Freedom Beyond These Lips

Chapter 24: A Hundred and One

Nobody understands what great fear is instilled into a person until they've tried to save the life of someone who's nearly taken yours away. Becoming so terrified of yourself, that you do contemplate allowing that person to suffer, and die themselves. Leaving fate entirely within your grasp.

"Look after her, while I grab the phone!"

My grandmother shouted to me, those words still living in my head, wondering if I truly would be capable of something as inhumane, and unsettling as witnessing her stiff body convulse, and never dialing for help. Blood and foam dripping from the edges of her lips. I remember not crying. I remember concerning myself with the idea that I be content with her torment out of my path. A part of me wished that I'd grabbed my grandmothers wrist, but she'd never understand it from this perspective, and I was petrified that I would be the only person to wish death.

It wasn't possible for my siblings to understand this. They never lived with her for the amount of time I stayed, and even if those dreadful, hurtful words they'd said to me was true about

You don't know what it was like. You didn't have it that bad.

I knew that I stuck it out longer. It was hell, but I was no coward. Nobody could know the truth. Perhaps I am mentally ill, but she was both the reason I lived, and wanted to die.

I constantly thought to myself, what would I say at her funeral?

"She was.. my mother. She was nice when she didn't beat me to a pulp."

I still can't find the correct words, to this day. I worried that my unnatural lack of concern for societal norms regarding my mother's life would place me into a psych ward. Perhaps a popping of pills to numb them, but if I ever found it in me to forgive her, I feel the first step would for her to be pulled out of her own sheer denial, and apologize first for the trauma that she's scarred me with. Admit to me that she both drank, and did meth. Admit that she had sex for drugs. Abandoned her children when they needed her. Gotten arrested, and revoked their childhoods. 

Sheer pent up anger, and fuming questions with no real place to push these emotions, and as my prescribed therapist said

"Bottling it isn't good."

She was right, but now that I'd cancelled, it felt stupid to talk to a wall. I feared that Alex couldn't understand what it meant to go through what I did, and even if he were to listen, it was the same story he'd heard, and heard me scream about more than just a few times. It became exhausting. I admit, spilling your life to someone a hundred and one times is sad - but if they can learn something from it at least once, it is worth it. I have tried to open up my mind, and communicate more.

Learn from your mistakes. Don't do what I do. Don't wish death. Don't bottle it. Let it out, and tell your story - a hundred and one times. Yes, it will take time. A lot of time in fact, and try not to be frustrated, because it's a process unto itself, but it is your story, you write it, and those who wish not to listen are not the people who are not willing to learn from someone else's experience. It is not a competition. It is a story.