A Crazy, Psychotic Mother Who Hated Me

I share my story now, years after the fact, because I believe in my life I have come to a place where I can call myself a survivor. I can say that I lived, and I survived, and now I want to make things different. I don't know how.

I was a good child. I don't mean just good, exceptional. I was reading high school level books when I was 8. I was quick, I was sharp-witted, I was smart, I was orderly, I was honest, I was kind. I tried my hardest, and somehow, I always failed. So my mother said. The nightmares have stopped in the 3 years since I ran away, yet the screaming in my head is still there and has been for a long time. She called me fat, ugly, bitch, pig, brat, selfish, cunt, cruel, retarded, worthless, useless, irresponsible, stupid, ignorant. She called me evil. She would constantly roar like a bear and stomp down the halls, throwing or breaking my toys, slamming doors, pressing the kitchen knife blade-first against my throat, she pointed, she made me get on my knees and do whatever she wanted. I scrubbed floors, I did the dishes, made her bed, cleaned her room, cleaned the bathroom, I did everything in the house while she sat on her fat ass and lounged around in front of the TV because a clean house was the only thing that would stop the screaming. She made me sleep with her, naked, and she detailed every "ugly" part of my body since I was 6. She put me on diets that year, liquid diets, I ate barely anything around her, then went to my grandmother's and ate everything she would offer me. I walked on a sprained ankle, miles, from school, because she said I was "faking it." I took over at her job as a house cleaner while I had a fever of 102, until her boss noticed and gave me tea and a good place to sleep.

I had no friends because she always drove them off. I was told what I thought didn't matter, that I was exactly like her (which I'm actually not), that my ideas, my philosophies were evil. I was demon-possessed. I was in college by the time I was 14, I had a steady job and I kept the house, I did the cooking, and, still, it wasn't enough. If I forgot the directions to the DMV she would start roaring and driving like a maniac until I was screaming at her to stop the yelling, the noise. She was enraged when the black mold in our rat-infested house gave me an aggressive allergic reaction, she screamed at me when the Benadryl wasn't working, "YOU THINK I TOOK YOU TO THE DOCTOR FOR NOTHING?"

I won, though. I ran away 3 times, the third time it worked. I had developed friends online, the only place I could, I developed my own religious and philosophical beliefs, and I ran. I ran to my boyfriend and I married him. She never came after me, because in my note I told her I would go to the police if she ever tried to hurt me again. I'm 19. I'm currently applying to medical school. Next year, with any luck, I'll be there. My husband and I celebrated our second anniversary, one year of it spent while he was in Iraq. I have friends now. I tell people what I think. I went into therapy.

And still, I hear the screaming when I think about it, and I don't know what to do with the hate. I hate my mother. I feel no love, no connection to her. She told me many times she was going to kill herself, so when I was 8, I came up with my plan for when she did it--threatening suicide was just one of her guilt games, but even so, I felt it best to accept that if she died it would only benefit me. She didn't want me, anyway. I found out she wanted to abort me but didn't because my father begged her not to, and that she was on drugs that she bought with the divorce settlement. Sad, really, because I read some poetry she wrote before she got the drugs, and she seemed like a nice person. I look at children and I think how strange for them to be loved, I look at pictures of the house I grew up in before my mother kicked my father out, and I think, what a house, with a father who genuinely loved his child, a house that soon became a den of pain, the backyard filled with trash and the rats from the infested walls. I want no children, but I want to help children. I want to make a difference.

Maybe medicine is the answer to all of that, but I feel like there should be more, that I should do more...but I don't know how.