The Maternal Instinct : A Narrative

Me

At the age of thirteen I started doing odd jobs to try and earn money for food. My mother was gone, and I wasn't sure as to where she was or how long she would be absent. She left for extended amounts of time and kept little contact with me, often leaving me at the house alone with little to no food. I learned how to supply food for myself and my animals with an acute amount of money. I can sufficiently budget and coupon my way through summers and the school years. I would illegally drive myself to where ever I needed to go to make money. After I turned fifteen I became so self sustainable that I was able to hold dinner parties for my friends. I would go grocery shopping that day, come home, cook dinner and a desert, then everyone would come over to eat and chat about their week at school/work. I was also at many points helping to pay or fully paying the electric bill as well as other bills. My mother would call me and say, "Hey the electric is going to be cut off today so I need you to go pay for it. You have to do it before one though because that's when they're going to shut it off." I usually got this phone call around noon. I also paid for the insurance on both of our vehicles. During the summer, once I had a steady job, my paycheck was anywhere from two hundred to four hundred dollars. I get paid twice a month, once on the 15th and the other usually the 29th or 30th of said month. A little around one hundred went to insurance plus whatever fees had to go into fixing my car since it was constantly breaking down, two hundred usually went into buying groceries and toiletries, then whatever may have been left over (had it not been stolen out of my wallet by her) went to gas and fixing things around the house. If I did have a smaller paycheck I went back to doing odd jobs such as cleaning houses, working at marinas, etc. That's how I survived. I was a full functioning adult at the age of fifteen.

Mentally, over the years, I haven't done quite as well as I should be. At one point I attempted suicide, because of my mother calling me an accident and constantly blaming me for her missing out on life. I was put into counseling in the eighth grade and stayed in until my junior year of high school. I was on antidepressants as well as anxiety medication on and off most of my teenage life. I feel like I wouldn't have had as many issues if she would have been around to help me cope. However, I do find her bipolar, a pathological liar, neglectful, and mentally unfit to raise a child. So truthfully, the only way I could have truly been helped would be to have a different mother.