Published May 11, 2017 by Adelle

Hiatus

OMG crying again? lol

The tears stopped and I instantly started laughing.

I am grateful for my ability to cut through the BS with myself sometimes.

Lately, the kind of problems I cry about are the kind that most people might kill to have.

The real problems that I deal with give zero fucks about my tears. They collapse and cripple me in more ways than one. They torture me and threaten to take away my life for good this time.

There is something very, very tragic about my life.

I think that is what makes my triumphs so brilliant. And inspiring.

But the depth in my eyes comes from chasms of pain I have traversed.

And some canyons which still exist that I not only don’t have the map for, but they exist waiting underneath the fabric of my everyday existence like landmines.

I have discovered within me a power that I believe is in within everyone, and that is to materialize the earthly things that give me peace, joy, beauty, comfort and self expression in this world.

I am good at getting amazing groups of people together seemingly out of nowhere as well.

Angel people always show up in my life at the right time.

I have become a magician at materializing in the world but there are parts of my inner being that I still cannot touch.

No one can. And I am incredibly and deeply lonely.

I have been since I was a child.

I remember these physically crushing feelings of rejection, isolation and loneliness from age 2. Being alone and trying valiantly to hold back tears, my tiny chest tight and heaving as the alarm of abandonment raced up and down through my body. My throat squeezing shut literally and metaphorically.

My mother would leave me locked in a car outside the apartment building of her new boyfriend because well, he “didn’t like” me.

I didn’t like him either. He had a bad vibe, a grouchy face, didn’t talk much, drank alot and as I recently heard my three year self say on a tape where my mother was interviewing me, “he doesn’t share”.

“Oh, Adelle” was her reply, disappointment and hurt in her voice. A voice that disturbingly sounds exactly like mine today. The emotional tone is different. My mother extremely extraverted, myself, introverted af. Hers had a people pleasing element to it, mine a touch of that disagreeable personality type which means I typically have very different political and social views from my peers but has probably saved my life many times over.

I had books in that car. I became great at reading.

With no one to talk to, I developed a vivid imagination and fantasy world inside my own mind.

I practiced listening intently for the voice of God. I didn’t hear it until many, many years later but that is a different story.

I spent hours people watching from behind the glass. An isolating way that I would come to experience the world for most of my life.

I told myself that my mother had extremely bad taste for choosing her boyfriend over me. I was smart, I was cute, I was funny. I loved her.

Her relationship with him would last a year or two. With me? A lifetime.

My mother is very dumb, I rationalized.

When I was 24, I lived in the woods a 7 hour drive away from home, in the midst of my dream job at the time. She died a few weeks after emailing me while telling me she was in the hospital. It was serious. Please come home.

I still have the email. The tone was meek, childlike, mewling.

Nothing like the silent, seething Medusa that could ice out and shame a toddler. Where was the raging Hydra mother whose mere memory would cause me as a confident, assertive adult to experience myself cower into a protective position that I could not pull my body out of when a therapist once tried to have me push a pillow away to experience setting a boundary with her. The emotions and memories it called up had me somatically stuck like a person under a spell. Or a curse.

I pretended I thought the email was a joke.

It might have been, she liked to play manipulative games to affect her children negatively whenever they seemed happy.

Watch, she’ll get sick when we’re gone, my brother had predicted.

Even if the email was serious, I didn’t care. No, it wasn’t that I didn’t care. I did.

In fact, I was pitiless. Almost grateful for the opportunity to reject her in her time of need.

The woman who left me tied to a hospital bed alone when I was 4 years old, my hands straining to reach the barbie coloring book I’d been looking through that had fallen on the floor until an old man who could barely move got himself out of the neighboring bed, shuffled over and picked it up for me.

The woman who visited me after surgery in the hospital when I was 10 years old and after the nurse left the room, turned to me with venom and accused me of faking………faking not being able to walk on my less than 8 hours prior biopsied, underweight and malnourished ten year old thigh and ankle.

That woman wanted me to drop my life to be by her side in the hospital now.

I suppose years spent on welfare and mooching money from people had gotten her used to the idea that she could easily get something for nothing.

I guess she was surprised to find that relationships don’t work like that as well.

Being back in talks with my brother has been really helpful. Even if he is just asking me about how my weekend was or telling me about a show he has coming up or a friend who is visiting from out of town, there is an underlying thread of being able to be met on a certain level.

