SEVEN

Written 24th October 2024

My earliest memories are of being forced to clean. My sister and I, upstairs in our room on tenterhooks as we listened out for the sound of the tiny gold bell tinkling on our mothers charm bracelet as she plodded upstairs to shout at us about not cleaning what was already clean, for the possibility of a single speck of dust on the highest shelf in our bedroom - outlandishly, outrageously - somehow being overlooked.

We’d quietly read, walking around at intervals to make it seem we were tidying the invisible mess that we were meant to be attending to day in and day out, always tense, always listening out, always on guard.

We had a chore list that would have rivalled Cinderella’s. My poor sister got the worst of it. My stomach still clenches at the memory of hearing my mother berate her, call her names; fat cow being one of her favourites, as I stood helplessly upstairs unable to make it stop. 9 year old girls sometimes miss spots when they wash dishes; couldn’t my mother understand that?

My singular early memory I have is of playing with my Pocahontas doll and being told off for making mess with my toys to such an extreme extent that the memory has stuck fast in my head. Pocohuntas came out in 1995. I couldn’t have been older than 4, yet my mother’s rage was so profound that I recall that moment as a standout in my young life.

My childhood memories in general are spotty. Sometimes looking at old photographs, I can’t believe I don’t remember the presence of my Dad (who was indeed very present, despite what Mother would have us believe). We were raised with constant ranting and raving about our Dad not wanting us, not wanting to spend time with us, the general idea that we were rejected by him. All of which I’ve grown to learn was never true. The greatest evidence of this is that from about aged 7 onwards we spent every other weekend with him. I screamed and cried as we travelled to his house as who’d want to spend time with someone they believed to not love them? Despite my Dads patience as I wailed the whole way, despite him taking interest in my interests to show me he could see me, despite playing Metal Gear Solid in the room with us until we fell asleep at night as I was scared of the dark and my sister was scared of birds (a hitchcockian fear), I somehow couldn’t see his love.

Mother would dress us in our worst clothes for our weekends with him; trousers too short, trainers to small, to manipulate my Dad into spending his hard earned money on new clothes for us. He never fell for it, he paid a large amount of child support that I sometimes had to collect from him in cash, but upon returning home after each visit my Mother used this resistance of her schemes to proclaim to us further his lack of love for us. I believed it.

She disallowed my (loving, caring) stepmother closeness with us. Hell would have been raised had she touched our purposely messy heads of hair, fostering another belief within my sister and I; she didn’t like us or want us around either.

There are others she kept us from that are too heartbreaking and to great of a loss for me to even tolerate thinking, let alone writing, about right now. Though I thank my Dad for doing what he did; what was right - allowing us to bask in the love of my grandmother, his mother, despite my mother’s vindictive attempts to thwart such a thing. My grandmother sadly died when I was 11, on my mother’s birthday. I don’t know what that means karmically, but thank you Nana J for allowing me to remember you on that day instead of her. Thank you for being you, for the DNA I have of yours that makes up parts of who I am. That overrides some of the DNA that comes down my maternal line. Thank God for you.

Despite the darkness, there was pure light in my life of this period though; the sweetest baby brother borne of my stepmother and my dad, and the feeling of shared experience that my sister brought. Both of us would have lost our minds if there weren’t two of us to. There’d be no one that knew, that understood, that could wrap their minds around the absolute madness we lived in. I didn’t see it very clearly until I was older, although I felt it, and my sister sadly is still entrapped in my mother’s web of lies and distortions. My little brother is still the same; caring, smiling, happy. My two younger sisters that followed further bonding me to a familial connection that keeps me grounded and sane even when we are apart. Thank God for them too.

I was luckily to be loved loudly and proudly by other family members; precious aunts and uncles, family friends, teachers, neighbours. All who have done more for me than they’ll ever know. Being my mothers favoured child for the first 30 years of my life sheltered me from some of her abuse but opened me up others. The way she treated my sister still brings tears of sadness and anger to my eyes now. But I suffered in my own way, and my sister in her way too.

Whilst we may not be in contact, I know my sister is simply (and sadly) just a product of the poisonous woman who raised her. I always hope her true self will ovverrride that one day. She deserves a life and she hasn’t had one yet as my mother lives deeply burrowed in her psyche, a parasite that needs to be removed. (Edit on 21/10/20225 - fuck her.)

My upbringing, the secret hell of my household, the boundless cruelty of my mother - who at times was also funny and helpful - is a complex matter filled with confusion and conflict. I am now free from her and ready to look back at it. She has dealt her last blow, played her final card, a wicked and evil one that I expected but that somehow exceeded those expectations, and she won’t ever have the chance again.

I’m free. (Edit on 21/10/2025 - oh how wrong I was!)

Finally.

And my mother remains an idiot from hell.