My mother was born on August 19th 1968. She is one of four. She has one sister, and two brothers. Her father died when she was 13. All i know about him is that he was an abusive man. It is a family joke that my grandmother just got sick of him.. and killed him, leaving her with everything. He died of a heart attack. I don't really admire much about my mother. I mean with her never being there as I was growing up, and her long list of criminal charges that I discovered on the government website, it is hard to look up to her. The only thing I want to be in life... is absolutely nothing like her. This memoir prompt that Is fueling my writing, is basically making me think of something to admire, and I guess if I had to pick one thing, it would be her courage. She grew up in an abusive household. She was abused by every man she ever dated, including my father. She has made bad decisions, her whole entire life. But the one thing she had the courage to do was to just drop us off, my brother and I on my grandmothers porch and say, I cant take care of them, you take them. It is so quick to contradict myself and say it was not a courageous thing to do at all. It was almost as if she just gave up. "Here you take them.. I lose." but it was courageous in the sense that I know, that through everything, all she wanted was to be normal, have a normal head, not be on a million and five drugs, and raise us in a normal, non-abusive environment, and it was the most courageous thing to accept that she couldn't, and just hand us over. Am I mad? yes! Do I resent her for not just staying away, and letting us believe that she was our sister instead of our mother? of course I do! everyday! I hate her for not staying away! but we all have to admit, the only thing an abused person wants from life is to be loved, and at such a young age a child's love is unconditional at most, so the most courageous and admirable thing she has ever done in her whole entire life... has been to hand us over.
3 life lessons you have learned from your Mother
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Well no mother you were not the best role model at all! But all in all I did learn from you.. I learned to never make the same mistake twice. I can not say that I have never learned to make mistakes because we all make them. I can not even say that you taught me how to not make the same mistakes as you.. because I have made them. But you did teach me that instead of repeating the same mistake and ending up in the vicious downward circle ... that is your life. I am better then you and I learn from every mistake I make, because once again I will never be like you!
I learned to never experiment with drugs. I never wanted to end up a waste of society like you. Living off the system because you can not keep a steady job from a drug overdose. The only steady job you ever kept was when you were walking the streets, instead of providing for your children. Not only have I never experimented with drugs, in fear that I would end up exactly like you. I also have always learned to deal with my own problems instead of shoving a thousand different prescribed drugs down my throat to make all the pain go away .. who is your doctor anyway.. and how can they not see what the prescriptions enable you to do to yourself? I guess your doctor figures a million mixed prescriptions that you clearly every night try to OD on ... is better than the crack you sell your body for. I have learned to put on my big girl panties, and make something of myself instead of wallowing in a puddle of different colored pills..
I learned that nothing is ever permanent! People are not permanent, pets are not permanent, jobs are not permanent, and neither are mothers. Things come and go in your life, they come back, they go away, they may stay for a little while, but absolutely, positively nothing is fucking permanent. There is nothing you can do to stop someone from leaving when they want to go. No matter how much you love someone or want them to be in your life, if they have a better opportunity then you are just going to get replaced. Did you think it was funny that you would go to rehab, come back into my life like you were there all along and then fuck up? Trade the good in life that you had just worked for, for the life that made you dead to everyone? To come back into a child's life and play mommy for a year and then trade your children for a night out with some guy that provided you with crack? Downward spiral into you fucked up.. and you were never permanent.
and...... I'm just going to skip the "is there any tension between you and your mother?" question.
When my mom was not using, we played basketball. We would walk about two miles to the nearest basketball court and stay for hours playing horse, 21, pickup games. Basketball was never my favorite sport, softball was, but I played basketball with my mom. I could shoot. I was a seven year old swishing in every three pointer without missing. You bet that caught the eyes of some of the urban men that went for pickup games. They couldn't understand. They had been playing basketball all their lives and here is this seven year old, shorter than life white girl shooting better than them. Ive always caught the attention of people when I shoot hoops, during gym class, goofing around on my street, going camping in the summer, recently still whooping ass in 21. My gym teacher actually asked me why I didn't try out for basketball in high school. Well its a simple answer. whenever my mother was in my life we played. I joined travel teams, I was on the 7th grade team. but It was my mothers dream. It was something I did with my mother, to make her happy, to try to keep her, and it never worked.
