The Devil and I.

Before I Lost Myself.

In the summer of 2015 I lost my mother. I don't mean she wandered off in a super market or she disowned me, I mean she died. My mother wasn't always the most easiest to deal with, we argued a lot towards the end. I was 18 and still living at home; sometimes mother loved having me at home, other times we just rubbed each other up the wrong way. After my dad left to go live with his new girlfriend, my mother saw me as an equal meaning she put all the emotional troubles she had into my head. I was only 12, I had lost my dad to another woman. I didn't understand why to me we was the perfect family, I thought my dad loved us both and when he left I felt like I wasn't good enough to be his daughter, I wasn't good enough to earn his love. When I was lying in my room listening to my mother break her heart in her room I cursed my dad for leaving and even though he made no attempt to see me while I was growing up I always told my mother I would never leave her to see him. She had stayed and loved me, he hadn't. He had his head turned by a younger model and left me and mother to fend for ourselves. I hated him. I still do.
The day before she died, we fought over what to have for tea. A very trivial thing and I still regret not giving in to her and making her the lasagna she used to make for me but at the time I didn't want to bake it so we had a microwave meal instead. It was such a little thing but as soon as I tried to wake her the next day I immediately regretted not making it for her. The doctors told me she had just died, natural causes they said, natural causes at 49 that doesn't seem right.
I remember coming home in a state of shock and curling up on her bed, the flowery wallpaper and the pale blue carpet, this is where she died. This is where a part of me died too. No matter how much I hated my dad for leaving her, I hated myself more for not being kinder to her. I hated myself for not giving her that stupid lasagna! That night I lay on her bed crying myself to sleep wishing I could take back every cross and mean word I said to my mother, wishing I had made her feel loved.
At her funeral all the family members we hadn't seen for years came crawling out of the woodwork; "Oh, Emily I'm so sorry about your mother", "how did she died?", "she was so young". After a while I just stopped listening. Nothing they said would make me feel better. Nothing they said would bring my mother back. They voices were so piercing to my eardrums I couldn't take much more. I must say no I am so ashamed of what I did but at the time I wasn't thinking rationally I was thinking on my grief. I stood up staring at all the members of this family who I haven't seen since before me and mother were abandoned by my father and in an eerily calm voice i said " who the fuck do you think you are? Where were you all when she was alive? When she had no money? When all she needed was a friend? Shall I tell you who was there? Me, I was. Just me. She needed you all when she was alive but now she is dead you all come crawling? Get fucked". After that little outburst I grabbed all my stuff and left to go home where I belonged.