Every sibling has a different experience of their parent. My brother has a history with our mother that is a different constellation of pain, neglect, abuse, disappointment, manipulation, lies, outrage and brokenness than mine.

But he is the only one who will ever really get it. He was there. And having that as a touchstone has really helped me. Sometimes I can’t imagine that any of the things I lived through were ever real. He reminds me. Verbally sometimes too, when I am hard on myself, which is often.

It’s been tempting for me to believe that the right person could take my loneliness away as though it were simply an uninvited guest who won’t leave my doorstep.

But until I get better, all I am doing is looking for people who want to be lonely together.

There are a lot of us in the world.

I don’t know if a full recovery will ever be possible for me. And I am okay with that.

Much to my cardiologist’s dismay, I even take a lower dose of my heart meds because the recommended dose takes my passion away. I realized that on this earthly plane, I need my physical heart to create and experience the passion of my life.

I’d rather take numbered heartbeats that have purpose, depth, pain and meaning than a lifetime where the capacity to feel has been numbed to prolong it.

I feel like I can finish what I have come here to do within 10 years if I am lucky enough to have that. I can take it even further with 20. Who knows what I could with 30 or 40 but realistically, that is probably somewhat unlikely for me.

Regardless, I am taking some time away. I will be working on my books and my new website. I will be setting pre recorded videos to post for me on YouTube. I will probably just go live in a cabin in the woods again for the summer so I may post Instagram pics and such from time to time. I like blogging here so there’s that too.

I have wrapped things up with my current clients but may start offering a new type of session later this summer. Connecting with people, deeply hearing their stories, being with them where they are and being able to hold space for their future vision is one thing I am good at. And quite enjoy.

But I am going on a hiatus from the human game of life for a while. I need to slow down, stop, probably. Get some help and take some time away because I have a lot of things I want to create but I can’t in this current state.

Apologies to everyone who has sent me emails and messages. I can barely deal with phones calls for now but I do have the hope of every overwhelmed procrastinator that one day, I will be able to sit down and read and reply to everyone!!

Sending everyone lots of love for a beautiful summer.

Goodbye for now

Adelle

childhood Emotional Reality healing Life therapy Trauma

abusive mothers adult children of borderline personality disorder mother bpd mothers healing trauma narcissistic mothers overcoming depression and anxiety

Published June 20, 2015 by Adelle

Mental health interventions in early childhood

I suffered from toxic stress as a child as a result of an unstable home life, lack of support from my mother (which would later morph into emotional and physical abuse), bad daycare experiences and the absence of my father.

The fact that in the future, less children will have to experience this fills me with hope.

This is a great video.

childhood healing Inspiration Trauma

Published May 15, 2015 by Adelle

Should you forgive your parents?

Society’s protection of parents damages children.

If the commonly held belief is “honor thy mother and father”, if you don’t, there must be something wrong with you right?

And PS: ever wonder why there are no commandments that you must enjoy the taste of chocolate? Or that you must think Brad Pitt is a babe? (sorry, I don’t know who the hot celebrities are these days)

If people need to be commanded to feel a certain way, there is a reason why. A bad reason.

Growing up (and even now, in the comments section of my videos), people were quick to anxiously remind me that my mother loved me.

This of course, following a video where I explicitly stated how abusive and cruel she was to me as a child.

Complete strangers.

People who had no idea what was going on inside the home where I lived with her, people who would not believe what she said to my ten year old self, after surgery in the hospital after the nurses left the room (“You’re faking”), people who had no idea that she would get us excited that “one of” our dads was coming to visit, insinuate that we would finally have a father for a few hours (YAY!! YAY! CLEAN UP! YAY!), and take off to her bedroom while we worked, only to come down in lingerie with no pants on when the doorbell rang.

This actually happened.

She also once decided to tell us that when we were kids, she wanted to drown us and kill herself.

Love? Really!

These people were DESPERATE that I know that my mother loved me. Teaching a child that that was love is how these cycles perpetuate.

My mother tolerated me. Sometimes. Felt obligated towards me and guilty about me. She had concern over my immediate corporeal safety…sometimes. She sometimes was proud of me when she felt it publicly reflected well on her parenting skills (right).

But no, my mother did not love me.

