...i was happier the day my mother died than when she was alive.
this is the most evil thing to say and it pains me to even hear me say it, but it’s true. because it was easier for me to deal with knowing she wasn’t going to hurt me anymore, than with the pain and guilt of not knowing what to expect next from her. i didn’t see or speak to her for six years before she passed away, and i was so guilt ridden about this, so torn because of what she did to me before that time. her funeral was so hard because there were all of these people that were there, and looking at me like i was the worst daughter on earth, because i didn’t dare go visit her at all. but what they didn’t know is what she did when she was high, and what i went through when she was high… crashing the car into mailboxes and trees while i was in the back seat; smashing open my piggy banks when i was in primary school, to get my money to get drugs; telling me she would go to things and then never show up.
christmas would always get weird, because it always ended up with her showing up 8 hours too late, as my father was picking me up from my grandparent’s house (they were divorced), finding me heartbroken, and asking me if i wanted to stay now that she finally arrived. i remember just telling him … “drive away, just drive away from it all.” that was in the sixth grade.
growing up was full of disappointments and disappearances. and it’s upsetting because i want to look back and remember a meaningful moment between her and i, and the last time i saw her she couldn’t remember who i was. a few years before she was committed to the institution, they asked her if she had any children and her response was “yes, i have a 7 year old daughter”. i was fifteen and had spent most of my life trying to connect to her in any way possible. it’s as if she reverted back to the time when she could remember me, and to who i was as that time.
she was kept in the locked-down ward of an alzheimer's unit because they didn’t have the proper space for a schizophrenic in her stage. she wore diapers towards the end of her life. she was 52 when she died, and 47 last time i saw her. she was originally diagnosed as being bi-polar, and then later as a schizophrenic. so the technical term is ‘schizoaffective disorder”… yeah, and that’s my mother.
when she died though, despite all of that, when i found out that she had died, i got physically sick and vomited everywhere, you know like those overly dramatized television shows when something traumatic happened. i always thought those were super cheesy, but then it actually happened. and it was as if all of this time and my whole childhood moments didn’t matter anymore. what she did to me didn’t matter to me anymore, i wasn’t being hurt anymore and i was only going to hurt myself by hating a ghost.