The human mind is something I'll never understand. It compells us to cry and laugh and love and fear. It tells us that we should preserve our lives and that we should conform to the society around us. It's the place where all our thoughts and dreams and memories are stored. In it lies our biggest fears and our darkest secrets. And then you die.
And it's all just gone.
Depressing right?
Growing up I had the privelage of never losing someone close to me, at least not to death. I would hear of friends losing their grandparents or their uncles or someone close to them and in my mind that never made sense to me. Somehow the thought of just having someone leave the world didn't click in my mind.
Don't get me wrong I had my fair share of people leaving my life. When I was eleven I came home to an eerily silent house. After coming across my mother head down in silence on the kitchen table even young me knew something was wrong. It wasn't until she lifted herself up to acknowledge me with bloodshot eyes and shaking hands did I realize just how serious it was.
That night was spent in my mother's room wrapped in her arms. Even as a young kid she never talked down to me or made me feel naieve or dumb. She explained things to me as if I were her equal always telling me I had an old soul. So it was no shock to me when she so openly discussed that my father had decided to leave and that he wouldn't be living with us anymore. She told me how he was going to live his own life and that we would be better off without him. My mother and father had never had the best relationship and endless nights of yelling and glass shattering let me know that.
Even after hearing all of what she had to say I didn't say a word. I didn't even shed one tear. I just layed there and let her run her fingers through my hair, knowing she would need me to be strong for her. I knew I was the only family she had and she was the only family for me. So that night after she was done we were there for each other. We didn't cry, we didn't talk, we were just there.
From that day on me and my mother lived our life without help from anyone. Every morning I would wake to the smell of eggs and bacon and pancakes. We would eat breakfast together and she would sip her coffee and twirl her curls around her fingers while getting lost in a book. I swear I never saw someone read as much as that women. She would always have a highlighter right next to her side and when she came across a part that she related to or just a sentence she found beautiful she would highlight it and then place the marker back on the table. One time I asked her why she did this and she explained to me that one day she'd want to write a memoir of her life and thought she could use these books as inpiration.
My mother was the most amazing women I knew. She had dark brown hair that coiled in messy, irregular curls down to her mid back. Although her face was plain it was something about her eyes that drew people in. The were brown but with flakes of emerald and gold scattered around. She had a simple style. She never needed to wear over embelished clothes to light up a room. She could simply stroll into an event wearing a plain black dress and still have men gape at her. She claimed it was because they wanted nothing but physical attraction from women but I really knew it was because .of her effortless beauty that she was unaware of.
I often found my self looking in the mirror wondering what I would look like at her age. It was obvious that I was her daughter by how we both looked alike but I couldn't help but notice how different I was from her. My hair did not have the bounce that hers did. It was a light shade of brown and fell in loose, limp waves past my shoulders. And I didn't have gold specks floating around in my eyes. Just simple green ones. And I couldn't remeber the last time a boy in my class had ever looked my way.
Education was another thing we differed in. Throughout high school she was smart and popular. She got amazing grades and got accepted into some of the best colleges. However, when she met my father and had me she decided it would be better not to go. Me? I could've cared less about school. I didn't find any of my classes or for that matter, any of my classmates, that interesting. I mostly kept to myself and just managed to pass. It wasn't like I was some rebel or anything. I got mostly B's and C's. I never spoke out or disrespected anyone I just never really cared about school.