The year that I was seven, when she was home and sober, we made Christmas cookies. Who knew that through all the drugs and traumas in her life she could actually be a home maker. Ill never forget it. We made enough cookies to feed a small country. Butterballs, snowdrops, sugar cookies, fudge, chocolate chip, peanut butter, and the list goes on. We decorated them, she let me break the eggs, she let me lick the batter off of the spoon, but i will never forget the way we played pretend. I was the star of the show and she was my assistant. I had my own t.v. show on how to make cookies. I talked my way through measuring out the ingredients, told the audience what the temperature of the oven was supposed to be on, as she animated my words. It was fun! It is probably the only memory I have of my mother actually just being a mother. There is no other bad memory surrounding this one that ruins it. When I think of my own cooking show that snowy day in December. I smile.
So the memoir prompt is really going to make me list ways I am like my mother. I am going to make this short and quick because I don't like admitting that we have anything in common
1. We both get hurt easily
2. We both collect stupid things
3. We both can sing
4. We both can act
5. She writes poetry.. I write blogs with bad punctuation and spelling.
the end
So now things that make us different.
1. you do drugs
2. your selfish
3. you hurt those closest to you
4. you don't care about anything
5. you smell
the next question asks me if I share my mothers beliefs.. I don't think my mother has beliefs.. if she does.. its only in believing about the witches that live in the trees.... ready for a story?
So I guess i lied. My mother does believe things. She believes that she has the power to cast curses on people. In other words she believes shes a witch. There has been some freaky coincidental incidents that have happened that may or may not contribute to her sick beliefs. I mean with all those drugs that shes done it would not be very hard to hallucinate events that would also make her believe that she could cast spells. one story has just turned into two
1.I was probably around age 13 when she had come back from rehab, and was suddenly spiraling out of control. she starts fighting with her boyfriend John. God only knows what the poor guy did to deserve a beating from my mother for every time she was beat in past relationships. And my god did she beat the shit out of him every time. Anyways, So they are fighting, shes screaming, throwing shit, hes staying calm and telling her he loves her, when all of a sudden she puts a "HEX" on the poor guy. She is yelling at him "I put a HEX on you burn motherfucker burn." well what do you know.. John lights on fire. Don't ask me how, because I could not tell you. I know it is just some freaky coincidence, but John did light the fuck on fire. Flames coming off of the mattress, flames coming from johns shirt, you can smell burnt hair. Awful smell, someone lighting on fire. So you know that just confirms her beliefs that she can put hexes on people, tell people they will burn and they just go up in flames.
What our camping trip should have looked like
2.
Day1
OK so you went camping... and it rained... tell me all about how that was the trip from hell. So this was around the same time as the hex incident... and what finalized my relationship with my mother for a good six years. She thought she could be the cool mom. After never being there I guess she figured it was OK to be my friend and not a mother figure. I ate it up for the wrong reasons. I probably would have never smoked a cigarette or drank a beer, if she didn't tell me that it was OK to have a cigarette.. it wasn't peer pressure it was mom pressure. She had this bright idea that my brother and I could invite a couple of friends and go camping. She would provide us alcohol, she would provide us weed, and we would have an amazing weekend. My brother invited his friend. I invited my friend and my boyfriend. The first night was normal. It rained we stayed in our tents, I was young and my mom was OK with me sleeping alone in a tent with my boyfriend. I guess its not a big deal, but if I had kids that would never happen. My brother pranced around a tree in his boxers with an umbrella, slipped and fell, got mad, and took it out on my boyfriend. They started fighting. My friend got in the middle of it to stop the fight. At this point I already wanted to go home. I told everyone to fuck themselves and went to bed.
