Sweet sixteen
TW: s.a
When I was young, a toddler, I’d ask my mum to wipe my chest and ease its weight. She just smiled back.
When I was a child, I’d ask her why I couldn’t ever breathe. I asked her why I felt so weird, why we weren’t normal.
But my mum just told me she didn’t hit me. She called me lucky and told me to be grateful. She told me she loved me as she repeatedly pinched me under the table.
My mum told me she was a revolution. My mum told me to be pretty and obedient as I cried in all my dainty white dresses. She drowned me in her need for superiority and then slapped me when I chocked on it.
My mum told me I was special as she presented me to her friends. But when I puked every morning, she just poured orange juice down my burned throat and smiled when it bubbled.
When I was ten, my mum began to diet me. She’d pinch at my hips and scowl at my thighs. When I was ten I asked god to prove himself. I cried myself to sleep and prayed to wake up skinny. I didn’t.
When I was fourteen I told my mum I was depressed. She smiled. She laughed. I hadn’t left my bed for a month. She just told me I was getting lazy.
When I was seventeen I told my mum I got raped. She told me I was lucky it was someone I knew. When she walked into me crying, she yelled at me for making her a bad mother.
When I was four, I told my mum I was sad.
Now at eighteen I don’t know how I’m still here.
