Ugly words issued
Should stand alone unanswered
Revealing their shame
(bad Haiku #135)
When somebody says something so hateful and hurtful to you, something that just cuts you to the core, how do you get over it? Are you supposed to get over it, or is it meant to follow you around for life, like a bad tattoo?
When I was about five, my mother told me I wasn't her child. That somehow at the hospital she got a changeling, and had remembered being told in the delivery room she had had a boy. Occasionally, she'd remind me of this, usually at some holiday like my birthday or Christmas. I never met my father. They were divorced when I was 2, so there was no one from whom I could demand answers. How cruel. This began when I was 5 and it still hurts me.
I lived with my grandparents from the time I was a new baby until my grandpa died and she was forced to come and take me away. She got a new husband, and a year later, when I was ten, I got a new brother.
For awhile when I was a teenager it stopped, but then when my brother was in his teens, she related the changeling story to him, and it started all over again. In fact, it never ended until she died, in 2003. Never mind that I looked just like one of the family - I've got their nose and eyes. Never mind that my father was a 6'5" redhead. I've got his hair and smile and height--I know this from photographs. According to her I was a changeling. Period.
She never told me she loved me. On her death bed I tried to tell her I loved her, and with her dying breath she told me, "Shut up and don't get sappy."
To this day it breaks my heart, and there is no way I know to fix it. Anyone who might once have given a shit is dead. Except me - the only one that matters.
No comments:
Post a Comment