dear mom

Dear Mom,

This Letter is a long time coming to you…….. How do I ALLOW myself to be upset, hurt or angry with you, when I watched you suffer?!? I knew what a horrible, tormented upbringing & life you had, and it had the same horrible tormented, painful, agonizing end!!! Who the hell am I to get upset with you now????? You were only 62 when you died of cancer. I should have had you around for another 30-40 years!!! NOW, I miss you?!?!?!? NOW, I WANT you around?!?!?! What I wanted was ALL of the things you were never able to do, give, show or be TO ME!!

I’m angry that you left me when I was so young. That you abandoned me, that you left me with a drunk scary father who wasn’t their either, who was so unpredictable. It was so selfish of you to leave just so you could try to find love in all the WRONG places by sleeping with other men! I was scared and terrified and never knew if you were coming back or not. I lived in fear of being with you and I lived in fear of being without you! You frightened me with your mean, spiteful, bitter, hateful words and comments. Comments you’d make about people you did know and people you didn’t, but especially when they were directed at me!!

I was just a little girl, a child, and I had to watch you try to kill yourself. I had to listen to you threaten to kill yourself….i even had to watch dad try to stop you from overdosing once…I was 4 or 5 years old!? How dare you do to that to me! How dare you care so little about me and my life that you would take your own. You would have left with an emotionally abusive and neglectful father. I hated when you and dad fought in the kitchen and I’d be watching from around the corner! You threatened him to get out and not come back! Why would you send my father away?! It scared me so much when you’d scream and swear at dad and threw dishes and glasses and told him not to come back! I didn’t know if he would ever come back or not. I grew up scared of you and fearing you. Why didn’t I get the unconditional love and safety and security that real families had??? I hated that you (and dad) lied to the Psychiatrist so blatantly in front of me, making me look like the spoiled brat who cried for attention. I was so scared and traumatized by both of you that I feared life so much I was afraid to die! I felt so abandoned when you left me in the hospital at 7 years old when I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t belong there. But you lied, so I had to stay there. I feared falling asleep and when I awoke startled and alone in the dark I yelled for the nurse only to get in shit for waking the other children in the ward who were REALLY SICK!
I resent the environment you supposedly provided for me…..how nurturing was it if I feared going to sleep, feared dying, feared each of you leaving, feared each of you dying or never coming back!??!??!?!?

It hurt me to see you cry so much and be in so much pain. It tore me apart inside when you wished that you were dead and said over and over that YOU HAD NOTHING TO LIVE FOR!!!!!!! Then it CONFUSED me so much when, in the same breath, you would hug me and tell me that I WAS THE ONLY THING KEEPING YOU ALIVE!!! I could never explain to you how that made me feel. I feared losing you and I was so young yet felt so responsible for your life, for your entire existence. I hated that at such a young age I was not your child, but only a pawn to support YOUR agony & grief.

I hated bedtime, because I would be sent off to my room, my bed, and alone. Why didn’t I DESERVE to be tucked in and kissed good night appropriately and made to feel safe. Instead I was hurt and feared you as you threatened me to be quiet and quit crying or I’d really be given something to cry about. I feared that physical threat from you as you were such an aggressive person. It pained me to have to call out to you because I knew what wrath awaited me; your, spiteful, bitter, scowling, anger!! You were so threatening and imposing to me. And not as just a young child, but YOUR entire, MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!

I used to fear you turning my lamp and night light off, because, as you said, I was being such an immature little bitch, and you threatening to close my door. And leave me in the dark to cry like the baby I was!! What you didn’t know was that I would grow to appreciate the safety my door being closed was and the barrier I knew it put between me and you and dad’s fighting. And the barrier it gave, when you were separated, from dad’s drunken arrivals home late, listening to him bounce off of the walls down the hall staggering drunk. I feared my door would be the impenetrable wall that he could and would not cross that night.
I listened to him stagger his way into the bathroom, use it and then back down the hall past my room where I prayed to a God I did not know existed, that he would just leave me alone! Please leave me alone!? Please don’t open my door?! Fear and anxiety filled my body and my mind as I listened to him bash around the kitchen, turn the television on blaring and I’d just listen. Waiting for the drunken storm to settle. I’d quietly creep out of my bed, out of my room and check on my dad in the living room, if you weren’t home. I’d go out, turn off the blaring television, turn off the oven that was set to broil with a bag of Chinese food take out from the bar you were at and had already caught fire and burned the paper bag off in the oven, close and lock the front door. If dad was on the couch I’d turnoff the light s and leave him, if he was slumped over in the chair I would tell him to wake up and go to bed. I usually got sworn at and yelled at and I’d quickly go back to my room and leave him in the dark. ****Why weren’t you there to protect me from him??? I wasn’t supposed to be his keeper, I wasn’t supposed to keep the house from burning down, I wasn’t the one who was supposed to make sure our home was safe and the doors were locked!!!! Where were you???!!! Where were my parents?? Where were the people who were supposed to be there and make sure I was safe and cared for and loved??? You were to busy with your own Problems!!!

I can finally say that I outright BLAME you for not helping me when you saw the bruises my friends older brother and father left on me! And my Brother-in-law. You all pretended nothing was wrong and nothing happened. How DARE you think you think that my young body of 10-11 years old deserved to be used and disrespected and whored out like you did with your own body!?!? HOW DARE YOU!!!! Did I mean SO LITTLE to you that you wouldn’t speak up for me, fight for me and basically just PROTECT ME???? Was I asking TOO MUCH of my mother, my parent, my guardian??????? To care!? To give a damn!?!?!?!

