Forgotten Knite

I was in fourth grade when my world broke apart in the shape of the office lady coming to my water-color covered classroom. My teacher, who taught all but two classes, was pulled to the side and delivered news that would reach me shakily. "Lydia, I need you to come with me, let's...take a walk?" she started questioningly. "Holly will cover class until we get back." she continued heading towards me, sitting in the back of the room nearest the open door.

It was a deceptively nice day that day, leading me to a false sense of security, all too fitting. We walked a distance before my teacher who I was about to get to know a lot better started to quiver out the words that would break my soul for years to come. "Your...your mom was in an accident at work. Your biological mom, that is...she was hit in the head really hard and they don't know how bad off she is yet"

We continued in silence as my mind attempted to grasp the reality of the situation, my ten year old mind not entirely equipped to process exactly how much of a tail spin my life was about to enter. "Oh." was all I could muster in the moment seeing my bio mom was in and out of mental and physical hospitals every month for as long as I could remember. It was more of a normality than I'd like to admit at the time for her to be gravely ill in some respect.

"Wha- are you okay? Do you want to go home?" My dear teacher studied my pinched face for any true emotion. I was a deeply emotional child, but my bio mom was such an outlier in my life I rarely allowed myself to show my emotions for her. I spent years worth of my life crying because she wasn't coming to see me, this could be no different.

I smiled up at my teacher weakly, moved by her kindness but not wishing to go home, I craved a normal childhood more than anything else in this life. I still crave that over a decade later, some things never change, do they. "No, I'll stay." I left it at that, not wanting to break down, not wanting to seem weak. We walked the rest of the way back to the classroom with silence weighing us down, her hand in my chilled, clammy hand.

A few years later I found myself at an impasse, my bio mom was never going to get better, her brain had finally been broken, she had little capacity for memory and could not remember my childhood. She could not remember the times I prioritized her life over mine. She could not remember me caring for her, or all the times she allowed her husband to enter me. She still doesn't remember.

I found myself spacing my days in the hopes I could see my brother yet avoid her. I became the soul guardian for my brother, and I could feel it's weight crushing me more each day. I spent my life forced to care for a mother at ten who could hardly remember me, I found myself caring for a stranger. Her whole personality had shifted, she used to to have an infectious spark to her even in the most agonizing of emotions, she was always herself.

Now? She felt empty, a dull husk of humanity. She was utterly unrecognizable. I had found myself missing her prior to the accident, but now, I had the deep stab of loss as I realized I'd never know my mom as an adult, realized I'd be caring for her till the day she died, if I didn't die first. I still don't know my mom, because the woman she was when my dad was with her is long dead, a woman that was repurposed into blind love and an inability to think independently.

I found myself in high school staring down the loaded gun of my future, knowing full well what was expected of me, razorblade in hand. I found myself fondly considering suicide over caring for my mother as her slave, her, entirely unaware of the soul shattering pain I felt in each breath spent in her company. Her, blissfully ignorant of the trauma I had endured on her behalf. I gave her my childhood, all I ask is half a life for myself, free to make my own decisions, own mistakes.

When I was around fourteen I was sitting with my bio mom, who had been subjected to shock therapy, only the final nail in our coffin. A decision made by her mom who was currently caring for her, a move I am now sure was made to create a more passive and subdued person, as the shock therapy went on twelve years. My bio mom was in such a state she was drooling on herself, falling asleep while smoking, and couldn't remember much at all.

My brother and I sat with her, when she asked me "Lydia, what's Christmas?" in her usual sing song voice. My dear brother looked at me in shock as I slowly told her about santa, and trees, choking back tears, hoping not to alarm my nine year-old brother further. I think that was the moment I realized, mom's gone for good.

I have since had to face the reality that my bio mom is never going to remember how much I destroyed myself just to make her happy for keep her safe, or get her fed. She left some very real marks on me, none of which were good, and I will never get the respect I deserve from her, the only person I crave it from. I will never get closure, and I will always be treated as a toddler when near her, despite my warrior-like upbringing. I don't seek recognition from her, because I am all too aware that she is incapable of grasping so much as the concept of what we went through.

The one thing I crave the most, will never be realized, I will never see the woman who tried to raise me, put me in dangers way, and burned away my innocence. She will never understand why when I look at her, pain crossed my face, why when I look at her mom, I gaze with suspicion.