Day2
We woke up to breakfast. My mom had cooked a ton of food for all of us, eggs, bacon, her super awesome, never to be forgotten home fries. (normal mom) after breakfast we all went swimming. while we were swimming we met up with a few girls from school that were staying at the same place as us. They invited us to their campground for late night activities, including our mother. Apparently soon after we left to go swimming my mother had been popping pills like tic tacs. She was fighting with john, but started cooking dinner. After dinner we told her where we were going and my brother let slip that she was also invited. I could have squeezed his head off of his body like a pimple! Well that was it she was already half loaded, and knew where there were parties there were drugs, she was going. We all drove there in the car like one big happy family. Everything was going great, the druggie was acting normal, john was making friends, we were off sneaking in drinks. When what do you know all HELL breaks loose. I guess my mother could not stand the fact that john was talking to another women. Her logic in this was to make him look as bad as he could so that this very attractive lady would not want her property. What did she come up with? She ran over to me, checked my hand. Went back to john checked his hand, she saw scratch marks on his hand. She starts screaming, "he touched you didn't he? he touched you, that why he has claw marks on the back of his hand you tried to stop him!" john has never touched me in his whole life. John was nothing but nice to us, my friends, and my mother. Well my boyfriend grabbed my hand, gathered up everyone, yelled we are leaving. The druggie and john followed us. The sick thing is that I looked behind me, to check on my mother and saw her pop ANOTHER pill. We pile into the car, John for once in his life speaks up to her. He calls her a looneybin, he says he is done with her. Well this doesn't settle too well with her. The lady starts to have a seizure. Some how in the middle of her "seizure" she opens the car door and falls to the ground. She doesn't move. Is she dead? "call an ambulance does anyone have cell phone service?" call an ambulance!" what do you know she jumps up like she has just been saved! but no.. not saved.. crazier than ever. She dashes behind a tree and crouches down behind it, trying to hide herself. She starts to whimper. She starts to cry, she starts to claw her face off. She is scratching her face so hard that I am surprised that she didn't leave permanent scars. She is yelling with each scratch, "I'm OK... nobody hates me... everybody loves me... nobody hates me.. nobody hates me.."
My friends have seen enough of this horror show. They start walking. It is dark, they don't have flashlights but they walk. Somehow we all get separated. My friend ends up cutting her feet up and landing into a campsite with people who cant speak English, my brothers friend I guess was trying to walk home but never found the main road. My boyfriend disappeared, trying to find my brother. of course I get stuck back at the campsite with her. I run. I don't know what else to do but run, usually when I run, I run to a library. There is no library, so what works is a playground, and to revert back into my world where nothing can hurt me, I sing. I sing every happy little Disney lullaby I can think of. My boyfriend must have heard me singing, and found his way back to the playground. He said he was just with my brother, but lost him. There is no use finding anyone in the dark, with a hundred pathways, yards and yards of trees, and who knows what kind of animals. I dont remember how it happened or when it happened but we wer all back at the campsite. My mother had gone to be bed, and we decided to make a fire and enjoy the rest of the night. It was only ten oclock. my boyfriend went into the woods to go to the bathroom and he came back laughing. "What is so funny?" "John is crawling through the woods commando style trying to hide" we all start laughing which wakes up my mother. She grabs a tiki torch and starts swinging it around, she starts chanting, "I know... i know about the witches in the trees, I have pictures, you wouldnt beleive what the pictures say, they say you will all turn into wolves. the tress have witches in them. Im going to light all the trees on fire all the trees." My friend sneaks away to her tent, to pack her stuff. We are going to leave. We should have left along time ago but we are going to leave now. My mother notices that my friend and her boyfriend are missing. where else would they be but inside my friends tent together. My mother runs over to the tent. "I know your both in there, get out of there now or im going to light your tent on fire." she opens the door to the tent. She tries to punch my friend, my friend escapes out of the back of the tent. We make a dash for it. We run to my car.. we sleep in y car.. we wake up in my car and finally leave. That was the last time I talked to my mother for six years. It was also the last time I saw john. He left her. He passed away this year. R.I.P John.
Its a true story. A little cut short. But true. Shes psycho.
When she was fresh out of rehab, she was a hair dresser. She always worked for the same salon. My mom actually was great at what she did, and she had a big clintele. The lady who owned the salon loved my mom, and she loved me. I would go to the salon on the weekends, get my nails done, help sweep and fold towels. It is such a small world, I actually have tons of mutual friends with the owner and see her often. She always asks how my mom is. My only reply is.. "she is alive"
to be continued...
