One #2
“Otherwise what?” I provoke her, tired of this constant prevarication. “Are you going to take away my cell phone? Ban me from watching TV? I’m an adult, and I wish you would start treating me like one.”
“‘An adult’?” she mimics me sarcastically. “Believe me, you’re proving yourself to be anything but adult right now!”
“Just because I’m not bending to your will?”
“No, because you still can’t tell right from wrong!”
“And you can? You, who are letting a man I’ve met once move into our house and forcing me to share space with him? You are taking a huge step with someone you know very little about. Does that make you wiser or more adult than me?”
“If I didn’t trust Victor one hundred percent, I would never have let him into our home. He is a good person.”
“So you can say that about him, but I can’t say the same about Thomas? Is my judgment of character completely irrelevant?”
“It’s not irrelevant, but I am the parent, so what I say goes.” She raises her chin with authority, firm in her convictions.
I shake my head, feeling anger burn my cheeks. “And like always, I’m the one who has to give up what I want because someone else says so, right?”
Her silence is answer enough.
“If you cared even a little about me, you would never put me in this position…my God,” I say with an exasperated sigh. “I am your daughter; you’re supposed to support me, have my back, be happy for me, and love me. Why is that so hard for you to do?”
Mom presses her hands to her chest with a pained expression on her face.
“I want what’s best for you, but you’re too close to the situation to understand that it is not him.
I’m sorry, but I’m not going to change my mind about that boy nor about what I expect from you!
” Her overbearing tone as she says it is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
I suck in a breath through my nose, teeth gritted.
“If you’re trying to make me hate you, then congratulations, you’re succeeding.
But that’s nothing new, because apparently making people hate you is what you do best. Just look at Dad: He got so fed up with you, with your tyranny, with your uncontrollable need to micromanage other people’s lives as well as your own, that he ran away the moment he had the opportunity!
He made a new life for himself. A life that you are not in.
And—imagine that—he’s happy! Far away from you, everyone is happy.
That should tell you something, that you ruin everything you touch!
” The words tumble uncontrollably from my mouth with a cruelty I would not have expected from myself.
Then, a fraction of a second later and just as unexpected, I receive a slap so hard that I can feel my cheek burning. My mouth drops open in shock just as my mother’s does the same; apparently she’s even surprised herself.
“Where is all this… evil coming from?” she asks, her voice shaking and her eyes furious.
“I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow the older you get, the more like him you become…
” She studies me with disdain for what seems like an endless moment.
Then she averts her eyes, adjusting her fleecy robe against her chest. Wiping a tear away with the back of her hand, she declares, “So you want to be an adult? Fine. Let’s see how long you last. I want you out of this house by tomorrow, so you can finally be happy.
You’ve got a job; you’ve got money; you can make it on your own. ”
With one hand still pressed to my searing cheekbone, I watch her get up and leave, slamming the door behind her as she goes.
I can’t believe she really said that…
I know that I exaggerated. I know that I vented all my anger without thinking.
I know my mother saw the end of her marriage as a failure.
I watched her lock herself inside the house, humiliated at having been cheated on while my father doted on his new family, showing them all the care and attention that he’d once dedicated to us.
All the care and attention that he had then ripped away from us.
I know very well that he is the villain in this story.
And if she is so cynical and I am so insecure, that’s his fault as well.
I know all of this because I suffered just as much as she did, and I’m still suffering.
But her continued insistence on controlling my life made me lose all control.
It’s not fair of her to back me into a corner.
I was so angry, part of me wanted to hurt her.
And because of that, for the first time, I think that perhaps Thomas and I aren’t so different after all.
When the porch light turns off, I feel a stab of pain in my stomach.
I squeeze my eyes shut, realizing that in less than an hour, I have managed to make Thomas leave me and goad my mother into kicking me out of my house.
I have lost everything in just one evening… I feel the world collapsing in on me.
Exhausted and unable to do anything else, I go to the sofa near the front door and curl up on it in the fetal position. With my cheek resting on the pillow, I try to hold back the sobs that wrack my body, but I fail miserably.
It’s all my fault.
It’s always my fault…