Or appreciate me. Express interest in my inner world or in developing a personal relationship with me. She didn’t see me as a unique and worthy individual independent of her selfish desires and wishes. She didn’t see me as a new human being who had to learn how to be a woman and person from the one who brought me here.

Her eyes never lit up when I entered the room. She was never happy to see me.

In fact, she regularly neglected, ignored or emotionally and physically abused me because of her own issues and because she never sought treatment for her mental and emotional illnesses.

My mother did not love me.

If that makes you uncomfortable, you might want to ask yourself why.

Another thing people are quick to tell me is to forgive, forgive, forgive. The best therapy I have had, that is helping connect me to my real self, the self that got erased by the indignity of my childhood, has encouraged me to finally be me. To respect my emotions, my feelings, my truths. For once.

If I had met therapists who shut that down by cowardly encouraging me to “forgive”, I would not be where I am today.

Do I think you should wallow in anger and grief and think about how much you hate your parents every day instead?

Yes. If it’s part of your healing process.

You will know when it’s time to let go. And being pressured to “forgive” by people who would rather not have to deal with witnessing your pain or considering what your revelations might mean about their life, is not helpful at all. In fact, it’s quite cruel.

Daniel Mackler explains:

“When therapists are quick to forgive parents their errors, and are quick to preach forgiveness, I am quick to say that I don’t trust them and I don’t want to refer clients to them.

To me, forgiving parents is not part of the healing process, no matter what the Dalai Lama or Eckhart Tolle or Mother Teresa might have said. Yet so many therapists preach forgiveness. Why? Because they haven’t done much to heal their traumas and instead took on the mindset of their traumatizers.

Those who preach forgiving parents are really just preaching dissociation. No one who has really gone into the depths of his or her childhood despair and rejection — that ubiquitous childhood experience — would expect or encourage forgiveness.

Instead they would respect the anger and sorrow and even rage that comes with breaking dissociation, moving through depression, and following the trail of grief.

Healing is hell, and there’s no way around it.

Often it entails breaking, and breaking deeply, from those who set up or even directly caused the trauma.

To touch upon an earlier subject, this is another reason why I tend to mistrust therapists who have children of their own. So often when people have a child they are quick to realize how imperfect they themselves are as parents, and in so doing are quick to forgive the imperfections of their own parents. This might sound healthy on the surface, but I have observed that it’s a lot easier for parents to forgive those who traumatized them than to look at the ways they are culpable of replicating those traumas on an innocent other whom they created. To me, preaching forgiveness is a sign of a stymied healing process, and why would I want to go to, much less pay, such a person for my own healing?”

MAIN TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS ARTICLE:

Not all parents love or even like their children. This is a fact of life.
Would you tell someone getting beaten and abused by their spouse that they should forgive them and that that person loves them? No? Then please do not tell this to children. Big or small ones. If there is a need for someone outside the family to convince a child that their parent loves them, there is something majorly wrong.
Forgiveness should not be your main concern when doing deep healing. So often, the victim takes on the mentality of their traumatizer. Believing they “deserved it” is one. And automatically jumping to forgiveness is another. Who is it so important to that you forgive your parents? Probably your parents and other people who are made uncomfortable by your decision to be so brave. Don’t worry about that. It will come in time when you have healed yourself. Maybe.

excerpt from Is My Therapist Good or Not? by Daniel Mackler

Click here for an infograph on the ABC’s of recovery

Written by a feminist, but still a very good, emotionally raw article: I can’t forgive my mother

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adult children of borderline personality disorder mother alice miller therapists attachment disorders bad parenting childhood neglect childhood trauma forgive your parents mother with borderline personality disorder mother with bpd parent with bpd parental neglect and abuse

Published April 24, 2015 by Adelle

Excellent

Required reading for anyone wanting to get to the bottom of chronic illness, anxiety or depression. Click image for a link to a great preview of this book

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Published January 30, 2015 by Adelle

Never hurts to ask!

I once proposed to my teacher that since it was obvious that my schoolwork was child’s play for me, she should let me open a private detective agency in the back of the classroom for half of the day. People who lost their erasers or had some other type of unsolved mystery could come to me and I would investigate.

