***Warning graphic content and triggers***
Looking back on it is hard to believe that I spent almost a whole year with Dad and Anne in Sydney before going back to visit my Mother after Christmas before the school year started. Dad and Anne were moving to Brisbane that Christmas and I remember driving into the night with them to Brisbane to stay with Anne's mum for the holidays. The biggest trigger for this memory for me is actually popcorn. Anne had brought me snacks for the road trip and the one that stood out was popcorn. I remember it being night time at a road stop sitting by a playground while Anne and Dad had a cigarette brake eating my popcorn and again feeling very special to be included and thought of.
Anne's family was probably the first glimpse I had of larger families that are mindful and engaged with each other. I spent a lot of time watching them interact and wanting desperately to be a part of the whole dynamic. Her mum was not a typical family matriarch of six children, she loved old Hollywood and embracing her youth no matter who she offended. She wore bright lipstick and danced in sequinned tops and I could never understand what compelled her. She didn't act like a TV mum, but she didn't act like my Mother either, she was another kind of mum but she still loved all her children, she was like an exotic shiny beetle.
For Christmas lunch she let me help her in the kitchen, making salad and my soon to be new favourite, caramel tart (which I discovered was less magical that I thought with canned filling which she told me was to be our secret). All around me people included me, paid attention to me, cared about my well being regardless of who I was just that child and should be looked after. This was the first time I can remember being so snaked by indifference to people caring about me that I couldn't relate. I really didn't understand why they were so nice, I felt off to one side no matter how many times they embraced me.
Then I returned to my Mother.
I flew by myself from Brisbane to Darwin. I think she was happy to see me but when I try to imagine that all I can think of is her being inconvenienced, but she probably cried. She cried at the appropriate times but as I got older all I could think was how exactly appropriate they were. I remember getting off the plane and into my Mother's car with the steel resolve that I was just visiting, I was going back to my Daddy. Oh how wrong I was.
This steel resolved I am sure my Mother saw and was threatened by. I didn't want to be with her, I liked Dad better. I was a child rejecting her and didn't want to stay. I don't remember how it started the very first all out assault but I know it hurt more than anything had ever hurt before. She wanted to know why I would leave her, why I didn't love her? She told me that I hated her and that she hated me even more. She screamed these things at me, I was her first born and I was leaving her!
As a child I didn't understand that she was manipulating me.
The pinnacle of this was when my Mother had retreated to her room crying on her bed that I didn't love her and her first born was leaving. She screamed that she couldn't even look at me and "how dare I!" (one of my Mother's favourites "how dare I/you").
I grovelled.
I begged.
I grovelled and begged for my Mother to take me back. That I did love her and I was so sorry that she felt this way. I crawled onto her bed and she pulled away as I sobbed for her to take me back. She shoved me off her telling me that I didn't love her and that I was a bad daughter. You may find it hard to understand why I wanted her to take me back, to not be mad at me and it all really comes down to this; she's my Mother. No matter what that's what she is and I still needed to think she loved me.
The more she pushed me away and screamed at me the more upset I got, the worse I felt. I can remember clearly being curled in a ball on the bed next to her crying so hard my chest hurt and I completely believed that my heart was breaking. I felt like I was dying. This is when she gave me the ultimatum (and it wouldn't be the last time) I had to choose between my Mother or my Dad.
I chose my Mother.
Why? Because I honestly and whole heartedly believed she couldn't survive without me. She seemed so so upset at the proposition of me leaving that she was this mess. Everyone [my Dad] had left her and now I was going to as well. My Dad always taught me that I should do the right thing no matter how hard it was, so I had to stay with my Mother to make sure she was going to be OK. My Dad had Anne but my Mother had no one, I couldn't do that to her.
Substitute Girl Card #8 The Saviour
I had to save my Mother from this horrible torment. A torment that was all my fault. While I was still entrapped in her dramatic whirlwind of torment she pounced. As I lay there crying in a ball she went and got the phone and told me if I was really going to stay with her I had to call and cancel my plane ticket back to my Dad. She menacingly hissed at me that I HAD to do it to PROVE I still loved her. So, in tears I called the airline to cancel my ticket. This phone call happened three times.
No sooner had I tearfully called the airline my Mother flew back into another rage. Why would she want a child like me? How dare I want to leave like this? I should leave and go back to my Father (she'd always spit that word "Father!"). Again she made me call the airline in tears, sobbing down the phone at the poor attendant and re-confirm my flight. Then she'd regain her composure of a cold manipulative bitch and tell me I didn't love her and was a bad daughter.
