Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

I know this may be misleading, but I do not actually feel like a motherless child. At least not anymore. But I did for about 16 years of my life. And this is the first time I am going to be talking about something that has been such a heavy burden on my chest. This is probably the most painful part of my past. But I cannot keep moving forward bearing this type of weight on my chest. So I choose to do what I know how to do. And that is to write.

I’ve always wanted to write these words but they’ve always seemed to be so difficult because they’ve been so painful to write. But for the sake of moving forward and letting go, I must continue to write on. So… these words are for you. It was titled dear mama… but in all reality I know that she has been nothing but someone who gave me life. I mean that I’m the most non malicious way. But I mean it. She carried me in her womb for 6.5 months and then delivered me. After that, I was told… since as far back as I could remember, I was told the reason why we never got a chance to bond or form a connection was because I was in an incubator for 26 days.

But… I call bull shit. To me it doesn’t matter how long I was in a box fighting for life and trying to grow as much as I could after being born 2.5 months early. What was a helpless little new born supposed to do? I couldn’t beg her for attention. But we couldn’t bond? Yet interestingly enough the person of whom I now have given the title of Mother/Mom/Mommy was able to bond with me instantaneously. And I was given the chance to have a mother, almost immediately. But, we will get to that later.

I say that I feel (well in reality I felt) like a motherless child because it is nothing more than the actual truth. I wasn’t someone’s daughter. Correction, I was not her daughter. And to be honest I do not think she ever deserved for me to be such a thing to her. But to her I always felt like a stranger. I felt like someone who merely existed. And for me growing up all I wanted to do was be mommy’s little princess. And I guess you could say I was… but I was Mommy’s broken Cinderella. I was Mommy’s emotional punching bag. I was Mommy’s physical punching bag at one point. I was everything to mommy, but her daughter.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.

I remember one morning, I was asleep. It was the summer time and my father had just left to go to work. And I was on summer vacation so I expected to be able to sleep in. Wrong. I remember being woken up promptly at 0700. And I wasn’t woken up peacefully. I was woken up to being screamed at for not doing a chore that one of my other half siblings were supposed to do. I got yelled at for being lazy and not doing everything. So I was told to get out of bed and go do the dishes while my other siblings were sleeping. I was in fact, Cinderella. Which I never really knew why everyone always idolized that movie, maybe it was for the symbolism that she was able to grow from her abuse. But that is exactly what she endured. Abuse. And that was me, I was living the life of an abusive Cinderella.

I used to lay around and question my worth to her. I really was always trying to please her. At a young age I had it coined to try and be a people pleaser, especially those who said they “love” me. I was taught at a young age the ropes of abuse. I was shown it. Whether it was through the sexual abuse I endured from my siblings or the countless hours of emotional abuse I received from her. And that was all something that was basically tattooed on my skin since I was 4 years old. I try not to place blame on a lot of things. But I blame a lot of what I am used to on her. She taught me that abuse was the way I was supposed to live. And in the end I ended up seeking men that were more like her than like the King I call my Father. But rest assured that lesson was learned.

I was told once by my half sister that my mother said that I was ugly. And that she hated me. And that she only had to me to try and save her marriage with my father. To keep him. To trap him. So to her I was nothing more than a pawn in her game. Thank god I was so much more to my father.

My dad used to leave the house every day like clock work, by 0645 he was on his way to work. And like clock work I was woken up at 0700 every day to do some more chores. Or to get screamed at. Or to hear pots and pans being slammed as she was on the phone stating to her mother how horrible of a child I was/am.

I remember in my Junior year of High School I went to see her and I wanted to try and have a relationship with someone who gave birth to me. I wanted her so badly to be my mother. But she further more proved why she was and how she was not. I got into an argument with her over how she basically single handedly ruined me and my family. And as I was walking out of her apartment I dropped my water bottle that hit her car and she went ape shit. “Oh you want to fucking throw water bottles at my fucking car you stupid little bitch”. She went to hit me but she stopped herself. She was screaming at me that I was a failure and that I was never going to be worth anything more than a dirty bitch who has to lay on her back to survive.

My dad was at work and I wanted to get to volleyball practice and I had about 45 minutes to get to the gym. And the only thing I could think of doing was to call my Volleyball Coach. She happened to be 3 minutes away from where I was at and the whole time I was on the phone with her I was practically running away from my birth mother ( not the first time.. we will get there). My volleyball coach could hear her driving past me and yelling at me “You are a stupid ass  bitch and you aren’t ever going to be anything but a whore. You are a cunt. You are a stupid ass fucking bitch and I fucking hate you”. My coach was alarmed. She was shocked that she was able to witness this. She told me to keep walking but that she was right around the corner. And she picked me up. I looked at her and said, “All I want to do is go to practice”. And she didn’t say anything to me. We just drove to practice. She however, was used to hearing these stories. Or she was used to me coming to practice with red eyes, etc. But this time was different. I was done. And she knew it.

