Dramamine Queen

There are things I know about my mother that explain her. Explain my upbringing. Things that make it easier for me to understand why she might be the way she is. Things she should have gotten help with things she should have been medicated for.

The details of her own upbringing are at best hazy. She is one of 12, the 3rd or 4th born. Her mother gave her to her grandparents who raised her. I’m unsure why, I have a theory it was for post partum depression, since it runs in the family but, it could have been anything. My mother was raised until she was 5 by her grandparents who lived next door. Then her mother wanted her back. So she went back to a mother she didn’t know. A bond had never formed and never would.

She lived on a farm. She did chores. She took care of smaller children. She went to Catholic church and was schooled by nuns. She helped make moonshine and homemade wine.

She became an alcoholic by the time she was 15. She told me this once while she was lying on the sofa wasted. 

She doesn’t remember her life from the ages of 10 to 15. She has blacked it out from her memory. She says she can only remember a few things. Making moonshine with her brothers. Swiming in the ocean. Some bits from school.  Her cousins were all sexually abused by her Uncle, a man that was always around. Her sisters believe that my mom was too.

She left home when she turned 15. Hitch hiking across the country. She met her best friend who is a few years older than her. 

She travelled with bikers. She worked odd jobs.  She did drugs. She shacked up with a man. Who she caught in bed with another girl and beat him with a baseball bat.

Eventually she met my father. Two months later she was pregnant with me. Three months after I was born they got married.

She got pregnant again sometime later. That sister died inside her just before her due date. Once when she was high she told me that after that she lost her mind. I don’t blame her.

When I was 5 my sister was born. My mother always had her in lots of layers. She was sweaty all the time. Then she got pneumonia when she was 2 months old. She almost died.

My sister turned into a monster of a toddler. My mother cannot recall this either. My dad and I used to joke that if anyone ever kidnapped my sister they would pay us to take her back.  It was awful. My mother retreated to the sofa and slept. Which is how my sister remembers her youth.

Now she starves herself. Her never ending quest to stay young or perhaps to control something. She eats a tiny amount for show or mashes her food around on her plate. She smokes a lot of pot every day. Self medication.

These are all the things I know. She has had a rough life. A life that she has never properly dealt with. Which makes me sad. She could have at least tried. Instead she spends her life constantly lying to herself and everyone around her.

All these things make me understand.