Well it’s true.

My Mother. My Hero. My Bully.

My mother was a mountain lion, a mother bear dangerously protective of her cubs. Perhaps a little too much. I miss my mother dearly; there isn’t a day that passes where I do not think of her. But lately, I find my memories aren’t particularly happy ones. My mother was a gentle woman, the soul of goodness. She was generous to the point of ridiculous and loving to near smothering, my mother was a majestic woman.

That is until you made her mad, which if you were one of her kids, was often.

When angry, she was a force of nature as powerful as any hurricane, or as ferocious as any wildfire. My mother was a real bitch when she was angry–her words, not mine; certainly not mine. If I had to use my words, I would say my mother was painfully abusive, both emotionally and physically whenever she became angry, and as much as it kills me to admit, she was my biggest bully growing up.

My mother was a single parent who raised three children to adulthood practically on her own. My father was sort of in the picture. Let me elaborate briefly, I knew where he was, but he wasn’t around. My mother and my father separated shortly after my sister was born. So, he did not live with us and barely came by to see us. After a while, he stopped paying child support and my mother had to get a better job to support us. My older brother wasn’t with us at the time, as he made the military his career choice. I say this because it is important to know I did not have a strong male role model growing up. My mother was also my father and as a result of her attempts to toughen me up (I was a sensitive child who was picked on constantly because I cried easily) often left me angry, bitter, confused and weakened. I felt angry because my mother’s attempts at toughening me often meant belittling me with names such as bitch, stupid, mongrel, dumbass, idiot, sissy, retarded, etc and in other cases, hitting me with belts, swtiches, or anything she could get her hands on when I misbehaved. Most kids are called worse by their parents all the time and in many cases, they shine their parents on–it’s water off their backs as it were. In other words, they didn’t give a fuck.

I did. I gave many a fuck.

I was tormented at school, I was unhappy at home. I felt (and still do, sometimes) like a reject or an outcast. But worse, I felt like I was stupid, so I didn’t try in school. I felt like I was a bitch and a sissy, so I fought a lot in high school to prove to myself I wasn’t a punk.  Sometimes, I still think back to my youth with anger, but I’m working on letting that go–it’s a process.

I think towards the end of my mother’s life, she began to realize just how much damage she had done. I think she felt profound guilt and as morbid as this may sound, I hope she did. A part of me is terrified to post this, as I feel it does a disservice to her memory. I don’t want people to think she was a monster–though I suppose she was in a way, to me. All of my nightmares as a child usually involved my mother as the object of horror, the angry monster who always got me in the end. I suppose all parents are monsters to their children at some point or another. When it was good, it was great. When it was bad, it was excruciatingly, depressingly so. Though she’s gone, her influence lives on and for better or worse, my mother is always with me.

When I succeed, she is there to raise me up. When I fail, she is there to remind me of how stupid it was to have even tried.

I miss my mother and I will always love her. It is a shame the abuse came to an end with her death. I wish she had seen the damage she caused earlier, but for whatever it’s worth, she loved me the only way she knew how–hard.

Quick question.

Many so-called pro-life advocates are actually pro-birth, pro-numbers. These people aren’t interested in the child’s welfare once he or she is born. That’s a different animal altogether. It reeks of dishonesty to feign concern for an embryo’s eventual development into a baby, when in reality you could not care any less if the space-time continuum were at stake. Sorry, my feeble attempt at spicing up an old cliché, while simultaneously dropping another one (see what I did there?).

So here’s a question; please appreciate this scenario for a moment, suppose you are a parent of two children with one on the way. Now imagine one is diagnosed with a rare leukemia. Now imagine your developing embryo’s stem cells can save your already existing child, but it would also ensure your embryo’s undoing. Which do you choose? Sadistic question? All right, let’s try this. Your daughter is 15 and gets pregnant by her very 18-year-old boyfriend. The pregnancy is already determined to be a problem with a high probability that if your daughter brings the eventual baby to term, she could very well die. Which do you choose?

If you find abortion abominable, or detestable then don’t get one. Don’t tell other people what to do, and stop trying to regulate the vagina. If it ain’t your’s (or if you’re like me and you lack the plumbing), you don’t get a say.

Quick little rant. Working on something else, but as with all good things, it will come to those who wait. See you laters.