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What Haven't I Told You, Mom?

I'm an open book...now

By Tinka Boudit She/HerPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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Unsplash Image - Mael Balland

I often hear of the two extreme ends of the spectrum of people's relationships with their mothers: She's my best friend or she's my worst enemy. It's weird to think of my mom that way. She was never either, not sorry mom.

Momma Boudit had a career. I was a child of the 90s, most kid's mothers worked. My mom loved working. She loved her children. I never thought there was anything abnormal about this. My mom was not a sitcom/stay-at-home/helicopter/PTA mom. I'm pretty grateful for that. I think she would have been really bored.

Now as an adult, the love I have for Momma Boudit is almost peer-like. Because of the way we connect, it's hard to figure out something I haven't told her. It's probably stuff I haven't told lots of people.

I wasn't a perfect child, far from it. I didn't do homework for about ten years. I only had to go to summer school for one subject one time in middle school - and I still stand by the fact that that was on a technicality, but that's not what this is about. I only skipped one class in all of high school. I didn't smoke. You knew I was to square to drink - and when I did end up at parties that had alcohol, I barely touched it. I wasn't a total hellion, but I did enough to cause disappointment, and I sure did a few times. And disappointment is worse than your anger. This is one of those times. Tinka Boudit was a little Miss Guided.

It's confession time...

(Deep breath)

You found my journal from the end of freshman year. You and Poppa Worthit were...let's use the word disappointed again. I wasn't happy either. I was just shy of turning fifteen. I had my suspicions for a couple of days when I saw the journal on my bedside table and not in its usual hiding place. Then it was sister (let's call her) Smarta's graduation. I spent that whole evening of Smarta's graduation trying to hide the fact I had been crying when you told me you found and read the journal when we were in the kitchen. I think the three of us spent that week violently ill and awkward with the unspoken shared knowledge we all shared in the content my journal.

As awful as that experience was for us, as hurt as we all were, I knew then, and I still know now, how wrong I was. To be real, that's a given; I was 14, I was a dumbass --at least when it comes to the choices I wrote about in the journal.

Here's the part I haven't told you Momma: how much better my life probably ended up being because of how you and Poppa handled it. As it went: I was grounded for three weeks and the standard was set for the future. After a several months of rules and regulations, the issue at hand was no longer an issue. Looking back on it, even while I was in high school and now, it was probably one of the best parenting decisions I think I had ever seen. I was the lucky recipient of your justice.

I never went through the 'I hate my parents' phase. Sure after the journal incident, I was angry, but I never hated you for it. Maybe it's because I was the youngest. Maybe because my resentments lie elsewhere. I tell you all the time Momma Boudit, you and Poppa Worthit were great - even when I was a dumbass, little fourteen year old.

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About the Creator

Tinka Boudit She/Her

contact on FB & IG

linktr.ee/tinkaboudit

The Soundtrack BOI: WA

FP

Bette On It: Puddle, Desks, Door, Gym, Condoms, Couch, Dancers, Graduate.

Purveyor of Metaphorical Hyperbole, Boundless, Ridiculous, Amazing...and Humble.

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