I heard many times, why are you like this, what is wrong with you, why can't you be like...insert any child near my age who made good grades, didn't day dream, liked to wear plaid scratchy wool skirts and penny loafers.  I often contemplated this dilemma. Why can't I be a good kid?  Mother  tried as hard as she could, I guess the child abuse training she had received from her step-mother, that I believe she desperately didn't want to continue, was pressed so deeply into every pore of her being, she couldn't help it.  She had to release all the anger, hatred, worthlessness on the next available human being; someone who could not talk back to her, who could not leave her, was completely dependent on her, that she could belittle to make herself feel better and numb the pain, a coping skill shared by many a bully in the schoolyard. That human being was her 1st child, me.

Her mother died when my mother was born.  I'm not sure if there were complications with the birth or it was a sickness.  I'm not sure if she even got to see her baby. My mother didn't know her mother. My biological grandmother was never spoken of. I think that is how my step-grandmother wanted it, to pretend she had never existed, so she ceased to exist. My grandfather left my mother as an infant in the late 1940's with my great grandmother to care for her.  He returned approximately 3 years later to a child that didn't know him.  He brought with him a new wife and mommy for my mother.  Each time her step-mother looked on my mother I'm sure she saw my grandfather's true love, his deceased wife. They would go on to have 2 boys who were very spoiled, my mother's half-sibllings.  My mother tried to stay out of trouble, a good girl, but could never amount to anything in her step-mother's eyes and was always treated as an outsider in the family, raised believing she was not worthy of respect, love or kindness, a thing that should have died with her mother. 

How I wish my mother could have made the connection in how she raised me, because I really feel that if she could she would have never wanted anyone, even me, to feel what she had felt all her life.  But there must always be the sacrificial lamb. Blood must run. Cycles must repeat themselves unless a drastic measure in learned behavior is interrupted.  

She had  left home, gone to college, married the first boy she had sex with and had a baby. Everything was going to be just fine.  Until I demanded feedings, diaper changes, baths and comfort. My crying made her feel incapable of even being a mother. Her husband was uninterested in taking on the domestic duties that she had so willingly accepted. She felt like a failure once again and dreamed of a life of freedom. She was in prison and I was her warden, sentencing her to 18yrs.

I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I knew there was something because I had been told over and over something was wrong with me, but what, I couldn't imagine.  At the age of 7years being sent to my room to contemplate why I couldn't read well, ride a bike, why it had taken me so long to learn to tie my shoes, I would beat my head against my pillow and think why? Why? WHY? must I be so bad? Why can't I learn and be as smart as everybody else. 

My mother tried to help me, really she did. She would yell at me to tie my shoe, tears streaming down my face in fear of being hit and frustrated with myself for being unable to please her.  She would point out to the neighborhood kids and their parents that my bike STILL had training wheels and that I was too old for training wheels. She would smack the wooden ruler on the real wooden desk she purchased for me kept in my room for school work demanding I read through the stuffed up nose and tears. I was shameful that my nose was running and she would refuse me a tissue until I had read the page.  She was a childhood drill sergeant, tore me down, but never building me back up. Her self esteem depended on my success and I was a failure.