You taught me that everyone that wasn't a christian was going to hell.
You taught me that we were the prime example of a good christian family, even though I had bruises on my skin.
You taught me that girls should wear makeup and do their hair and wear pretty dresses, and are good for nothing except being a housewife,
you taught me that my talents should be used only enough to get money so I can live in a big house with kids and be a good wife.
You taught me that homosexuals should be strung up and gutted for being sick and diseased sinners.
You taught me that boys who don't dress like men are homosexual ***** nasty sinners.
You taught me that I wasn't good for anything
You told me that you wished you could raise me all over again, so maybe I wouldn't be such a disappointing sinner.
You told me I couldn't play with boy toys, because that's a sin,
You told me I could only wear girl colors.
You told me to only read books about good girls who do good things and not books on adventure and crime.
You told me I was ugly.
You told me I was fat.
You told me I could be somebody someday, but it wouldn't be so because I was ugly and fat and stupid and good for nothing, so I better stop dreaming.
You called me a liar when I said my father hit me.
Even when you pulled him off me as I breathed what would have been my last breath.
You didn't take me to the doctor when I laid in my room screaming in pain for an unknown reason,
You called me a ***** and a ****
and that my friends are disgusting.
You claimed I had no free will and that everything I did, was me just trying to be like all my nasty sinning homosexual friends.
You said all I did on the computer is watch ****. I was a kid.
You said my pains and sorrows and feelings and thoughts and ambitions were me just being dramatic.
You never called the police
or divorced him sooner,
you just got another job and left me alone with him all day.
You called me a liar no matter what I said.
You blamed me for your woes and your weight.
You prayed and begged and cried in front of me,
trying to understand where you went wrong and why I was such a sinner. I was a kid.
You didn't raise me.
When I twisted my ankle on a field trip, it was another parent who iced my ankle.
You didn't pick me up from the school play at 10pm,
I waited and waited- it was another parent who came back to check on me, and took me home.
When I woke up with ****** knuckles and ****** walls, you didn't care that I had been punching the walls in my sleep you didn't do anything to help.
I ran away from home three times and each it was my sister who came to get me, never you.
When I fell through a window and that piece of glass lay pointing at my heart, for I was too light to have my body push down through it, I wasn't relieved, I was disappointed. You didn't stitch me up, my brother is the one who cleaned my cuts and bandaged me up and down.
You didn't help me, it was my sister who taught me how to push our dresser in front of the door when he was on a drunken rampage with a baseball bat, so it would buy time for us to hop through the window and down the street.
It was my sister who held me when I fell of my bed and took the skin off my nose.
It was my brother who read me stories of a brilliant boy named Artemis Fowl who went on adventures.
It was my sister who screamed for him to stop when I played too loud and he smashed my head against the wall.
It was my sister who taught me how to cook and clean
and bought THE LABYRINTH so that I could fall in love with David Bowie and learn to be a girl who didn't need anyone to save her.
It was my brother who lent me his clothes when he grew so I could get out of those nasty pink dresses with lace that covered every inch of me.
Every time I spoke you said I was a liar and that I should sit down and shut up.
You badgered me for being rude when I didn't speak in public or with family and when I do you laugh and shush me, letting the other people know that I like to exaggerate, I like attention.
and then you scream at me for being rude and that I should sit down and shut up sit down and shut up and that's what I did.
From birth, you said I shouldn't exist and that I was heartless and nothing and cold and dead inside. You blamed me for the world and you still do.
This all happened before I was 8 years old.
When you went to Italy last summer, you went without a word and left me with no food or money. It was another family that sheltered me. It was a man I've met only twice who has become my only father figure and texts me to make sure I'm okay and picks me up and feeds me and gives me a place to stay and helps me indulge in my interests and tries to heal me and treats me like his own daughter.
This is still all you do.
You expect flowers and a card
and chocolate
and the world at your feet
because you have given me the world
and raised me
and cared for me
and loved me.
But when I do the dishes for you as a favor, I can only think about whether the knife I'm cleaning will be plunged into your heart, or mine.
For the woman who tells me I look ugly on prom night, who calls my friends sinners and curses them tells me I'm fat and nothing and punishes me for things I've never done and won't leave me alone in the doctor's office so that she can "Correct" everything I have to say so that I can't get anxiety or depression or anger medication or a thorough checkup on why my body hurts everyday. To the woman who cries and screams to this **** day that she doesn't understand why I'm a disgusting monster, how she doesn't understand how I turned into a freak. To the woman who openly despises every inch of me that tries so hard to be happy and love everyone and everything,
Happy mother's day.