I begged again, I didn't want to be a bad daughter. I wanted and needed her to love me. And again she told me what I had to do, so for the third and final time I called the airline and cancelled the ticket. I think I fell asleep exhausted after that. The next day my Mother had me mail my ticket back to my Dad and as she said "that's the end of that".
Thing's settled back into the same routine of school and looking after my sister but with one small difference, my Mother was fired up now and there wasn't really any stopping her. She became capable of flying into these amazing rages and they became more frequent.
Two of those rages stood out year; the family incident and the kitchen incident.
The family incident started over my sister and I riding our bikes to our grandparents without permission. One afternoon Kory and I decided that with my Mother absent we would go and see if we could find our way to our grandparents house on our bikes, two suburbs over. As a child it seemed like a long way but in reality it was only 2.8 km so its fair to say we likely only took 30 mins to get there. To us it seemed a grand adventure and we got to see our Nana and Poppa but to my Mother who as you'd probably expect wasn't on good terms with them and it was a huge betrayal.
Once home again with my Mother she started screaming at me;
"How dare you go to MY parents house! How dare you take your sister there!"
Now I would like to take a quick time out to make a note that my grandparents are wonderful, supportive and caring people who tried to help in anyway they could. My Nana often came over to help me with my sister when my Mother disappeared. They had to walk a fine line not to provoke my Mother and help where they could. For her own reasons my Mother hated them, from my understanding it was that they didn't validate her dramatic streak that was evident even when she was a child.
My Mother stood at my bedroom door as I pleaded with her that I didn't mean to upset her and I did love her. She screamed that she hated me, that she didn't want to be my Mother. She screamed that I didn't deserve her as she ripped my pictures from my bedroom walls. She pulled my bookcase that sat on my large desk down, smashing the porcelain figurines. These were from when I was born and I'd received for my following birthdays. My most memorable one was a pink teddy bear that was a vase my Mother had gotten with flowers in it at my birth.
As they smashed my heart sunk and the dark resolve came over me that would become more frequent as I grew up. She proceeded to make her way through my room tipping up furniture and ripping things as she found them. I remember watching her try to flip the mattress from my bed and not getting the right leverage as it slid off my bed. In frustration she stormed out to return a split second later with a large multi photo frame full of family pictures and she threw it down on my bedroom floor.
"I don't even want to be part of this family!" she screamed insolently.
I felt numb. My Mother stormed off to her room and I started picking up the pieces of my bedroom. My sister Kory had watched from her bedroom door this whole time, she knew better than to make an appearance. As always I cleaned up after my Mother and by the next day it was as if nothing had even happened. I hang the photo frame back up without the glass and only I noticed the empty spaces in my room where my possessions had been destroyed.
The next incident was the kitchen incident. I don't remember what triggered this particular time. Our house had a kind of nook kitchen. It had an arch door way that lead into a walled off alcove that contained the whole kitchen. It wasn't small but there was only one way in and out and the benches lined the kitchen walls. My Mother was screaming about my being an ungrateful child and had cornered me in the kitchen. She then started smashing plates and glasses at my feet on the kitchen tiles. I lifted myself onto the bench to escape the shards as she smashed what seemed like everything breakable onto the floor in front of me.
When she ran out of things to smash she paced in front of the door way, screaming at me about what I had made her do. Then she told me to go to my room, there was no way out of the kitchen then over the shards of broken porcelain and glass and I wasn't wearing any shoes. I said this to my Mother and she just screamed louder for me to go to my room, so I walked over it all, barefooted and numb.
I sat on my bed and picked the shards from my feet as I listened to my Mother carry on outside my room, eventually it went quiet. So I came out to clean up, my Mother was in her room and I had almost finished cleaning up the kitchen when she came out again screaming at me for leaving my room and making such a mess. I think this was the first time she really started hitting me. As I tried to get passed her to take out the rubbish she smacked me over the back of the head and I stumbled out the front door. I remember blinking away tears as I put the bags in the bin and when to sit in the front garden away from the house and contemplate what I could've done for my Mother to break everything like that.
And in my Mother's true style as it got dark she called me to come inside for dinner like nothing had happened. She was so good at that, switching back to the mildly indifferent woman who just happened to live in the same house as me. We seemed to be sliding into the situation where if there wasn't yelling we just existed together.
Please note Substitute Girl has moved to a more mobile friendly site www.substitutegirl.com head over and sign up to the mailing list and follow the articles there ~SubstituteGirl
