It’s only a new war I’ll be fighting.
Gracie Mae
It’s incredibly hard to watch someone you love slowly deteriorate.
Wasting away until all that is left of them is an empty vessel.
My mom used to be a beautiful woman. One with warm blood and porcelain skin. Eyes a vibrant shade of sky blue and a smile that could melt all hearts.
She was kind. Wore her heart on her sleeve and believed that people were meant to be good.
She was the best of our family. She was the best until the love of her life, my father, died unexpectedly when I was twelve and my brother was one.
The mother who I adored, the woman who I aspired to be slowly begun to change.
And with each day that passed I knew that Connor and I were never getting her back.
It took until I was fifteen, when I found my mother strung out on heroin on the couch with the needle still lodged in her bruised arm, that I came to realize we didn’t just lose my father that day, we lost our mom, too.
They used to call me little Viv.
You see, even when I was young, I was a spitting image of my mother.
The same voluminous sandy blonde hair that looks sun kissed. Our eyes the same vibrancy of sky blue. Skin as pale as a porcelain doll. Lips perfectly plump and a natural shade of nude-ish pink.
And as I grew older, well into my teens and now my early twenties I’m everything that my mom used to be.
Full of life, high spirited and vivacious.
There are times where she looks at me with those same eyes of mine but different now and it feels as if she’s staring at her past self.
Those days are the hardest.
Because when she looks at me and recognizes the woman she was before the drugs she resents me.
The same way when she finally takes the time to get a good look at Connor, she resents him for looking like the the man she loved who died, dad.
Neither of us can help how we look but we know every time the fog clears the sight of us brings her an immense pain.
“Is she passed out again?” Connor asks with a mouthful of his cereal. Once a week I go to the grocery store and when I do I spend the extra money to get him his favorite brand instead of the store brand. The family size Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries are all his.
I join him at the table with my two slices of toast and butter. “For now,” I reply before I take a bite. There’s a satisfying crunch when I bite into it.
Connor scoops another spoonful. “Hopefully she stays that way before we leave.” It’s a sad truth that I unfortunately agree with. When mom comes down from her high it’s not a pretty sight. I always try to keep Connor away from it by telling him togo in his room and locking the door. Mom has been known to be aggressive. Not just with her words but with her hands, too.
I would rather be the punching bag my mom uses than him.
“You ready for that math test today?” He’s in sixth grade but the boy is wicked smart with numbers and equations.
He gives me a closed lip smile because of his mouthful of cereal. After he’s done chewing, he tells me excitedly, “I’m so ready! It’s all too easy.”
The funny thing is he isn’t lying. Ms. Henderson, his math teacher, told me she would like to see him placed in Algebra 1 next school year. The standard level math student takes that class in ninth grade. Connor will be taking it in seventh.
That’s if his parent authorizes it and signs on the dotted line.
Thank god I’ve known how to forge mom’s signature for years.
I smile at him, one that is full of heart and lights my eyes. “Too easy or not I still hope you studied.”
