I sat on the carpeted floor of my Dad’s basement, papers that I had pulled from a little tan filing cabinet were spread around my legs. The file that they had come from had been about my parents divorce; a subject that I thought I knew everything about. My mother had been so open and honest when my two sisters and I asked questions as we grew older. She often spoke about how my dad had lied and cheated his way out of insurance and out of child support. She explained in detail about all the wrongs our father had done and in our young eyes our mother was a brave, strong, truthful, woman who would do anything for her daughters. At church on Sundays the ladies would whisper about what an amazing and inspirational christian she was and we all believed she was perfect.
It’s funny how often a little distance is required from a situation to be able to see the truth.
This is where I learned that.
“Time to get up.”
My mother had thrown open the door, letting the light from the hallway in. I cringed at the harshness of the light on my face and snuggled deeper into my warm blanket. That morning she seemed extra irritated and I knew that I had about 1 minute before she would begin yelling at me. I slid out of bed my bare legs getting goosebumps as the cold air greeted me. I grabbed a pair of sweats from the floor and shook them, making sure there were no spiders, and then put them on. I trudged up stairs dreading this part of my morning.
Joining my sisters I sat at the table while my mother read from the scriptures. I could tell that she was in a particularly foul mood. In fact she practically had steam coming out of her ears. I remember wondering how in the world she could already be mad, no one had even spoken to her yet. After she finished with the scriptures my mother passed out the hymn books. This was it, the worst part of my morning. My mother expected her daughters to sing hymns every morning and if you didn’t sing loud enough or nice enough she made you start over. In her mind reading the scriptures and singing hymns at such an ungodly hour would not only bring the Holy Ghost into the house it would make her daughters smarter.
You want to know what singing in the morning did to me? It made me tired and pissed off, but I put up with it because I knew better than to try and fight my mother because she would always have the last word and in her house you never got away with any sort of behavior that in her saintly mind was deemed “evil”.
Well this particular morning I knew she was going to come after us. She was going to use any and every excuse in the book to make us suffer. Finally we had finished singing the last hymn and I knew that if I closed my book to fast or too loud she would take it as a sign of me rebelling. Taking special precautions I made sure to close my book like a normal person. Sure enough I saw her head snap up from across the table.
“Open your books.” She seethed. “Another song.”
I stared at her and then tried to explain that I hadn’t slammed my book and that she was being unfair. She wouldn’t hear any of it and demanded that we sing.
That was it.
This was the moment that I decided to stand up to my mother for real for the first time in 19 years.
I simply looked at her and closed my book. Standing up I moved to go back down stairs to my bedroom. Suddenly she was in my way. Her eyes were lit with a fury that I had often seen when she was mad at me.
“You’re out!” She growled. “You have till 10 to pack all of your stuff before I throw it all on the lawn.” My mother knew that she had no control over me now that I was older. I payed my own bills and owned my very own car and wouldn’t let her take any of that away. Living in her house was the only control over me that she had left.
Still when she said those words my stomach dropped. But I kept a calm face and refused to let any tears fall because I didn’t want her to feel like she had beaten me. Quietly I went down stairs and stood in the middle of a bedroom that was no longer mine. It wasn’t even 7:00 a.m. and I had to find a new place to live.
I texted my dad, afraid that I might wake him, explaining the situation. In a matter of minutes he was calling, telling me to pack up my stuff and live to come with him. Isn’t it funny how the man I was taught to see as evil automatically jumped to my rescue? After a morning of tears and packing I managed to move my stuff to my dads. And that is where I currently live.
The papers that I had pulled from the filing cabinet were letters written back and forth between my mother and father. I put a hand over my mouth as I read one of the letters that had been written to my mother(the letters were all copies). In one of the letters my father begged my mother, asking her to provide the correct information so that he could get his daughter's health insurance. Interestingly my mother had raised me believing that he was the one that had refused to get us insurance. I read a lot of letters similar to that one that night and I sobbed while while I held those papers in my hand The picture of a man that my mother had created and expanded upon for so many years was a lie. Her letters to my father were curt and brief, no feeling came from its lines.
I suddenly could look back on my childhood and see so many different lies that I had been fed. It’s funny how a little distance will show you who a person is, sometimes you can be so caught up in the moment or with a person that you can’t see what is actually staring you in the face. My relationship with my father was very basic while growing up(I’m still not grown up) and I couldn’t see how much my own mother was hurting me. I was blind to the damage that she inflicted on me. I still love my mother but I’ve come to realize that I need space to grow and learn and that when I am with her I am beaten down without even realizing it.
