Growing up forced me to see that my mother was a fraud, a fake, a lie. She was the un-mother. Her name is Angela, but she isn’t an angel. She is more like a demon hiding under an angel’s skin. She never cared about me, nor truly loved me. Does one hide their head under a pillow when a baby cries from hunger? No, but she did. My father would come home from work hearing me cry and find her head under the pillow, attempting to ‘drown out the noise’. Angela is not a mother. She is not my mother. I feel sorry for her three other kids who live with her. I know she wont treat them right. She’ll just keep them alive. She’ll probably just let them eat junk food like she let me.

I remember one day when I was hungry and she pushed me away. We were living in her older sister’s basement and ‘napping’ on ugly green couches. There were some cold chicken nuggets on the coffee table, but I really didn’t want them. I tried to awaken her by saying ‘Mommy I’m hungry…. I’m hungry”, but she slapped my hand away and told me to go find food for myself. I pouted for a moment and climbed up the stairs and went into the kitchen. I guess I was smart for a five or six year old because I climbed up onto the counter by using the drawer handles as stairs and got some Teddy Grahams out of the cabinet. That’s all that I remember of that day. She isn’t a mother, but an uncaring lump of a person. The only reason I think she wanted to keep me was because she wanted to be spiteful to my father.

When I started living with my father, I think I was six or seven, I know I couldn’t play outside when it started to get dark. It was because the night air would make me sick, all because I was malnourished by her. Eventually I could catch fireflies with my step sister in the dusk and partly into the night, but I still got sick easily. I always was sick with strep throat or something. I hated it. Of course I was little and still believed my mother to be good. I wrote to her and I she eventually wrote back. I have two of her letters and a Valentine’s Day card saved so I won’t forget these memories. I don’t want to forget how I felt, so I will never become her.

Growing up forced me to see her true self, because I learned what things are expected of a parent, of a mother. I hold the deepest regret in my heart because I wasted a lot of my life believing I could see her again and that she would love me. I have a real mother now, and even though we fight a lot, my step mother is my true mom. She is the true angel.