She actually said maybe.

childhood

Published January 9, 2015 by Adelle

Silken Laumann’s shocking secret

Source: http://www.macleans.ca/society/silken-laumanns-shocking-secret/

The Canadian Olympian opens up about her dark childhood: anorexia, cutting and her troubled abusive mother

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An Excerpt from Unsinkable by Silken Laumann

One scene from my childhood remains indelibly etched in my mind. I am standing, age six, at the top of the stairs in our house on Narva Court in Mississauga, Ont., carrying a beautiful pale blue dress with a navy sash that cascades to the floor. My dad gave the dress to me for my uncle Rolf’s wedding, and I utterly love it.

My mom looks angry. I feel confused. I’m so excited about this fairy-tale dress, but my mom’s face frightens me. Later, when we’re alone, she slaps me. “You’re always trying to get your dad to spoil you,” she scolds.

I’m ashamed. I know I must have done something wrong, but I don’t know what. I want Mom to know what she’s saying isn’t true, but now doubt has crept in. Maybe I am bad. Maybe I am trying to steal Dad’s attention, like she always says.

I remember another scene, this time on the day of Uncle Rolf’s wedding. My mom poses with one hand on a birdbath and the other on her hip. She is wearing a lovely white, flower-embossed gown with a long, light blue train draped around her. On her blond head she wears a sheer blue veil. Today, not even Uncle Rolf’s bride can escape my mom’s need to be in the spotlight.

My mom smacked me many times while simultaneously pummelling me with her words. Her attacks left me convinced that I was a devious, bad person. Her special weapon was a wooden spoon, but the scariest part of her attacks was their randomness. Since her rules felt arbitrary, she was always catching us off-guard. If I dared say something to her that was unpleasant but true, she would give me a puppy-dog expression of, “I am so hurt.” If I didn’t back down, she would tell me how mean and selfish and ridiculous I was, then taunt me about my hairstyle, or my friends, or my teachers—anything she knew I was sensitive about—until I was in tears. Then she would either become sympathetic or accuse me of being hysterical. I had nowhere to turn to legitimize my feelings, and no one to tell me this wasn’t okay.

When I was 10, [my older sister] Daniele was given permission to ride the city bus to the mall with a friend. Desperately wanting to go with her, I made a huge fuss about how unfair it was to have to stay behind. After shouting at me to smarten up, my mom dragged me inside, then beat me with a boot. I was crying and she was screaming. I don’t remember how badly it hurt, but I do remember the shame I felt about my behaviour, and how afraid I was that my sister was now old enough to leave the house on her own—she was becoming independent and I was left behind. When Daniele was gone, my mom’s focus was on me—and I didn’t want any more of her negative attention.

My [younger] brother, Joerg, was a cute, mischievous kid who could do no wrong in my parents’ eyes—at least when he was little. My mom used to take him in her arms, stroke his hair and call him her little liebchen, but I came to believe his upbringing might have been the most confusing of all, caught as he was between my mom’s mercurial moods and my dad’s great expectations. When Joerg was eight, he started sleeping with a knife under his pillow. He never needed to use it, but it lay close as he slept. Years later, when I asked him why, he said, “I didn’t trust Mom.”

I believe my mom loved us in her own way, but in her darkest hours, she would say things like, “I could kill you and then kill myself.” What seemed to transform her words into a frightening possibility was the fact that a distraught mother in a nearby neighbourhood had shot her kids, then herself. Another mother had gassed her family while they were sleeping. My mom would get worked into a frenzy—screaming and sobbing and throwing dishes. She would howl that she was going to gas us all. Her threat was that she would kill herself and take us with her. She never did anything to show that she’d go through with it, but I slept with my window open.

My mom later insisted her threats hadn’t been serious, yet I felt that we lived in an unsafe house. It’s hard to convey just how volatile the situation felt. I remember one day, when my father was out trimming the hedges. There was a woman suntanning in a bikini in the yard next door, and my mother was consumed by jealousy—she felt my dad was staring. To punish him, she went into the basement and pulled out the plug from his power cord so that my dad would have to head down to the basement and plug it in again. This was repeated a few times before my father raced to catch my mother on her way into the basement and lock her in there. Up to this point, it was almost silly—the plotline for an episode of I Love Lucy—but my mom’s rage bubbled over. She grabbed an axe from the basement and hacked her way out through the door. For me, every day felt like it could take that kind of unpredictably scary turn. Perhaps Daniele and Joerg felt the same way, as we schemed together about an escape, for which we created a kit with bandages and a flashlight. We also saved getaway cash and planned whose doorstep we would land on if we needed to make a run for it.

