FCYU-Feature Story

Leaving Her Behind
I love my mom, but I can’t live with her

By Tamara

(Names have been changed.)

My hands began to tremble as I reached for the telephone, knowing it was time to reveal to my mother the troubles that had been on my mind for quite some time now. 1-7-1-8... For each number I dialed, my heart skipped 10 beats. Then the phone began to ring.

All the thoughts in my head were tangled like a rope. “Should I say hello Mother, or hello Mommy? Should I just get straight to the point? Maybe I should just hang up now.”

After a few rings, she finally picked up.

“Hello?”

My words were caught in my throat and it didn’t seem like they’d be coming out anytime soon.

“Ummm, Mommy?”

“Yes?” she said.

“It’s Tamara, and I have something to tell you.” My voice had already begun to wither away.

“What’s the matter, what is it?” she asked with concern in her voice.

“I don’t want to come back home, and neither does Tanya. It’s not that we don’t love you, it’s just that we’d feel better if we stayed with Tasha. Please don’t be mad.”

There was a brief silence. Then my mother spoke.

“No, it’s OK, I understand. I know that I can’t provide you guys with everything you need right now, and Tasha is just doing a better job than I can. Trust me, I’m not upset. It’s fine.”

“OK,” I said, feeling somewhat relieved. We exchanged I love you’s and hung up, but afterward I kept replaying the conversation in my head, thinking: If everything is fine, then why do I feel so bad?

Cruel Words

Telling my mother I wasn’t planning on coming back home to her was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’d recently moved in with my 22-year-old sister, Tasha, because my mother had started using drugs. It wasn’t the first time.

When I was 2, my brothers and sisters and I were placed in foster care because of her drug use. She got clean and regained custody of us four years later. I remember being so excited about going home. All I wanted was to be with my mother.

After we moved back home, my mom stayed clean for 10 years. But that didn’t mean things were good. My mother was always yelling, making mountains out of molehills. She cursed at me every day, saying things so cruel that sometimes I hated ever having been born.

I tuned her out most of the time. I didn’t want to believe that those words were coming from my mother’s mouth.

Other times I thought that by yelling back or ignoring her I could get across that I was tired of being disrespected and never being heard. But that didn’t work.

A Roller Coaster

Still, she was my mother, and we had our good days. If I was feeling sad, she would say things to make me feel better. Sometimes we would just sit and talk about any and everything that was on our minds (although if I told her something in confidence she’d sometimes use it against me later). Our relationship was a roller coaster. But I’d been on the ride for so long that getting off wasn’t even an option.

Then, last summer, things escalated. I’d started seeing drastic changes in my mother, physically and emotionally. She was going from job to job, she was losing a lot of weight, there was never any food, and the arguments we had became way more intense, and more violent. Once she slammed my head against a mirror, angry that I’d told Tasha how she’d blown the money meant to pay for our brother’s 8th grade graduation.

All these things were major clues to my mother’s drug addiction, but I didn’t want to believe she was at it again. I kept hoping things would get better, until one huge incident put the icing on the cake.

Suspicion

It was my birthday, and Tasha had just given me $100 as a present. My special day was going perfectly. I went to the movies with my sister, and all my friends had shown major love.

As I was getting ready to go to bed, my mother came up to me with a childish innocence to her voice, asking how much money Tasha had given me. Instantly I felt my blood temperature rising. “I know she is not about to ask me what I think she’s about to ask me!” I thought.

“$100, why?”

“$100? Wow, that’s a lot of money!”

“Yes, I guess so,” I said with apathy in my voice.

“So can I ask you for a favor?”

“What do you want?” I replied warily.

“Can I borrow some money so I can buy a Metrocard to go to work tomorrow?”

I was outraged. “I can’t believe she even has the audacity to ask me for money,” I thought. “She hasn’t even been to work in like 50 million years.”

I was so angry I blurted out my thoughts. My mom gave me a look of disappointment.

“Wow, Mara, so it’s like that?” she said. “But I’m your mother. Please?”

She repeated her plea again and again, until I finally gave in and handed her $10.

No More Denial

When I woke up the next morning, a voice in my head kept urging me to check my purse where I’d left the rest of my $100. I looked inside. Only $8 remained.

A wave of panic came over me. “What the hell? Where’s my money?” I woke up Tanya, my other sister, and told her what I’d discovered.

For a short second our eyes connected, and I could tell she was thinking exactly what I was feeling.

“I think Mommy took it,” she said, without hesitation.

I wanted to give my mother the benefit of the doubt. But when we couldn’t find the money anywhere, Tanya and I went to confront her.

“Mom…” I began to say, but Tanya immediately cut me off.

“Mara’s money is missing, do you know where it is?”

“What?!” my mother yelled, as if she felt disrespected. “Do you think I took it?”

“Yes,” my sister and I said simultaneously.

“Well, did you?” I asked. At this point it felt as though my body was there, but my mind was frozen solid, making it harder for me to say all the things I wanted to.

She kept denying it, but she wouldn’t look me in my eyes, not even once. She had liar written all over her face.

I Couldn’t Ignore It

I wasn’t even angry, just disgusted that she could lower herself to such a level. And that’s when I realized I’d been blind. For the past 10 years I’d been trying not to think the worst about my mother, but I couldn’t ignore what I was seeing right in front of me.

And now she had stolen from me, too! Her daughter, her flesh and blood. At least I’d thought that she was above that. I felt as though she’d let me down in the worst way possible.

