Start Over

Sabine let out a breath as she sat across from her daughter, something weighing heavily on her mind.

She seemed to sort out her thoughts before she opened her mouth to speak, "I know that you won't speak to me after everything that's happened, and I'm trying to be ok with that," she clasped her hands in her lap, "But all I need right now is for you to listen."

She took a moment as the silence dragged on and gathered her courage.

"My mother wasn't a good mother." She chuckled a bit at her bluntness, having healed from the fact long ago, and carried on, "You know that- I've told you stories."

"She was too young when she had me- 17," the woman let out a sigh through her teeth. "She still had a lot of growing up to do and a baby- well, let's say a baby wasn't something she could afford to take care of, financially or emotionally, but she was a hard worker, and she found a way to support us all on her own. She worked in a cafè in the mornings and served drinks at a bar at night."

"While growing up, she worked me to the bone, making me help carry trays of bacon out to the tables as soon as I could walk and forcing me into a job as quickly as I was able to. All my checks went straight to a savings account that I couldn't access until I was 18. I was okay with that; of course, she would tell me that I'd be so rich I wouldn't have to work a day longer by the time I was that old. I liked to believe that," she paused and corrected herself, "Or I chose to believe it.

"Things went downhill from there. I started working harder when my mom lost her job at the bar, and we grew distant." Sabine wrung her hands together, feeling like she was reliving it all over again.

"I started to notice she would come back drunk in the middle of the night with random people that I would find rummaging through our fridge when I woke up the next morning." Sabine scoffed and adjusted her skirt, "God I hated it."

She bit her lip and pulled herself together.

"She would disappear for days at a time and brush me off every time I confronted her. We yelled at each other a lot and even physically fought once. She would always get mad at me like I was the one who wasn't pulling their weight. I would laugh, and scream at her, saying, 'You don't understand' and just go to my room and cry with fury.

"When I turned 18, I asked for my account so I could leave as soon as possible, and she just turned to me, with a cigarette in her mouth and a beer can in her hand and said 'What account'" Sabine couldn't even look up as she trembled, her fists clenching and unclenching.

"It turns out that my mother was using the money I was making on her shopping and alcohol." The older woman cleared her throat, "I was so angry in that moment that I didn't even move- I couldn't even move, and all I could think about was how she stole my childhood.

"She forced me into the world from her own mistakes, and she stole my childhood away from me." The grey eyed woman sunk as the weight on her shoulders grew, "She never took me to a park to play with kids when I was little; she didn't take me for ice cream if I did well in school, and she forced me in to work so early that I had no friends in high school because I was working too much to hang out with anybody.

"When I eventually left my mother, she pleaded with me to stay, asking if we could start over." A humorless laugh escaped her lips, "I thought, 'Start over?' what a selfish thing to say"

Sabine twiddled her thumb, almost thankful for the silence as she had no interruptions.

"I swore to myself that if I ever had a child, they would have the best childhood imaginable. So when I left her I worked, and I worked, and then I met your father, and we worked together, and we established ourselves enough to have you.