A Sad Story...

Through myspace I found out that my cousin Michelle is in the hospital on life support.

To be 100% honest with you, I don't know what to do with that.

I haven't seen this cousin since I was 7 years old. I remember her, but in short hazy bursts. I remember her longish strawberry blonde eighties hair that was slightly curly with heavy aquanet shine to it. I remember that her room was plastered in pictures of 80's metal bands, like Motley Crue, Posion and many other men wearing enough make up to make any drag queen proud.

I remember she ran up to me once when I was a little girl and took my small hand and made it into the sign of the devil and told me to show my mother what I could do. My mother, a product of 70's rock herself thought it was funny. I was young and stupid and had no clue at the time what I was doing. All I remember was that it made me burst into a uncotrolable fit of laughter.

I remember that in the days that followed my gradfather's stroke, that they (all my cousins and aunts/uncles) all followed us home to our house and I suppose tried to help each other gather up the pieces of all our broken hearts.

I remember that tripping over my baby cousin and eating the maple wood bedframe and with my head as I came to bed that night.(I promptly ditched the wooden frame after that.)

I remember my mom, my aunt Ginny, Jennifer and Michelle making fun of the local liquor store that was called something like, "Big 'O Bob's Liqour store".

I remember Jennifer, Michelle and my mom trying to (in vain) to sort through years years of paperwork that my grandfather never organized, looking through old photos of the family and doing what families do in ackward moments like that: just talk.

It took my grandfathers stroke to gather up my family together so we could see each other. To see how we had all evolved as human beings, or as in the case of some of us, how we were still growing up and trying to find out who we were.

Sadly, out of all my cousins, I knew Michelle the least. To this day I know nothing about her other than then I thought that she and cousin Jennifer were beautiful and for a short brief period in my early children years, I had considered them my sisters, since I had none.

And with the possibilty of a soul I never got to know, or see again, might leave us, is very saddening to me.

And it makes you think about all the other people that we love in a lifetime that somehow slip through our fingers almost carelessly.

Mother's day = Argh.

I really dislike certain holidays.

And when I mention to people that I hate Mother's Day, I always get the looks of shock and awe. Their face scream out, "How could you dislike a holiday celebrating the woman who brought you into this world?"

It should be noted that it's mostly women who give me these looks. Men, usually understand.

Let's talk about that women who brought me into this world, shall we.

My mother is one of a kind, putting it lightly.

She followers her own drumbeat to her own drummer, then screams at the drummer for not playing the right song in the first place.

She is essentially at her core- a demanding, self-centered, greedy, self-important person who makes time around her hard to bare.

And as if this combination wasn't lethal enough, she has over the course of ten years decided to add drinking to her all ready colorful list of traits. The drinking would lead to angry 'bouts and erractic screaming fits and a wide of assortment of objects being thrown at yours truly, for not taking her shit.

Together -- My mother and I, make a mess.

My father and brother have always had the attitude of, "Let's give her what she wants, and then she'll go away promptly?!"

Giving her what she wanted usually consisted of boxed wine (the flavour became unimportant as time went by)and cigrettes.

She would sit alone on the sofa, with a glass of that god forsaken boxed vine, and watch tv quietly. That was until the liqour made its way to her brain and started to make her thinka nd dwell on her past. On her youth and what happened to it. Where did it go? Why did she have children?

She would sit and soak in the all regrets of all past and start to pick fights with my father over things that were never really that important in the first place. Her wine glass shaking and falling on the 30 year old carpet, as the two fought. Each one getting even louder then the other.

My brother and mine doors in the back of the house slamming shut, trying to avoid the monster that been unleashed. The monster never found my brother, she found me.

I was the punching bag. I was the yelling post for her when my father would finally have enough of her shit and take off. I was the one she slurred insults at. I was the one she'd tell that I was useless and nothing.

After years and years of this, when I was 15 years old, I started to write on my wall. In any form of ink near, I would write. Mostly my feelings at the time, no matter how hurtful they happened to be, I wrote them there in bright blue ink from my perement markers or in a glitterly lavender glue pen, anything to get the point across.

You should have aborted me.
You Never wanted me.
I FUCKING hate you!
You all are chicken shits. Stop! Giving to her!!!
I hope you die.
Stop hitting me.

My parents eventually saw the writing on the wall. My father expected it. He looked at his daughter sitting on the floor of her messy bedroom, back against the bedframe looking every bit like a broken doll. Battered and wilted away, with a comatost stare. I think part of him understood why I did it, but shrugged it off as teenage behavior.

My mom, however, retaliated by writing in beige lipstick on her wall, "I Love it!"

I wrote back on my wall, "You love yourself!" in the darkest shade of red I had on me. I wanted it to look like blood red. I wanted it to be the visualization of my pain.

Blood would have been the natural choice to get the point across, but I wasn't cutting yet.

That would not take place 'till my early twenties.

And my first marks weren't cuts either. They were burns. I took the blunt edge of one of my pens and dragging against my skin about a hundren times until flesh came off and started to burn. At the time I didn't feel anything. It left a nasty mark as it tried to heal.

I covered it in gause and tape most of the time, unless I have forgotten or my dress was pushed up above my wounds.

My mom asked, and I told her that i got them at my job. She believed me.

My dad asked, and I told him the same story. He didn't believe me.

My mom didn't figure it out 'till sometime this year.

This is my mother. If it isn't about her, it isn't that important.

I have never been important to her. Not in the way that my brother has.

And today, I head off to see mother on Mother's Day, though even now, I question why. I have no money to buy anything. Most mother's would understand that, and just be thoughtful that their child is acknowledging their role in their life. I'm a little confused as what her role was exactly.

To make me feel like I cannot ever do anything right. That I'm a failure.