The things I had to endure as a child even as an adult, no one should have to. I wish this world was a better place and that people didn’t have to grow up with shitty human beings trying to ruin them. And I was in the process of being ruined because she couldn’t get a hold of her own mental illness. I am a firm believer that children absorb what their parents do not deal with. Especially when we look at our parents as idols. So we watch their every move. We want to be just like them. We want to follow in their footsteps. But I never wanted to slide in to the shoes of an abusive narcissist. I am working on my bull shit now, so that my kids never have to absorb the things I was subjected to.

This next story is a fun one. Hope you can read sarcasm.

I was 15… about 6 months before I was sexually assaulted for the first time and my parents split. And they split because of the decisions she had decided to make. From telling me out of spite that my brother was not my dad’s. But also that she decided to put her hands on me because I simply did not want to go lift weights. Yes, you read that right. Because I did not want to life weights. I was a 3 sport athlete, just came off of my Freshman year in high school after making varsity track and field and making it to the State Meet. I had volleyball practice and basketball practice the day before and I was exhausted. I had a basketball game that night and all I wanted to do was relax. And that was not in her plans.

Fast forward and she basically was losing her shit because I called my dad to get her off of my back. And she came home and she was just yelling at me. Telling me I was a lazy piece of shit. She was telling me that I was not good enough for anything. And I couldn’t take being called lazy. I was the opposite of lazy. And she did not like being told that she was wrong. She did not like me telling her that I was not lazy. So she decided to smack me out of the high chair that I was sitting in. And I grabbed her hand. She got mad that I grabbed her from smacking me again. She told me that I had no right to do that. And I told her that was the last straw for me. And I was only in a pair of basketball shorts, a sports bra, and no shoes. And I tried walking out of the house. As I was walking down the stairs in the garage she was chasing after me and dug her nails into the back of my neck and pulled me back. And I almost fell. I had my cell phone in my hand and I ran out of the garage and up the street.

I was so upset. I called my dad. And my dad was about 35 minutes away from where I was. I was stopped by a group of male Jehova’s Witnesses and they asked me if I was okay. And I said yes as I was screaming crying on the phone. Another group of older lady’s that were Jehova’s Witnesses stopped and stood with me at a random neighbors house. As my birth mother was circling me in her car telling me “I better get my ass in the fucking car”. I refused to go with her and those ladies were staying with me. They told me they would stay with me until my father got to me. Well a few circles later it was my uncle instead of my birth mother. He basically attempted to kidnap me and he picked me up and body slammed me in the front seat of her car. As these little old ladies were trying to beat him off with their umbrellas.

I don’t know how my dad did it. But he got to me within minutes and got my uncle off of me. And that was the first time in my life that I had felt so exhausted for fighting so hard. And it wasn’t the last.

That was one of the many things I had endured as her child. During my rape trial I was told that she needed to hurry up and testify so that she could take my brother to practice. Getting my brother to football practice was more important to her than testifying for her “daughter” in court. In fact when I was being interviewed by the police and they had to call and tell her the assault happened at her apartment, she came and made everything about her. She told me that I was apart of the family rape curse and every woman in our family was raped. Eventually when I was in my earlier twenties she told me the same thing would probably happen to my future children. I hate to cut this toxicity out of my life.

I simply could not continue to be her broken Cinderella. I simply could not. It was something that I could no longer tolerate. So I cut her off. The only forms of communication she has had with me in the last 5 years is an email address I have had since forever. She does not have my number. She does not have anything. She doesn’t get to know me. She doesn’t get to be apart of my life.

I would receive some of the worst emails from her.

See below:

My real mom? Because being offended that a wonderful woman, who happens to be white has taken on and signed up to be a mom to someone else’s daughter. Someone else’s child. That “white woman”. The ignorance portrayed above is only a portion of the things I really had to endure. The hatred. The angry words out of no where. The insinuations of my father being abusive when the abusive one was her. Half of that email to be honest I don’t even know what it means.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. No longer.

To the woman, mother, friend, companion, and most importantly the woman who saved me and my dad. I thank you. I thank you for showing me what love without consequence meant. I thank you for giving my dad and I a place we can call home in which we have always NEEDED. I thank the pain, struggle, abuse, and anger I experienced because I wouldn’t know just how sweet this type of love could feel. And for that I am not longer a motherless child. And I have not been a motherless child for over 7 years now. Or hell, even longer. I don’t know I lost count.

As painful as this journey was it also taught me how to give and receive love, especially without fear. Life can hand us shitty cards. But I know one thing is for sure, life handed me one of the greatest treasures. My Mother. I am no longer a motherless child.