The Writers' Circle

Mothers and daughters are meant to be close right? Or is that just a myth we are all fed when we are young and impressionable? Is it just something you are told so often to make you feel bad when they are mad at you or when you are 'naughty' in their eyes? Is the truth really that mothers and daughters don't like each other at all? That they despise each other in their own little ways? Is the complete and utter honest truth that the mother did one thing that the daughter is glad of and now their relationship doesn't exist? Or is that just my relationship?

Love is meant to be the emotion you feel more intensely when it comes to family members. Although you could properly count on one hand the amount of days you haven't been pissed with them at some point as well. The bonds between most families are unbreakable, well between parents and kids supposedly because we all know that the partnership between the two adults in the family is more than likely doomed to end in disaster.  Cheating, name calling, back stabbing and reality of it all is that they didn't want to be with each other in the first place. One slip up and bam... you have a family on the way. But if there is no love in that relationship then how can the kids be expected to grow up with a healthy connection with both parents? That's just another one of the hundreds of different excuses I can come up with to why my mum is nothing to me but one of them is more likely than the rest. Possibly because it is true.

I have always stood by my statement that I wasn't entirely sure about how I felt towards her but over the last year or so it has become even clearer to me that she means fuck all. And yeah I know she had a hard childhood and all but was that really enough reason to put me and my brother through an even worse one? Was it enough reason to make me grow old before my time and have me looking after myself and a ten year old when I was only twelve? Was it enough reason to have us waking up every morning not knowing if she was going to be alive or if we would have any food to keep us going that day? Was it enough reason to have us lying to hide her sordid little secret even though we didn't even know what it was to start with? The answer... well her answer anyway would be that she did nothing wrong and I'm dramatising all of this but then again, I suppose she properly can't remember. 

I think I managed quite well. For a while at least, we didn't have much when we were at my mums but we kept ourselves going. Made up stupid games between us and salvaged as much food as we could. Sounds so demeaning the way we were living but being with my brother is where all my happy childhood memories are. Even if by that point it wasn't much of a childhood and we weren't exactly in the happiest place. I will always look back at those days and be proud of myself if nothing else because I got him through it and he has less dark memories than I do. I protected him and that means the world to me. We will make better lives for ourselves than she started us with. Well that isn't entirely true, when we were little my dad was there too. He has always been there just when they split up he moved out and because of the day and age we were expected to stay with the idiot. And like any father he expected her to take good care of us and being young he thought we were exaggerating when we told him stuff which is understandable but made me feel worse and eventually I stopped trying. It was years before it became apparent how bad our living standards had been. At the time my mum was so fake though she would look like the ideal parent to the outside world and she would put us across as the wayward kids that caused her hell and we would get home and she would turn into an animal. Cursing and swearing at us in every sentence, ignoring us and then eventually she became so violent she even hit me a few times before I left her humble abode. It wasn't that great though because he was still there!! I had to leave the only thing that I wanted to protect more than my life itself, my brother. 

From the day my mum and dad split up things spiralled out of control. I had been so sheltered by the fact my dad hide her problem that when I was faced by it, it was so out of the blue. We lived in a pretty crappy town; there were a lot of unclean, uneducated alcoholics and addicts cutting about. Its probably one of the places that makes Scotland's teen pregnancy rate so high. But our house was always in perfect condition, the fridge was always full, there was always heating and electricity, what else do you really need? My dad worked as a baker and that's where our income came from because my mum didn't work. She was seemingly on the dole because she had a mental illness; well I suppose she did if you class being a hypochondriac anyway. One of my very few memories of when I was younger was her lying in my brother's room all day everyday with his Nintendo and on occasion you would see an empty glass lying in front of the door. 

She wasn't a good mother then and still isn't one now. I could count on one hand the amount of times she has done anything that you would expect you mum to actually do for you and giving birth to me is one of those few things. When it was just me, her and the little man she would spend most of the time in a drink induced coma or on the internet meeting random men and she would make herself seem like the perfect housewife, she was always quite a good liar. She even convinced one guy so intensely that he decided he would travel from wherever it was in England he was from (I think it was Leeds but I don't really remember to be honest) and come to see her. I spend hours tidying up so that she would have the best possible chance to make a good impression because believe it or not at that time even though I knew she was a mess of a woman I wanted the very best for her. I stood scrubbing mould of off pots and pans holding back the acid that was rising from my stomach to my throat more and more every time the intense odour hit my lungs. I hovered, polished, bleached and re-bleached in some cases just so at least he would think she took care of her house and her kids, I just hoped he would have no idea it was the other way around. And he didn't. I mean who would. For a while after that they would talk on the phone every night, she had a phone voice. A pathetic five year old voice that was so small and delicate, it was no where near the voice we knew. He then proceeded to move in with us soon after that. He was in for a shock eh?