There was a stain on the living room ceiling. It was yellowish brown and looked like it was sticky.
My mom was sure that it was due to her smoking cigarettes & weed right below it 24/7. My mom wanted that damn stain gone! My Dad brought the tall ladder up from the basement storage area like she asked him to.
In my innocence I figured she'd climb up the ladder and clean the stain.
She didn't though!
I was small and young and didn't know anything about climbing tall ladders or cleaning stains.
But I was chosen by my mother to be the one who completed the task. I was afraid of the ladder. I was great at climbing fences & trees but a ladder??? What are you supposed to hold onto once you're at the top?!?!?!
I was SCARED!!!
She armed me with an old toothbrush, a spray bottle and a rag. She was too heavy. She didn't believe that the ladder would hold her.
"Spray it good! Till it drips"!
So I climbed...
I sprayed.
The yellowish brown stain dripped down...
Onto my head.
My face.
The floor.
"SCRUB IT!"
"Use the toothbrush and PUSH HARD"
The stain dripped gross yellowish brown liquid but didn't budge from the ceiling.
"PUSH HARDER!!!"
But I was afraid of falling and I couldn't reach well! No excuses though.
Just SCRUB!!!
"PUT SOME ELBOW GREASE INTO IT!!!"
?????
I don't know what that is 😕
So I cry 😭
"I'm trying"
She calls me a baby for crying.
Why can't I ever just help her without having trouble?
Why can't I just be a big girl?
Scrub all the stains before she even sees them!
Be her hero and savior 🥰
My tears leaked out of my frustration at being small and incapable.
The stain stayed.
For all the years I lived in that apartment with my parents.
Always reminding me that I was not her hero.
Reminding me that I could not make her happy 😕
I had failed.
But I was the only one to even try!
And I was just a small girl.
I tried not to look up at the reminder of my failure...
It made my stomach hurt!
To my mom that stain was proof that she couldn't count on me.
After that I knew what "elbow grease" was!
It meant I better scrub harder!
Her cigarette stain on the ceiling wasn't her only mess.
She made a mess of herself too.
Her relationships.
Our home.
Her body.
Her mind....
And I couldn't clean up any of them 💔
No matter how hard I tried out how desperately I wanted to.
But I still tried.
YOU ARE READING
This is my truth
Non-FictionMy life has been an intense journey from a little girl who was beaten down and abused into believing that she was worthless, to a woman at 43 years of age who is still desperately searching for who she truly is. I found her though. I did. And she wr...
