Writing
Everybody will probably yell at me for not meeting with my mum and aunt and cousin, and my nana today. I couldn’t do it. I got halfway there and knew there was no way I wanted to sit there while they asked me questions about what I’m doing in Wellington. I don’t want to be the one saying I haven’t gone anywhere in Wellington, I’ve gone backwards. So far back that now I can’t talk, I can’t even see a person without running away. And of course they’d blast me for being “negative” when the reality is so much more complex. I can’t control the things I hear that don’t exist. Or the fact that I feel so isolated and alone.
I wasn’t alone in Nelson. I just wasn’t. I had friends, I did things. I could go out. I can’t here unless I;m with someone or I go somewhere designated “safe”. People will still tell me to keep mum in my life. She needs me. Where was she when I needed her I ask them?
My mother didn’t raise me. I barely saw her from the age of 13 to 24, she wasn’t there. Because she was declared unfit, due to neglect and violence, and her desire to marry an abusive man then, I was sent to live with my dad. Dad taught me a lot. God I resented him for it, but he was trying to help me. I just died inside a little every time his girlfriend tried to make me a girl. Because she never had a girl of her own and deep inside there was a genderqueer boy trying to fight his way out.
So when people try to tell me my mum did a lot for me....I wonder what they see. Dad was the one who cared for me for so many years. I learned how to take care of myself because of him. And my mother, she was always flitting off here and there like a schoolgirl to go out with men.
And then the hell I endured last year, where she let that abusive, drunk creep inside my house. Police coming, drugs, the stench of alcohol and cigarettes and she told me her own child, that there was no way the guy was leaving. But I was. I had to. She kept letting him abuse her and emotionally manipulate her and I....I was forced to come here. I didn’t want to leave my cats or my home. I didn’t want to leave. I ran here, without looking back.
I’m afraid my mother lost me that day. I spoke to her once in April then decided no more. She’ll marry that idiot she thinks and I just know...my intuition tells me he is bad, and I trust my instincts.
I got help from my dad then to escape and he let me. I was safe for the last night in Nelson because Dad offered me safe harbour. I don’t think I’ll ever see my mum or my cats again, and my heart breaks all over again.
I just want people to know I didn’t do it to be cruel, I just did what I had to to protect myself, because if I didn’t I’d be caught up in violence and arguments again and I wouidn’t be safe.
The saddest part isn’t that I can’t stay here either, it’s too unsuitable for my mental illness. It’s not that I don’t have them. It’s that it isn’t my mother, or my family who offered me a safe, quieter place to stay. It’s someone else, someone who isn’t even related.
And yet they;ll probably be more family than my own ever was.