My heart sank. Tanya and I decided to go stay with our oldest sister Tasha, who’d moved out of mom’s house about 6 months earlier. Tasha’s house was the one place where we knew we’d be welcomed at any time. I didn’t think then about how long I wanted to stay. I just knew I had to get out of my mother’s house fast.

A Haven

“You guys have to sleep in the living room, because I don’t have enough space, OK?” Tasha said, after we told her what happened.

I looked around the cozy, half-lit room with eggshell-colored walls. The living room was bare because my sister had just recently moved in; there was nothing but the floor and the fancy curtains she’d bought to “spruce up the place.” It was different, but I liked it.

“This is fine,” I said calmly.

Addicted to Chaos

That night, while I lay on my “bed,” (a bunch of quilts on top of quilts) I couldn’t get to sleep. I tossed and turned, listening to the quiet. I thought to myself, “It’s so quiet. No Mommy arguing with her girlfriend, no Mommy yelling at Tanya, no nothing. It’s too quiet.”

That’s when it hit me: I had become so used to the fighting and screaming that I had become “addicted,” in a sense. I needed to hear all the chaos just to get to sleep!

“I have been in the middle of all this commotion entirely too long,” I thought. “If it has gotten this bad, maybe I shouldn’t go home.”

This was my mother’s second time using drugs, I reasoned. So even if she got clean, who was to say she’d stay clean? And even if she did, would we still argue as much as we used to? Would I be able to fully forgive her?

Worse Than Ever

A few days later, Tasha ran into our mother on the street. She told us our mother had on some sneakers that were falling apart, her hair was ragged and her skin looked bad. She hadn’t been trying to get herself together as I’d hoped; in fact, she was looking worse than ever.

I remember the look on Tasha’s face as she said this. It wasn’t hurt, sadness, or even anger. She just looked discouraged. I took that day as a sign. To me it truly proved that my mother wasn’t ready to be a fit parent again.

Thinking of My Future

I imagined going home, waiting for my mother to get herself together. What if she couldn’t? What if staying with her began interfering with my own life plans? In three years I was going to be 18, and probably already in college. If I went into foster care again, my world would go topsy-turvy again. That would certainly affect my schoolwork, and maybe even my mental health.

I didn’t want to hurt my mother, but I felt like staying with Tasha long-term was the only way for me to be in control of all aspects of my life.

For the next couple of days, all I could think was “I don’t want to go home, I don’t want to go home.” But I had to figure out how to tell Tasha. Would she let me stay? Before I took that huge risk, I talked to Tanya. She told me she didn’t want to go home, either.

When we told Tasha how we felt, her only response was, “Well, if you don’t want to go home, then I’m not going to make you.”

It Couldn’t Continue

A couple of days later, we all went to the social services office so that we would legally be able to stay with Tasha while she tried to get temporary custody. From there we had a month of court dates, only two of which my mother showed up for.

Both times, my mother was enraged, and it was almost impossible to talk to her.

After a couple of weeks, we started having supervised visits with her at the agency. My mother was like another person during these visits. She’d talk about how she couldn’t wait for us to come home, and how everything was going to be different. I didn’t believe her anymore, and I didn’t want to let her continue this wishful thinking. I knew I had to tell her soon, but I just couldn’t do it face to face. That’s why I called her.

After I’d hung up the phone with my mother, I just lay down feeling overwhelmed with worry. I should’ve been relieved, but I felt terrible, because I knew that in some way I was breaking my mother’s heart. But I also I knew that staying with Tasha was the best thing for me.

Love-Hate Relationship

It’s been about two months now since I made that call to my mother, and our relationship has become a love-hate type of thing. Sometimes we still laugh together, but most of the time we just can’t stand to be around one another. There’s a lot of screaming and yelling, and sometimes we both say things we don’t mean, like “I hate you,” or “You’re the worst person in the world.” We apologize later, but I feel like she’s punishing me for refusing to live with her.

Now that Tanya and I are living permanently with Tasha, my mother is always making smart remarks that get me upset. She says things like, “This is all about me and Travis (my brother) now,” since Travis is the only child living with her now.

She even gave Travis our old room, and when we asked her why, she replied, “Why do you two care anyway, you guys aren’t even coming home.” When she said that, I felt like she didn’t care about me anymore and that hurt. It was like she was cutting me out of her life, and so I started to do the same.

Safe and Wanted

Living with Tasha is still great. Of course there are times when she makes me angry, and we have our disagreements, but that’s part of every sibling relationship. I’ve had to make some adjustments, too, because she’s not only my sister but my legal guardian. That means I have to listen to the things she tells me. It gets annoying sometimes, but it’s worth it.

Unlike living with my mom, Tasha actually takes the time to listen to me, treats me with respect and values my opinion. She is the only person I completely trust. She makes me feel safe and wanted.

Not Who I Wanted to Be

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how my relationship with my mother has affected my relationships with other people in my life. It’s hard for me to trust even my closest friends. Even trying to tell someone that I love them is hard for me. I’ve barricaded myself against the hurt, pain, and disappointment, but this isn’t the kind of person I want to continue to be.

Right now, I can’t really see myself making amends with my mother. I’m at a point in my life where I am learning how to get rid of the people I don’t really need, and how to cherish the ones I do.

I used to think that because someone is family you need them in your life, but now I see that that isn’t always the case. At times, family can hurt you the most. Sometimes, when the negativity becomes so monotonous, you just have to learn how to walk away.