A good deed gone forgotten

I squandered my childhood on raising my brother, on saving my bio mom time and time again. I miss what could have been to this day, but I wouldn't change a thing. Despite being destroyed in the process I wouldn't want to change a thing about the events that transpired. I allowed my brother enough room to grow in my wake, while keeping my bio mom alive for long enough to get her out of that house.

I was born to a woman hoping for a servant, hoping for someone to carry out tasks in her image. I was unlike her or any of the women on that side of my family, I was a fighter with a strong sense of self and will. I did not allow my life to walk down the same path as all the women before me. I was over and done by the time I was out of kindergarten. I had seem how it twisted my mother in knots as she looked at me, a combination of pride, and fear for who I could become.

I found myself raising her in her own stead, she had never been allowed the freedom to grow as an individual, hopping from one abuse to another in a long line of now forgotten lessons. She had her mind wiped of all memories when I was around ten, causing me to step up to the plate even further. I allowed myself to slip away into a BPD wasteland, caused by her traumas forever gone unresolved.

I found myself alone in my experience despite not having been alone, my brother too young to remember, my mother too damaged. I find myself regularly wishing my bio mom would simply remember for a singular day, just long enough to thank me for triggering several mental disorders into being simply for her. I gave myself turmoil mentally and physically only to be treated as a young child by the only person I demand respect from.

In the end, she is now permanently disabled, her mother now cares for her, and in that possessive clutch she has found any and all sense of self slip away like lotion through cheese- cloth, messy and irreparable. I have lost anything and everything about her I cared for as her mother reshapes her, lying about who she was, what she was like. I have found a tinge of fear realizing I am dammed to care for her till her dying breathe despite the burning pain I feel as I glance at her. Despite the complete lack of love I feel for her, she is my burden, my cross to bear.

I searched for myself amidst a cloud of cigarette smoke nearly two decades after abandoning my call to arms. I looking within myself only to find a strange jealousy for those around me possessing a childhood I could have died to inhabit, yet couldn't bring my small hands to enact such a fate. I found a duality in each thought my bio mom wormed her way into, two corresponding thoughts of hatred and adoration.

I would curse her name while screaming into pillows throughout my upbringing. I would be abandoned time and again by her despite my unwavering allegiance to her. she would leave me beside my front door waiting for her to whisk me away for days, weeks, months. I would wait and wait till there was no time for her to adopt the resolve of a mother, of a woman capable of selflessness.

All I've wanted my whole life was for my bio mom to be an effective mother to my brother and I. She had me strictly to pass on a narcissist's vision of extension to herself, forever subserviently, a goal she would never reach. A goal I will never actualize for her, I am taking this half of a life I have left and using it. It is not my obligation to care for a woman who never cared for me.

I am sorry, mom, but you owe me this one kindness.

I am sorry mom, but I don't have enough life left to give.