A Broken Mother

Father time drug his feet during my adolecent years of schooling as my home life turned into my own personal house of torment. I had never gotten along with my mother, but a once strained relationship soon became an unbearable pit of despair. To ask my mother to look at me at times was as if you were asking her to gouge out her own eyes. The way she felt about me flowed out daily through her words of disgust and with each sting of the belt across the back of my legs.


A temporary reprieve from my mother’s relentless abuse came in the unexpected form of a car accident. It felt wrong to be grateful for another’s misfortune, but the short lived break I received was much needed. After the car accident, most of my mother’s time over the next year was spent behind closed doors nursing migraine headaches in a room blanketed with darkness and silence. Her emergence from solitude was rare and usually was followed by a command for a massage to ease her searing pain.

My mother’s migraines persisted for years, interwoven with emotional crashes and outbursts. From middle school on was like living with Dr. Jeckel while Mr. Hyde peeked around every corner. I found avoidance to be the best defense against triggering Hyde’s return, so in retreat I would bury my head in books. Needless to say, over the years I have had many wonderful adventures with Tom Sawyer, The Hardy Boys, and Sherlock Holmes.