140

[saitaina]

Originally published at Memoirs of a Nobody. You can comment here or there.

There are some things a child shouldn’t know. I mean, I’m all for giving a kid the truth and facts but really, there are some things that children do NOT need to know. One of those things? The location their mother was going to die.

Unfortunately, I’ve known this. I was told this bit of information a. when I was about seven (or eight, or nine, around then) and read some of mom’s papers. b. when I was thirteen and one of mom’s friends (aka: Annoying Bitch) told me.

Okay, maybe I should back up here as I may have lost some of you. As you know if you’ve read this, my mother is alive and well, but for most of my life, and I do mean most, she wasn’t well. Not even close to it. My mother suffers from…well a lot of things but mostly depression steaming from her childhood (and later her job as a Mental Health Hospital worker which brought up childhood things).

And like many clinically depressed people, my mother thought suicide was an answer. I can’t give a number to how many times the thought of suicide occurred to her (millions of billions probably) or how many plans/attempts she’s had, I can just say it’s…a lot.

So now you can get an idea of what I’m talking about when I say I knew where my mother was going to die. It was where she would commit suicide.

Age Seven Location: Orange Grove somewhere in Southern California. This was a plan with a friend of hers, they were going to go out together. Luckily for me, my mother didn’t’ do it. Not luckily for mum’s friend’s kids…her friend did. So yes, I’ve known about this through most of my life, leading up to…

Age Thirteen Location: Cemetery near Riddle, OR. This is rather ew, as no one but drunk teens goes there and…ew.

But really, I shouldn’t have had to live with this information for most/all of my life. It’s hard enough knowing how close I came to losing my mother over the years…but to know the details of the plans, the locations…I have to live with that knowledge, I have to try to bury it in the recesses of my mind and forget about the very images the thoughts bring about. I don’t think that’s fair..but maybe that’s my price to pay in this mess.

I wasn’t always the best daughter about this mess, the last time my mother was hospitalized for “suicidal tendencies” or whatever they called it, I rather gave her and ultimatum. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I was only fourteen…I was tired of it all. Tired of visiting her in cold, white rooms under watchful eye, tired of the “gifts” she gave me, something she had made in therapy, tired of the babysitters and long trips and not having my mommy with me.

I don’t really feel bad about getting sick and tired and fed up with it all. It was the last in a LONG line of hospitalizations and depression and suicide plans and tear and just…mess.

But maybe the knowledge I’m cursed with…is my price for my own frustration.