Messy by Choice

Mess 26 (Ally)

Mom's house is still the one I grew up in. It's so unassuming from the outside. A single-family home with timeless character and traditional trauma. She kept it in the divorce. I thought maybe she'd use its appreciating value and move somewhere else given how many scars were trapped in these walls. Festering. Like black mold. Maybe only I could feel their effects though. Even years after moving out. But black mold toxicity had a detox period. But you could only heal if you stopped breathing in the toxins.

Like my sister had figured out years ago. She had fled as soon as she could. For an international college in Asia because she had to get as far away as possible from this place. She left like dad did. Maybe he thought that might make things better for everyone, but it made my mom a thousand times worse in her treatment and resentment of her daughters. Because she couldn't punish him for leaving but she could punish the ones who stayed. We were in her reach. Even when I thought I was out of her reach, I still was, still in the abyss.

When I knock on the door, she answers and her eyes slant to daggers. "What are you doing here?"

"Ally! Hi!" Aunt Gracie says from inside. They must have been having a late lunch. They usually didn't hang out too much, but Aunt Gracie has been making a real effort to form a relationship with mom in the recent years after she pulled away from the family.

"Hey, Aunt Gracie," I say not as enthusiastically. "Can me and mom talk?"

Aunt Gracie is quick to comply, but mom stops her. "No." She's looking at Vee with skeptical hate like we're going to outnumber and team up against her. "Say what you want here."

Vee stays close behind me silent in her support that still speaks 'I'm here with you. You don't have to brace this alone anymore.'

"Here," I say, handing over the check. It was what my dad gave to me before he left right before my second  year of high school. A lump sum of 25,000 for college. It was his goodbye present. I didn't know it was then, and I couldn't bring myself to ever touch the money. She looks down at it with disgusted eyes.

"What is that?"

"The money you used to put me through college."

She sneers her nose but takes it. Like she's accepting trash from the mouth of a dirty stray dog.

"I want you to take this and I want you to not think of me as your daughter anymore."

She slaps me.

"What the hell are you doing here, Alexandra?" she says with rage shredding every syllable.

I hold my cheek. Wow it stings. And after a pause it makes me laugh. "I always knew you were holding back from doing that," I say, a relief high in my voice. "That you always wanted too and were a string away from snapping and doing it." I lower my hand, so she's forced to see the red mark of her fingers against my skin. And from this moment on I'll never have the anxiety of waiting for her to do it again, because she'll never have the opportunity too.

"You're the most dramatic self-centered insensitive bitch of a daughter anyone could have!" The venom in my mom's eyes and voice used to kill me. Not even in the words but facing the fact she wanted to hurt me when all I wanted was to do enough to deserve her love. "It's never a thank you or an appreciation of what I've done for you! It's all about you and your wants! A self-pitying little artist that is going to paint to the world that I'm the greatest bad in the entirety of it! Well paint away because it's not like you'll be going anywhere. No one's going to take notice of you. You don't have the talent, certainly not the intelligence! I should have slapped your bad attitude and delusions out of you years ago!"

Everything she tries to hurt me with doesn't. It's everything I figured she thought about me anyways, hearing her say it, is a relief. A weight of my shoulders because now I don't have to justify why being around her makes me feel so small. Now I can let her go. I just stare at her, and I'm detached, unaffected, truly fine. Not riled to emotions. She has never looked more outraged in her life than to see me calm in face of her exploding. So, she works hard at getting me to explode like her. To break down in her emotions not mine.

"I gave you everything! I gave you a home!"

"No," I cut in calmly but firmly. "You gave me a place to stay. "And when you wanted me gone you made sure I knew this was your home and only yours. Not mine. Homes are where you feel safe to come back too. Not doors you pause to open because you're not sure the person behind isn't going to throw it back in your face because they decided to make you the outlet for all their issues."

She changes topics. Goes for a different angle in her attempt to break her poison into me. "This is because you blame me for your father! You always have! But you don't know what that man put me through! Leaving me to raise two daughters! All by myself!"

She opens her mouth to spew more hate and blame. I for the first time in my life don't let her. "You don't know what you put me through." Mom goes quiet. Only because she's caught off guard since it's the first time in my life, I've been able to face her outlashing with a serious response of my true feelings.

"You're in a cage when you're a kid. At the complete control of whatever parent, you happen to be born to. I couldn't leave, and you treated me however you wanted because you knew I couldn't. And when dad left you tried everything you possibly could to get me out too. And I stayed because I knew you were suffering. I thought one day you might see that. See how all I wanted to do was help you. But what kind of parent does that to a kid? Why was I responsible for your emotions? And punished for them too? I didn't even have time to figure mine out because I had to tiptoe around your everyone."

Her eyes are still enraged even with her shock. I know they won't settle no matter what I say or reveal. But I'm not doing this so she'll change, I'm doing it so I finally can get rid of the traces of her still in ruining me.

"You'll be crawling back to me in a year when you're a failing artist with a hundred thousand dollars in student debt you can't pay off!"

"That's not your problem to think about anymore," I reply, my voice soft from raw emotion but steady as I speak my final peace. "I'm not your problem. I won't ever come to you again. And I won't speak to you again after this. I didn't come here to fight or get an apology. I came because I'm trying not to become how you made me feel my entire life."

Her eyes roll and she uses every muscle of her face to sneer her hate me. "Pray tell what is that, Ally?"

I don't pause or chock over the word. It comes out as the fact it is. "Unlovable."

Mom goes blanche white. But fails to come up with anything else as her sneering face doesn't unfix itself. I guess maybe we leave things at that then.

Vee helps me home. She thinks I'll cry and break down, but I feel rebuilt. I feel unloaded, I still cry. Tears of joy or just tears. I'm not sure. I just for the first time in a long time just allow real raw emotion to wash over me. No qualifying or quashing or diminishing them. It feels like I should be broken. But I feel light and put back together. Like a freshly formed person.