Christmas eve, year 2010.
I came home, an hour before Christmas, eager to see my younger siblings but dreading spending time with you and my father.
I bought Christmas gifts for everyone, makeup and clothes for my sisters, shirts for the men in the family, and a pair of city shorts for you, bought as an afterthought really, thinking I’d feel bad too if everyone had gifts except me.
And so I went home, not really knowing how we’d treat each other. You are my mother, the mother I’ve come to hate over the years. Hate that I concealed so well, hate that festered till I realized I couldn’t live with the hate and went away. I left everything familiar to me–my sisters and brother, my closest friends, my studies because I couldn’t bear living with you and the negative aura that wrapped our family like a glove.
Leaving, no matter how scary and painful it was, was the best decision I’ve made. I have no regrets despite everything. I was eager to test my independence, my freedom.
It irks me how you think you’re so perfect, that you’ve done nothing wrong, that you have no idea at all, not even an inkling why your children have no amor for you.
I am glad I moved away. I’ve made mistakes too and unlike you I am not denying anything… I am here because of decisions I made, both right and wrong. But what I can’t do is forget.
Forget what kind of a mother you were to me and my siblings, forget the days when we had to lie to people who saw the bruises, forget how you made us feel like shit.
Unlike you I never forgot what it was like.
I will never forget.