* * *

I was 16 the first time I cut myself with a razor. It was a Friday night and I wanted to go out on a date. So did my dad. If we both went out, Joerg would be left home alone. My dad, Daniele and I had already been butting heads over my desire for independence. They thought I was being too bold, attending events in Toronto and sometimes coming home on the midnight GO train. Since I was focused on training for the Olympics and excelling at school, I didn’t think I was being irresponsible, but this one night, it came to a head.

Furious that I was insisting on leaving, my dad demanded, “You can’t leave Joerg alone all the time. You’re being selfish.”

I was angry, but my dad’s approval was still desperately important to me, and I crumpled in shame. I did feel the need to take care of Joerg, and I worried that my wanting to leave made me a bad person. Everything was falling apart. My mom [had moved out] and my dad was out of the house a lot. The pressure on me felt unbearable. Shaking with conflicting emotions, I went out into the yard and sat under a tree with a razor blade I’d grabbed from the bathroom. I had been playing with this razor for quite some time; whenever self-doubt broke through my fragile facade of confidence, I’d fantasized about slitting a vein, just to end my anguish and confusion and self-hate. I would put its edge to my wrist, and its sharpness would feel so good that I wanted to go deeper to release the pressure building inside me so hard and fast that I felt I might explode. Now, with anger boiling through me, I was both desperate enough and ready enough. I didn’t want to slash my wrist in order to kill myself, nor did I want to injure myself so badly that I would have to go to a hospital—that part of my mind was still working. Instead, I cut lightly but deliberately and repeatedly to release some of my anguish so I could survive. It felt good to bleed, providing temporary relief. It also terrified me that I could do this to myself, and that someday I might possibly be tempted to go further.

Razors continued to attract me, and I would arrive at this place again a few more times after this episode. I’d toy with the razor, drawing it across my wrist in order to nick the skin. Even the thought of being able to do this served as a safety valve, making the pressure I felt more bearable. It became my secret, my private shame, never to be revealed to anyone.

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abusive mothers adult children of borderline personality disorder mother bad parenting childhood neglect childhood trauma mentally ill mother mother with borderline personality disorder mother with bpd parent with bpd Silken Laumann toxic shame

Published December 7, 2014 by Adelle

Depressed parents

“Children with a depressed parent are, on average, less socially competent, have lower self-esteem, are more likely to have behavioral and academic problems (even lower IQs!), and they are two to five times more likely to develop a psychological disorder.”

Source

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adult children of borderline personality disorder mother attachment disorders attachment theory bad parenting childhood neglect childhood trauma depressed parents gabor mate parenting mother with borderline personality disorder parent with bpd

Published November 4, 2014 by Adelle

Russell Brand mocks millions of fatherless children

In his latest YouTube video, Russell brand scoffs and giggles over the idea that black Americans’ troubles are stemming from the collapse of their family structure, attributing it instead to “White Privilege”.

I’ve got the video linked below. It contains cuts of debate between Tavis Smiley and Bill O’Reilly.

Tavis Smiley: “What we need is a government that makes it main priority jobs, jobs, jobs…”

I hate to say it but there’s a pretty good chance this man grew up without a father.* Over 73% of African American children do. You can see in his thinking that he is still waiting for a parental figure (the government) to swoop in and save him. My heart breaks for that. But it needs to be called out. And this thinking needs to end.

Some people love to romanticize single motherhood. You know, that “hard working single mother selfless hero” myth? A single mother is basically someone who made the single most important decision in her life a bad one and now an innocent child (or 2, or 4. or 7) will pay the consequence.

When you are a child in a single parent family there is nothing romantic about it.

Having to explain to the teacher every year that you don’t have a father on Father’s day. Addressing the father’s day card to the neighbor because he was the one who taught you how to ride a bike and hearing his wife yell at him about it later. Looking around at the kids who do have fathers and wondering what was so wrong with you. Being so starved for attention that when a man comes over to visit, you and your siblings literally fight to get his attention so badly that he gets exasperated and leaves. Having to ask your mother what ‘bastard’ means… are you getting the picture yet?

Although I have enough respect for her to allot her the responsibility of her choices, I do think that society enabled and contributed to my mother having multiple children with different fathers, none of which stuck around, while on welfare. I remember social workers coming around to the house every time she got pregnant and explaining to her just how much more money she would be receiving.

