dear mom
6:55 p.m.

Dear Mom:

So maybe things are different now, and maybe you're not as tightly wound as you used to be. Is it my fault that I have a hard time beleiving in the suddenly sympathetic and non-violent you, after growing up with the original version?

You say you want us to be friends, and you say I don't call enough. Remember what you said when I told you about the drinking problem four years ago? I don't trust easily regardless, and my body and mind has been trained to always be tense around you. Always watchful. Always on guard.

Do you know what I'd say if I talked to you about the truth, and things that are real, and what I feel?

I'll make you a list.

1. You scared me, every day, more than anyone I've ever known. I felt weak, ZI felt stupid, I felt WRONG. And so I blocked myself off.

2. Not being an alcoholic or physically abusive doesn't mean that you were a good mother, or that I had a good life.

3. Even just writing this, knowing you'll never read it, makes we want to throw up.

4. I was raped freshman year. I was a virgin. Remember what you said when I went to the gyno for the first time last year? "Now we'll find out if you've been lying to me"? If omission of what you don't want to hear makes me a liar, so be it.

5. I tried to kill myself Junior year.

6. I have scars up and down my legs from an xacto knife and my own hands.

7. I think I'm depressed. Still.

8. Sometimes, I wish you were dead. I think about what I'd wear to the funeral, and how much I'd cry.

9. I remember what you said, about taking away my first child, "Just to see how it feels". I will never be able to trust you.

10. I know about you and dad.

love,

your daughter, who will never tell you any of this, and who will always be a little bit of a disappointment

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