((((((((AM I that unimportant to you? AM I so insignificant? Isn’t something missing? Isn’t someone missing me? Even though I’M the sacrifice….you won’t try for me right now. Though I’d DIE to know you love me, I’m all alone, isn’t someone missing me? PLEASE PLEASE forgive me, but I won’t be home again, I know what you did to yourself, I breathe deep and cry out: isn’t something missing? Isn’t someone missing me? Even though I’m a sacrifice, you won’t try for me now, though I’d die to KNOW you love me, I’m all alone-isn’t someone missing me?)))))))

I was terrified of you after you had your ECT (Electroshock therapy) treatments in Edmonton. They made you scarier than you ever had been in my life up to that point! You had such memory loss that stayed, and a lot of short term memory loss which made you forget things that you normally you could do! You just about killed us TRYING to drive home, you forgot how and dad was too drunk to drive. I was terrified when you both ganged up on me, me sitting in the middle of the seat between you both, like I was the enemy. And I feared for my life and safety even more when you finally listened to my please to pull over and let me out, except that this time I was to “GET THE FUCK OUTNAD DON’T EVEN THINK OF COMING HOME YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE BITCH!!!!YOU CAN GO TOHELL AND WE DON”T CARE IF YOU EVER COME BACK. I was SOOOO afraid, I was 11 or 12 years old and my parents said I couldn’t go home. I felt so scared and abandoned and lost. It was surreal. I wandered to a park/playground close by and laid on one of those half buried tractor trailer tires for about 5 hours. I just stared up at the sky and then at he sunset and then at the stars and no one ever came looking for me or cared that I was gone. I felt so neglected and rejected. I eventually had to walk home and was met with incredible anger and hostility from you! “HOW DARE I STAY OUT SO LATE WITHOUT TELLLING ANYONE (you) WHERE I WAS! WHAT IF SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED TO ME!? HOW could I make YOU (my mother) worry like that?!?!? YOU had NO, zero, zip, zilch recollection of heat had happened earlier. I was more afraid of YOU than BEFORE!

You embarrassed me when i was living with my friend Kellie and her family. Mrs. Leitch had you come over to sign documents making them MY LEGAL GUARDIANS. It was so embarrassing because you yelled and swore at her and called her every and any profanity you could think of. You even stopped after throwing your chair across the kitchen and started throwing shoes at her from the front foyer and calling her a bitch and to mind her own fucking business. You confused me so much when YOU told me then to get my stuff and shoes because WE were leaving…you weren’t leaving without me!!!! I felt stuck and trapped and undecided, b/c Mrs. Leitch told me I had no obligation to leave with you. You swore at ME and yelled at me and hit me, b/c I said I was staying there. You hurt me when you said I hope you both fucking die! And slammed the door rattling the house!

I felt so embarrassed when you flashed me or paraded yourself off in front of me, exposing yourself. I was a child and it was inappropriate and disgusting!! You made me feel self conscious and embarrassed about my OWN body. You beat down any self esteem I could have had and made me ASHAMED of WHO I was and HOW I looked. I hate that I’ve carried that self shame and lack of self esteem with me my entire life now!!

I felt guilty not living with either you or dad. I felt so guilty when you were hospitalized and I couldn’t come and visit you b/c dad was too drunk to drive. I was afraid for my life, when he insisted on going in anyways! I felt guilty staying with my father every time you moved out or separated. Even though he was safer to be with than you….he was at least predictable MOST of the time!? I felt guilty avoiding visiting you and avoiding your phone calls most of the time? Just being around you for short periods of time from even 17 & 18 on, made me feel frightened and scared of you and like a little kid in childhood ALL over again.
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***I felt like I WASTED so much of the time we could have had together, but then I remember what that time together was REALLY like: frightening, terrifying, emotionally draining and being beat down verbally and mentally. If you’d lived another 30 years would any of those feelings and behaviors had changed? Could I have had lived a different life and not repeat the mistakes I watched you make…I can’t seem to “let go” of you and GRIEVE!!!! ….because your memory and your life Still haunts me and won’t leave me alone.

I REGRET the amount of control you had over me. I think you LIKED being FEARED. You said that ‘you loved me’, but I don’t know exactly HOW you showed it, because I never felt the closeness a mother and daughter should have had, I just feared you. You DID worry about me. BUT I still avoided you out of self preservation!!!!

I am sorry that we did not get to know each other better. I am sorry that you did not get to KNOW “ME”, the real me that my close friends, chosen family and Lisa get to SEE & KNOW & LOVE…..the person I’ve GROWN into being. I am sorry that you will not be here to see me reach MY “LIFE’S GOALS” and MY “LIFE’S POTENTIAL”.

I’m sorry you died the way you did; I only wish I could have done something. I’m angry that no one found the cancer until you only had 3 weeks to live! I’m sorry you were in so much pain. I’m sorry they hurt you, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from them. I’m sorry you died. I feel guilty for your death, even though it wasn’t my fault!!

I NEED to LET GO of YOU and our TORMENTED past!! I feel like I NEED YOUR PERMISSION!! I NEED to let that scared “LITTLE ONE” grow up and become the womyn she deserves to be!!!!!!!

I’m gaining strength Mom! AND a VOICE!! My PAST will NOT SILENCE ME ANYMORE!!!!
You can’t hurt me or abandon me anymore! You can’t threaten me anymore!

I do love you and want to be at peace with you. I do miss you and I wish you were still alive.
I also WANT the life I truly deserved to have as a child. Even though I can’t go back and DO my life over, I hope I can put yours to rest and go forward from here.
Wish me luck mom!!! ***