HE LOVED ME IN THE DARK

This is a letter to my mother Fonda Fisher

Dear Mom,

        First off, I want to say that I love you, because you are my mother and you gave me life.  You gave me a life that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

        For many, manyy years, I cried out to you for help, and love that only a mother could give her daughter.  But, I never received it.

        I feel like you never taught me how to love myself, r how to be a woman.  When I started my menstrual cycle in the fifth grade, I had to go to my teachers for help.  You didn't teach me or my sisters about condoms, sex, love, diseases, pregnancy, self esteem, or confidence.  By the time I got to the sixth grade, my breasts grew to be a 36D, and you never once brought me a bra.  I didn't get my first bra, until I was thirteen  and moved into a group home.

        I believe the only person you really, truely loved, was dad.  And even though I love my daddy to death, I feel like you only lived for him.  I remember a lot of times dad made fun of you.  He would call you fat, ugly, bald, and toothless.  Even though he would say it jokingly, you never spoke up for yourself.  Dad would even make big family decisions without talking to you first, and you never said anything.

        Tou never had confidence, or a voice.  Dad's voice was your voice!  Whatever dad says, goes.

        You used to gossip, and spread rumors about your teenaged daughter being a crackhead prostitute.  You even told people I had AIDS, and Herpes.  I could never believe why you would tell people I was smoking crack.  You woud be happy to know that, I have never in my life smoked ANNYTHING, other than weed.  True enough, I sold crack for a couple years, but didn't you and dad used to sell drugs?  Did you ever smoke it?  I don't know maybe you did, which is the reason why you made shit up about me.  I saw what crack did to those people, and I felt like I was already living in hell, but I never wanted to experience that kind of hell.

        The truth of the matter is, you never knew anything about me.  Sadly, you still don't know me, or care to know me.  You have no cue as to what my life has been like.  And the more you blamed me ass a teen for my actions, the more I hated you as a mother, because I felt it wass your fault as well as mine!  You were the only one that could have saved me, and protected me.  You never came!  And you're still not here.

        The funny part is, I am just like you.  Hell, I am you.  I let men dictate my life, treat me like shit outside, and behind closed doors.  I shamed myself, and let men humiliate me because, I , just like you, let them take my voice.  I let men belittle me, call me bitches and hoes, fat, ugly, made fun of my huge nose, and called me bald headed, just to name a few  And I took it.  I accepted it, and I lived by it.  These niggas would call me some of the same names you and dad used to call me.

        All of out life you et dad call your daughterbitches and hoes.  You never spoke up for us when dad would make rude sexual comments, or when he would teach our brothers how to call us the same thing. You didn't say shit when dad and your sons used to slap us on our ass nall day everyday, it became so bad, that we couldn't even bend over in our own home.  Me and my sisters were never protected.

        Out of five daughters, five of us were molested or raped.  But, none of the men responsible spent one day in jail, they are still roaming the streets til this day.  I always wanted to know, what made you this way?!  ZHoe can you bring ten children into this world, and just leave us to fend for ourselves?! I was thinking maybe your mother treated you that way, and maybe your mother's mother treated her that way.  Maybe I will never get the answer to those questions, all I know is the cycle stops here.  I don't want to be like you, I refuse to be like you! And instead of keeping things bottled upl and resorting to the things you did, I am goinmg to express how I feel to the whole world.

        I've spent all of my life being alone.  No one was ever there for me. I didn't have a voice or my own mind, and I let you, and every man in my life keep me in the dark, in a shell, that was my hell! But now, I've found my own light and I refuse to let anyone take it away.

        I did not write this letter to bash you, or make you out to be the bad persson, I just wanted to say the things that have been eating away my insides all of my life, with no back talk, and no arguments.  And this way you have no choice but to listen to everything I have to say.  I know you're not going to agree with me, and I know fo a fact you're going to callme a liar, but all the things I stated are true and as long as you and I know the real truth, that'd all that matters to me.

        In the beginning of my writing journey, I wanted to hurt your feelings, so you woud know how I've been feelings for the last 25 years.  But now, I'm writing to get my issues out in the open and begin my healing process.

        If I don't begin to heal somewhere, I believe my sadness and depression won't give me the strength to stay on this earth much longer.  And I need to be here to be the mother to my kids that you weren't to yours.

        I also have to forgive you, and everyone else I felt hurt me.  I can't hang on to things any longer.  I'm ready to begin a new life, with a new attitude.  I'm not sure if you and I will ever have a normal mother-daughter relationship, and I'm not sure if I want one, but I do forgive you and the pat is forgotten.  I believe I have grown into a beautiful, kind, intelligent, driven woman, and I still want to be so much more than that.  I have to be more than that for my daughter, and I am almost there, and I did it on my own.

I love you,

Jamie DeAnn