I am your baby.
I am a being that was held inside of yours kept tucked away for nobody to hurt for nine months.
For nine months I grew and grew inside of you.
Although you never felt it, my fingernails began growing. My skin started to fold and pinch together in the same way yours does.
My body was a blueprint created by you and a man that was coming to life in your very own torso.
My arms could have stretched out and touched the inside of the very skin that clung tight around your waist that I would wrap my arms around one day because a boy didn't like me.
I am your baby.
I was only a few years old when I had to witness a bipolar attack in the flesh.
I had to watch you throw plastic chairs off the front porch as the lightening flashed creating the perfect storm that highlighted the very silhouette that I felt I knew so well.
I watched as your face glowed the same shade of red as your hair. The same color I saw when my head was highlighted by the sun and my hair shined in the daytime.
I watched your short figure tear apart the house and the people in it. The same figure that I would grow into when I became a teenager. The same figure that I never wanted.
This isn't what I wanted, I never wanted any of this!
If I knew that those nine months of peace were only a decoy do you think I'd ever want to leave?
But, I am your baby.
That's what you always say to me.
Baby, I need you to take care of me because I'm too sick.
Baby, I need you to stay here with me so I can get the sympathy from everyone else.
Baby, I need my prescription medication even though I got better three years ago.
I am not your sign that you can put in front of you wherever you go saying "Please help, I have a daughter.
I need to help my daughter.
This is for my daughter."
I was never needed by you in the way I thought I was.
You didn't need me there because you loved me too much to let me go.
You needed me there so you had a reason to get the drugs you poison yourself with.
I was your "excuse to get better."
I am the very reason you are an addict in the first place.
And I am your baby.
Our legs are so similar that you can't tell the difference.
Our noses are big and take up most of our faces.
Our figures are hard to maintain not that we want to anyway.
I am your baby.
I am your little girl, the same little girl that you whispered to while I was in your stomach saying
"Mommy loves you. She won't let anybody hurt you."
But Mommy is a liar.
The person that's hurt me the most is you.
But I am your baby.
You're not supposed to let me drink alcohol or witness my sister smoke crack on your back porch while her very own kids sit on the couch inside unfed and not taken care of.
I am your baby but in no way do I want to be.
You're supposed to protect me from the evilness in the world, not be it.
You are supposed to come looking for me when I walk out of the house angry.
You are supposed to love me even though I moved in with my dad because I wouldn't had a chance in life living with you.
I am your baby.
And I can't shake the feeling that I am everything you are.
All of my bad characteristics I adopted from you.
I was saved but not in time so a hint of your anger seeped into my brain where no surgeon or therapist can reach.
You are etched into every skin cell I have on my body.
But I don't want this.
I never wanted this!
I don't want to be you.
I don't want to be your daughter.
I don't want to be the addict you are.
I don't want to be the mistake you made.

And I don't want to be your baby.