Inspired by a conversation with a friend.
There was something not right.
She was always so completely focused on me and the house. Perpetually working to keep everything spick and span, including me.
It wasn’t that she didn’t still keep things clean but, suddenly, she was distracted, always fiddling with her phone or closing down windows on her computer when I came into the room.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel as if the envelope of her love totally surrounded me. The tiniest gap had opened in my security blanket, but it felt as if a hurricane was blowing through it.
Leaving me uncertain and confused.
I can remember the day that I found out so clearly.
It was sunny and she was outside hanging up the washing when I came into the kitchen and saw it sitting on the side.
Her mobile phone.
I glanced at it once more as I got myself some juice from the fridge.
It was calling to me.
I didn’t want to do it but something inside me was just propelling me forward. I needed to know.
Desperately wanted some sort of reassurance that the feeling of impending doom was my imagination and not fuelled by some instinctive fear to which I could not put a name.
Watching her out of the window, she seemed happy enough, as the gentle breeze billowed through the sheets and the sun sparkled off the metal framework of the whirligig.
I had time… and I had the motivation.
Carefully picking up the black plastic rectangle, I examined the keyboard and selected the envelope for mail.
Her inbox jumped open and my world shattered into shards of pain.
Disgusting didn’t even begin to describe what I read there.
Sentences punctuated with vile, lustful desire and Anglo-Saxon expletives.
This person describing in the most intimate detail what he would like to do to my mother. My mum, who had played with me and cared for me and kept me safe.
The words destroyed the homespun heroine who ironed sheets and made hot chocolate or snuggled up on the sofa under a rug with me to watch movies.
They made her sexual and primitive, dirty and cheap.
Suddenly I saw with amazing clarity the image of other people’s parents holding hands and occasionally kissing. I had never seen my mum and dad do that.
And now, this other person clearly had more intimate knowledge of my mother than her husband.
My mum who was clearly having an affair.
My mother, the whore.
Fighting back the tears, the sound of the back door opening stung me back into the present and I dropped the phone, backing out of the kitchen to watch her unnoticed from the hallway.
She picked up the phone to check it and looked momentarily confused when the usual screen saver wasn’t the first menu to display.
Then her head darted in my direction.
I walked towards her as if I had just come down the stairs and pretended I was still the old me. The girl who hadn’t just realised that her parents’ marriage wasn’t going to go the distance.
I could feel her eyes on me as I got the juice out of the fridge and poured myself a glass before going back to my room.
It was only when I sat down on the bed that I remembered the first glass of juice.
Still sitting on the kitchen worktop.
It was only a matter of time before she worked it out…
I didn’t want this knowledge, tried to shut out the pictures in my head of some faceless man doing those things to my Mum.
The safety of my childhood was over and the future had become fractured and uncertain.
Fear and frustration bubbled up inside me like a fountain, pustules of rage pounded through my bloodstream, demanding release.
I took the scissors and I made the first cut across my arm.
Originally posted 2010-06-15 10:44:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
I think, sometimes, it’s a good idea for self-harmers to come right out and say what made them start. It’s cathartic. Not for reasons of blame but to help reconcile all the pieces of the puzzle and say ‘that’s what triggered it’
This post made me sad. Mainly because it made me remember the first time I cut myself. Different circumstances for sure but it still brought back a memory. ((hugs))
But the thing is, what happens if the mother doesn’t know? Teenagers are very good at covering things up. What they do is give their parents grief about totally unrelated matters. And, if you try to address the self-harming, they either refuse to talk about it or say there’s nothing the parents can do to make things right.
Thank you x It’s a cruel world. In order for one person to be happy, it always seems that someone else gets hurt.
The piece came to me as the result of a conversation with someone else. Kind of putting 2 and 2 together…
This is very sad and very scary at the same time. I want to shout to the mum ~ “Start talking to her!”
We all deal with loss so differently.
And now, Ms. Cake, and now….do you empathize? Everyone needs love, need to feel wanted and desired.
Even mothers.
I so enjoy your writing.
This is an immensely powerful commentary and it was obviously shattering at the time. I don't know how I would have dealt with such a revelation. The idea of a parent figure being sexual, let along illicitely sexual, is something that must traumatize to a degree.
Fascinating. My mother was always having another wicket dipped and DIDN'T necessarily hide it. The one thing I got from her was an immense sexual appetite.
Ron, I wonder if there is a difference when it is a daughter who discovers…?
I had the same experienced but not with my mom, it’s my dad who is lingering around with some flirtatious widowed! It feels like hell and I even wanted to shout at that time when I see my dad sneak with that bitch and my mom was out of the country working just to provide for us. Poor mom yet, my dad haven’t think of that! I feel like I was stuck with two huge rocks that comes to squeezed me.
Allyn recently posted..what are pustules
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