I don’t want it to be gone. My mom is the only thing left of my life. That life, the one we lived before this normal one will die with her. All the pictures are gone. I can’t look through a box of old pictures and see one of their faces in a group of people smoking cigarettes or with an arm around me anymore. They were proof that it was real. Those people existed. The faces and places that get fuzzy in my mind were real. They were real and I was really there with them. The rest could be picked apart, disproved but not that.
My mom never acknowledged it. But the way she use to look at me, she knew. There was this sad fear in her eyes if we looked at each other for too long. It was wild and searching and almost angry. Maybe I’m assigning too much to it.
She was my reality. She looked away and pretended not to see things happening. But I can always remember her in the aftermath. Her telling me to take a hot bath to smooth my privates, asking me if someone had hurt me after she sent me there to be hurt, her coldness, yelling at my manipulative tears, her avoiding me and not knowing why I’ve always been so mean. I remember them in the context of her. HER friends, HER boyfriends, HER taking us there, HER sexy clothes, HER feelings.
Without her I won’t have anything concrete. There’s only my memories and I can’t trust those. Nobody will remember me, who I was then, what I did, or who those people were at all. And without all that what will be left of me? She’ll take reality with her when she goes and all the things that I’m made of. I’m so scared. She’s going to take it all. I’ll never get anymore bits of my life back in her slip ups. The sole witness to my fucking gospel will die.