It almost seems like a very underhanded way of keeping the

lower classes growing while looking like a saint for your

charity.

In the wild, if a rabbit has more babies than it has available resources, they die off. In North America, a hand reaches out of the sky and gives them more resources than they had before the babies were born. Something is very wrong with that and god is it ever unpopular to say so.

Then people like O’Reilly come along and because of the energy behind his words (defensive) and the look on his face (hateful and ignorant), his message which is actually true, gets lost.

We are part of a system that has been using charity to keep people down for way too long. Most people will now attack you for even pointing this out. It’s like the pigs that are happy that the farmer is feeding them more and more food. Don’t you dare be the one to point out that maybe it’s not such a good idea to gobble it up without questioning why!

This extremely popular method of thinking is harming children. It harmed me. So I will keep speaking about it. Popular or not.

* Ah, I was right. God, I wish I could give this guy a hug. It is a pain to the soul to be without a father. But he needs to wake up. Taken from Tavis Smiley’s wikipedia page: “Tavis Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, the son of Joyce Marie Roberts, a single mother who first became pregnant at age 18”

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children of single parent families russell brand russell brand trews russell brand true news single parent families tavis smiley and bill o'reilly welfare moms

Published October 27, 2014 by Adelle

Thinscape

“How did you get contact and attunement as a kid? What tactic did you use?”

I had just finished roasting a popular YouTuber, in her 30s, who makes baby faces and noises at the camera in a childlike attempt at attention. It triggered me big time.

I thought.

“I didn’t. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t get connection…….oh wait, I got sick. That was how I got attention. Oh wait, no. That just made my mom hate me even more, so that can’t be it.”

“Hate. That’s connection and attention. To a child, it’s better than being ignored or neglected.”

Lightbulb moment.

childhood Emotional Reality Trauma

adult children of borderline personality disorder mother attachment disorders attachment theory bad parenting childhood illness childhood neglect childhood trauma chronic illness mother with borderline personality disorder mother with bpd parent with bpd

Published October 19, 2014 by Adelle

Excerpt of my next upcoming book

I am currently working on a book about my life as a child having had a mother with borderline personality disorder: what it was like, how it affects my adult life to this day and my continuing journey through therapy to overcome it. Here is an excerpt:

“Growing up, my relationship with my brothers mirrored exactly the relationship my mother had with me:

I’m glad that you are here so that I am not so alone and hey, we have fun together sometimes. But being responsible for you is very overwhelming and I will do whatever I have to to keep your needs from causing me too much inconvenience. I don’t want to hit you or yell at you but I feel I have no other choice: I didn’t sign up for this.

The difference being, I was an innocent, vulnerable child who my mother turned into a frustrated, overwhelmed, 8 year old co-parent whose stress level would later be diagnosed by a doctor as the cause of what was almost an early death. I didn’t have a choice. She did. And she chose to sleep around with multiple, delinquent, incapable black men, milk the government for free money and hide us away from her family like a dirty little secret.

The feelings of shame and abandonment her behavior induced was so real at times it felt like the fourth illegitimate child.

I remember the three of us sitting on the couch, dark skin covered in cracking calamine lotion and chicken pox, unable to move. It was the most sick I’d ever felt, before my illness hit two years later.

And it was just the three of us together, watching her walk out with a guilty shrug of a smile on her face as she locked the door, off to visit her alcoholic boyfriend. I had begged her to stay earlier, a nuisance in her ear as she giddily packed a bag and rearranged her hair in the mirror multiple times. She had argued back heartlessly.

You have fevers and skin rashes, you just have to wait it out, there’s nothing more I can do anyway!

I remember just our eyes locking, looking around at each other, the only body parts that didn’t hurt to move as the smell of her cheap perfume began to fade from the silent living room. The horror of just how alone the three of us really were began to set in with her joyful slamming of the door.

Not just in this house, alone in life.

Pepto pink streaked tears.

We were so embarrassed for each other.”

My brothers were both pretty special kids and I miss the laughs we had together. The guilt I have over my abuse of them is in my mind every day. I wish we had had an opportunity to truly get to know each other as siblings, not with me forced into the role of a mini version of my mother. We’ve been estranged for years now. I don’t know how much time will have to pass before we do not trigger each other. Lots, I’m assuming.