I’m broken. So fucking broken. Yet I keep laughing as I wipe every inch of my skin, starting with my hands.
“Oh, Delilah, you silly girl. You missed a spot.”
I scrub up my arms.
“You should be grateful he didn’t whip you this time.”
I move to my chest.
“Why are you making this a big deal?”
Red marks are left behind in the wake of my nails ripping through the cotton, so I grab a stack of wipes to prevent touching my own body before cleaning my face.
“You always have to be dramatic.”
I close my eyes to prevent seeing what’s on the wipe as I move back down my body with a clean one.
“If you weren’t such an insolent girl.”
A sob gets trapped in my throat as I sit up on my knees to wipe between my thighs. My hand trembles and I quickly grab as many wipes as I can reach.
“All daddies have to take care of their princesses.”
Tears drip down my cheeks onto my chest, making me flinch as I stretch my head back in an attempt to evade what I’m doing.
But it’s no use.
Nothing is when the reward of remembering my baby is punished by remembering what both of my parents have done. I’ve spent so long with a visceral hatred for my mother while refusing any memories about my father. I want to go back to that state. It’s fucked up, and I don’t know why my mind works the way it does, but I blame her more than him. I hate her more than him.
I hate her for not protecting me.
I hate her for protecting him.
I hate her for choosing to have children with a monster.
I hate her for not killing me when I was born.
I hate her for giving birth to me.
I hate her for not leaving me on a random doorstep instead of taking me home.
But most of all, I hate her for never caring about me beyond what I could do for her.
The hate I feel for my mother eclipses the hate I have for my father. With him, I want to make him hurt so he knows what it’s like to be overpowered. With my mother…I want to know why. Which is more dangerous than inflicting pain on her husband, because I know he’s a monster. I don’t want to understand him. With her, I do. I want to make sense of why she has only ever continuously hurt me, betrayed me, chosen a monster over her own children.
Only, if I understand evil, callousness, and abuse, then it means I’m the same as them.
My tears fall faster.
“If I’m like them…”
Then my baby is better off without me.
Maybe that’s how I’ll become a good parent. I’ll stay out of their life, allow them to live free from my shit, my mental issues, and my defective parents. By not being their mother, I’ll be a better mother. I’m doing the one thing my parents are incapable of: accepting my child does not belong to me.
I quickly pull the soft chiffon dress over my head. The thin straps slip off my shoulders due to the back dipping low as I stand, kicking the disgusting wipes away like my ankle isn’t on fire. Then, once I’m covered, I close my eyes, saying the first prayer in my life.
Hi, baby. You’ll never meet me, but I care about you so much. I don’t know your name so I’m going to call you baby. I hope that’s okay. I hope you have someone to call Mom, who reads you bedtime stories and checks your temperature by kissing your forehead. I don’t know if I’d be any good at that stuff. Well, not the stories, because I think I’d do a decent job of nailing the voices. But the care might not be something I’d know how to do. I hope you have a dad too. One who will protect you while you act all grumpy because you’re a teenager so you obviously don’t need protecting. Lastly, baby, I hope you have everything I never had and never would’ve been able to give you.
