the rest. Love me unconditionally. Not from afar, from some cowardly, spent place in the past where raising me was a sacrifice you made for my part. I did not ask to be born of you. You want to know me, do so from my living room. My home. The home you and father never stepped foot into unless I booked an appointment months out. Or called a million times. Why didn't I ever answer your call? Please note you and father only ever phoned once a month or so. In the end, the happier I got the more I contacted you both and it was you two who missed my pestering then. You won't remember things this way, but I have a very good memory, mother. Angy getting her house worked on cause you'd prefer to stay there. You never asked to stay here, though we had the room. I would have said yes. Would pop have put up my fence then? Would he have closed the hole in my living room then? No. I waited for you guys to come and just have a meal after I fixed those things, learned again how to build a life. Alone. I digress.    
   
I will always attest that I may make mistakes in the future that will hurt those that I love. I won't do these things on purpose, I won't do these things knowingly, but that is the thing about self reflective ignorance. It can be cured by surrounding yourself by those who love you enough to act as a mirror one must atone to or act as a reminder that one will never grow if a certain charted course is taken. I tried to help you two grow. You don't remember what it was like when you and pop would fight. I was the last one home as a mediator between pops drunken violence, keeping the life you built together as you both spurned up every painful memory you could poke into me when you needed someone to bully. I have forgiven the outbursts you don't even remember. And as an adult, you have still spited me knowingly. This is the difference that now drives me to affirm the decision I made to never speak to you and father again, despite your emails. You do not hurt me out of ignorance now, and you expect me to know this fact and continue our existence as if there is hope for a future in one together.    
   
I will put this in more specific terms, in which you should find the lamentations that drive my reasoning simple, as much as I am able to convey them.    
   
You have tried to take me down instead of helping me every single time I have come to you, family, for help. I cannot remember a time when you or father defended me against those who spoke against my character. So ready were you to believe, from my beginning, that I was guilty. With a failed child, I surmise that you looked upon all of my success as an adult and realized your stature was completely dependent upon mine, the child you most desperately cling to for wisdom and purpose. The child you had invested the minimum amount of time and money in, now held the totality of the family's image, image being so important in an authoritarian upbringing centered around the head of the house capable of being tarnished due to virulently wild children.    
   
When I left my husband, it was just too much for your social status. I understood exactly why I was thrown away, then, after Angela's great failure after great failure. I empathized again, in a time where my life was falling apart, because that is what I do. This is why I allowed you into my life after you betrayed my confidence when I came to you after contemplating an affair. I trusted you, again. I wanted to leave the man, not break him, and it was my secret to tell when I was ready, if I even pursued the new relationship. But you had to try and hurt me. Had to send a contract giving him my house just to needle it in, show just who's side you were on. Hateful texts speaking of hellfire, as if you would know anything of that sort of suffocation, flooded my inbox. It has always been this way. How many mistakes have you helped my sibling cover with your time and money, while condemning me for crimes that are as seemingly unforgivable as my divorce? Of which nothing but your support was asked. You people won't talk about how I injured my hand, about the obvious alcoholism that runs through our family, won't realize that Tio Walters death is but a chimes warning to pops because of their addictions or that your marriage almost fell apart because of said alcohol, that I had to witness and also placate moments of pure terror. You'll blame life and everything under the sun but what the actual problem is because to admit there is a problem means to admit weakness in your view. I say nay. You are wrong. Shoving all the family issues into a corner and pretending has never been my way nor will it ever be. I will never lie again to protect that man and his blissful ignorance. I will never. He keeps the devil close and chooses shysters over family. He did so two Christmases ago and that was the last time I was taking that back burner scorch again. He chose a friend over family AGAIN and by standing by his side you are just as culpable as you were back then. Pop chose friends again, wow, what a surprise. He has done this to you countless times and now the child you say you would die for will never speak to you again and yet you say your children are always first. You're a hypocrite. Stand by your man like you always have. But don't expect me to hide myself from him because that is all the courage you have had to do all your life.    
   
This half love, half of an existence you occupy. How could you? How could you kill yourself every day like that? For with each sequestered sentence not uttered in fear of his retaliatory rage is one sentence too soul killing for me. It killed me in that home growing up, not being allowed to express myself, ever. I will never live that way again given another choice. And that is the riff, mother, I made a choice. Many choices, to be happy. They were scary and I was a child and I was ALONE. I was a child who had to check her sugar and inject herself every time she ate or felt weird. I was a child that almost died countless times as I learned to control these dealings. Still, I suffered the knowledge of mortality alone. Do not tell me I was too young to understand. I was alone when I got my first period and you called me an attention seeking liar and didn't take me to the doctor for over five years as I endured fucked up menstruations. I was alone when I was sexually abused. I couldn't speak of it at home and you would rather move two hundred miles away than have that conversation with me. Why a boy with a record was expelled and you were brought into the office to speak of it with the headmaster. I was alone when you said it was my friend Alexia behaving like a slut that I got into lying about having sex. Alone when I moved out as a teenager to get away from that dark, toxic house. Alone when I paid off my first house, then moved about the country, alone when I almost killed myself one bottle at a time until one night fate became impatient with my impertinence and threatened me, again, alone when I baker-acted myself, alone when I decided on therapy instead of alcohol. Alone, mother. I was and am alone when I think of your love and the love father offers, because it is a backhanded love. It is such a conditional love and I wish that I could have even known the terms, because then I could have navigated better as a child. If I knew what could have made you love me more, I would have done whatever was needed. I would have. Just not kill myself.  
   
I am not perfect nor will I ever be. But I will not change the parts you do not like if there is no reasonably sound argument to do so. Unfounded feelings don't count. I should have been able, as an adult, to tell pop about the weed, the bisexuality. Screw you. He still doesn't know about those things to this day and I cringe at the thoughts he would express should he ever learn I partake in some of life's greatest sinful indulgences. There will be times in this place where I will be the abhorrent thing I hate to see yet do not see it reflected. But I am who i am. There ain't nothing wrong with being ignorant, just something wrong with being knowingly so. That being said. One: I don't drink because I am an alcoholic, but so is he. You don't get to treat me like a pariah while you fuck one. Two: I know there are behaviours buried deep within sources of darkness that are less than appealing. I can only see these things as I trespass unto others. As always, apologizing is humbling and requires that no expectation of gratitude or acceptance is expected. Once one is put in the position of baring neck to another, that may very well be the moment a bite is extracted instead of a kiss. Three: I expect a bite every time I speak to those I love in this moment in time because of you people, so I will not apologize for what happened on Christmas, because if this time apart has shown me anything, it's that you do not care and even if you claimed to, it is not enough. If it wasn't Christmas, it would have been thanksgiving :) There was never the option of being honest and being rewarded with sound opposition with you two. Peace was never an option.  
   
In conclusion, you will never see me again as you choose to exist now. I know my problems. I share them with those who call me family. I have a new mother and father in people I never thought I'd meet. I've always wanted more and for the first time I have found happiness in what I have. Knowing is freeing as I absolve myself of the constant fears that used to follow my every second awake. Knowing is debilitating as I learn to accept that fear has ruled my life and actions taken in the name of it has sequestered peace for a time. A long time. Goodbye, those will be the last orchids you receive from me. That was the last branch.