Mother where art thou—She was 3

By the age of 3 she had suffered some pretty serious physical abuses at the hand of her mother. It’s hard to imagine a mother striking out at her child and beating them into submission. Mothers are supposed to protect and nurture build you up not tear you down. Mothers are supposed to teach their daughters how to be a woman. Mothers are supposed to give you wings and help you fly. All her life she never knew anything but darkness. Somewhere deep inside that little 3 year old it started to rain and the sad part is her life would be filled with storms and pretty soon she would begin to accept that as normal.

She’s said I love the rain, I identify with the rain, I love gloomy days and I would ask why and she said because I identify with them. Never really knowing why because you see, she had no memories. Of course she knew her name, her family, things like that but she had no memories of being small and it bothered her when someone asked her if she remembered this or that and she had no idea what they were talking about.

She did have one memory of darkness, being surrounded by darkness. Long into adulthood one day her mother said you are a bad influence to children, you have always been bad ever since the day you were born. She said it was as if the shades were pulled back and in her minds eye she saw a little girl crouched in the corner of a dark room, covering her head with her arms, bruised, dirty and her face stained with tears. The memory she could not get out of her mind. It bothered her when she awakened in the middle of the night she saw that little girl in her mind. Sitting at her desk one day all of a sudden it was as if a flood happened in her mind and someone had turned a movie projector on fast forward all these memories came forefront to her mind. At first she sat there stunned wondering why she would think such things. She called her sister and told her of the memories in her mind and her sister said, “Mom used to do that to me.” She could not breath, she didn’t know rather to cry or scream her voice was stuck in her throat. Then out came the story her sister had to tell and she cried for her sister. She was haunted by what her sister told her and then she realized all those memories that came flooding into her mind were her memories. Her mother locked her in her room or in the closet till her dad came home because that’s what you did with little girls that were bad. She was a shameful little girl her mother would say she begged her mom not to lock her up. She crouched in the corner because next came the swatting at her wildly with her hands and fists till she lay helpless on the floor in a puddle. Screaming at the top of her lungs her mother would pace outside the door. How scared she was, how she wished her mother would be pleased with her. One time she got out of her room and went to the couch and pretended she was asleep thinking if her mother saw her sleeping sweetly she would let her stay in the living room but that was not the case.

When she grew up she became very confrontational, aggressive, suspicious, argumentative, belligerent, questioning authority, and down right mean. She picked fights with bullies. What really got under her skin were people that mistreated others she’d fight them sometimes physically other times with her words. By the time she was an adult she learned she could not go around punching the lights out of an offender so she learned how to use her words. The very words you are reading right now. Because that little 3 year old girl is me.

 

• MichelleMarie

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