Mother

My mother told me to when I was five to never call her that or any variation of the word mother. I was told to call he by her name. That was a sign of the kind of relationship we would have.

Recently L. admitted to me that she became pregnant with me to keep my father who was 17 years old at the time committed to her. I believe that is the reason why I was told not to call her mom as being a mother was not her intention in having me. She wasn't trying to be a mother; she was trying to keep a boy by having his child. Another reason for her not wanting to be called mother was her not wanting the embarrassment of people knowing that she was as young as she was and with a baby and had I uttered the word mother to her in public the secret would be out. L.'s trick of having a child to keep a boy didn't work as well as she thought as my father wanted a boy, and nothing else. I am a girl. Having a girl child did not keep him interested, and I'm truly not certain that had he a boy things would have been different. My father roamed the street with other girls at the time of my mother's pregnancy and had one pregnant at the same time as my mother. That girl's pregnancy resulted in a brother I have seen about five time when I was younger and whom I have no interest in acquainting myself to. My father ultimately landed in jail while I was in foster care.

My mother had me when she was 14 years old. She and my Grandmother decided to put me into foster care and retrieve me when my mother would be capable of taking care of me. She did so when I was 5 years old and she was 19 years of age. She wasn't equipped to take care of me mentally or physically, but put up a front that convinced the social workers and my Grandmother that she was ready for the challenge. I think, no, I know, my mother had been watching too many t.v. programs and was convinced per these shows that raising a child would exemplify the shows: it would be easy. L's job required her to leave home much earlier than the beginning of my school day, so she told me to go to school by myself, and to come home by myself. I was a latch key kid, and it worked out OK. But she handled it as a child would by saying gruffly to a 5 year old child that, "I have to work so you'll just have to just go to school by yourself." She stated that remark in a very confrontational and resentful manner with no encouragement or praise. That was the beginning of my understanding that my mother was not like the other adults I knew. Ultimately I guessed that she was a child trying to act like an adult.

My relationship with my mother continues to be strained as she has never been a mother to me. She, through the years I lived with her, exhibited that she only had me to try to keep a boy and only got me out of foster care to entice that same boy to live with her with the hopes that we would all live happily ever after. Well the boy came to live with us shortly after I got out of foster care, continued with his drug habit that he picked up in prison and started physically and mentally abusing the child my mother had to entice him into staying with her. When my mother came to the realization that her dream was deferred, she couldn't throw me back from were I came as that would be an indictment of her inaptitude as a parent, so she simply ignored and neglected me. She would have done the best thing for me had she given me back to faster care as the one family that had me throughout the duration of my foster care instilled in me the foundation from which I have prospered in being a responsible child, adolescent and adult. I am a credit to the foster care system.

All of my mother's time and energy went into trying to keep her boy/man. She worked to give him money to get him high and buy him the material things that he demanded. She dabbled also in drugs and drink but was a functioning alcoholic/drug addict that showed up to work most often. During that time I was abused I received no baths or attention. I dressed myself, and taught myself to bathe, and made sure I did my homework and chores. All the while my parents were doing their thing of getting high, fighting and acting as if there were no child in the house. I learned about explicit things at a tender age as my mother would do things in front of me to prove to my father that she would stoop to any depth to keep him, and he did things in front of me because he would be high all the time and didn't give a damn.

I left home at 16 to get away, and have done fairly well in my life. I think I have done so because of the foster care system and its ability to give me a foundation of principals. And in spite of my mother and father chipping away at that foundation, I am here to proclaim my victory as a somewhat normal person with a family and a career.