I can’t say anything good about my mother. I remember her from my childhood as a cruel woman with a father’s belt in one hand and a bottle in the other. It was impossible to expect motherly love and care from her, and when she and dad fought, I was very quickly sent to “visit” my grandmother.
We all suffered because of Mom. I was only glad when she and dad were getting divorced. Mom was moving away from us, and instead my grandmother moved in temporarily. She helped my dad by taking over my upbringing. She cooked for us and took me to school. With her easy encouragement I liked studying and I loved doing my homework. My grandmother treated me to homemade pies afterwards and let me go out with friends. My father was also much calmer and kinder without my mother, and sometimes I got some pocket money from him.
But that peace, however, did not last long. Not even a year after the divorce, my mother wanted to come back. She swore that she had changed, that she was working, and at first she held on, but soon she got drunk again and Dad threw her out.
Grandma came back again and the good days. I was put into karate at the time, which I really liked. The coach promised a lot of trips and competitions, and I really wanted to try something like that and go to camp with the kids. My father supported me, my grandmother even more so. But our life was still a stormy sea. Sometimes my father was broke and we lived only on my grandmother’s pension – then we had to skip classes because we couldn’t pay. Sometimes things would get better, and Dad would take me to the amusement park. And sometimes he would bring my mother home, and it seemed like they would be together again.
This never-ending epic of them breaking up was only interrupted when Dad found out Mom was already in a new relationship, and she was using him to get some extra money. Dad never felt sorry for her, thinking she was poor and lonely.
For a while he still wanted to snap out of it, hoped to restore the old relationship, but Grandma talked him out of it. One day it took its toll and my father met another woman. After his new marriage, we finally had a real life. My stepmother is a good woman, even though I am no longer a child and do not need my mother’s love or live with my parents. But it is still nice to know that my father does not have a relationship with my own mother, that she will no longer cheat on him, and that I myself will not suffer from her cruelty and calculating nature.
In all this time she only tried to communicate with me once, but one “I don’t want to” over the phone was enough for her to never call me again. It’s kind of a shame, but it’s also a good thing. I’m sure I would have suffered a lot more if she had stuck around and continued to ruin our lives, because she was the kind of person who would drink all her juices and then run away until worse comes to worst.
