Light

My pen glided across the paper as the tears formed in my eyes. I\'m so sorry I didn\'t believe in you it read. My eyes stung with the tears. *NO No that\'s not what I want to say,* I cried out in my mind, crumpling up the paper and lobbing it onto the floor. The temptation to tear it to shreds was there, but I composed myself and began again on a fresh sheet of paper. It\'s very hard for me to accept that someone would love me so unconditionally I began. That wasn\'t better. In fact, that was worse. What had I written on the first piece of paper? That didn\'t sound so bad now.
\"What are you writing?\" a nasal voice penetrated her thoughts.
My whole body tingled with the sensation of being caught. I looked up and groaned inwardly. It was Stephanie. The world\'s biggest bitch and my daily tormenter. \"A letter,\" I said quietly.
\"To who? Who would want a letter from you?\"
I cringed. \"My mom,\" I said even more quietly and bent my head back over the paper to write.
I could imagine the corners of her lips curling upwards as she said, \"You\'re writing a letter to your mother?\" in the most taunting way possible. \"Hey girls, over here,\" she called out to the other members of her group. \"Lori is writing a letter to her mom,\" she said, chuckling almost demonically.
\"Her mom?\" Kelly asked somewhere between doubt and laughter.
\"Hey loser, don\'t you talk to your mom every night you go home? Why the hell do you need to write her a letter when you can talk to her?\" Abbie shot at me.
\"I can\'t talk to her the way you guys can talk to your mothers,\" I tried to explain.
They smirked. \"What do you mean? Is she dead or something?\" Abbie asked as a sharp pain shot through my body.
\"Something like that,\" I mumbled.
It got eerily silent. They were obviously taken aback. I loved saying something no one expected. I loved the look of shock on their faces. I loved the way they had nothing left to say. No more retorts or stabs or taunts. No more tormenting. I loved that I had beat them at their own game.
They walked off silently, and I was free to resume my letter. My mom wasn\'t really dead at least not in the sense they were thinking of. But explaining to them that my mom had never been alive would have been beyond their comprehension. The teacher walked in, and I put the letter away. Fine, the words weren\'t coming out right anyway. I would write it later. Perhaps when my mother had gone to bed.


She was in a particularly bad mood that night though. Her words cut through my ice wall so deeply I felt like a little girl all over again. After her sharp, stabbing, icy words had cut through me, she went to bed satisfied. I couldn\'t bring myself to write the letter. Maybe I could try to tell her after all even though the words caught in my mouth every night I saw her. Still, I allowed my tired body to lay down on the bed and sleep to take over.
She was there almost instantly tonight. Her clear, deep voice rang through my head and shook my body. \"I\'m here tonight daughter,\" she said warmly. I nodded, tears forming at my eyes. I never once cried for my mother, but for her I cry like it\'s the end of the world. Or maybe the beginning.
My mom\'s arms wrapped around me, holding me as close as if I were her breath.\"I tried to write you,\" I began hesitantly, speaking for the first time since she first came to me.
\"I know,\" she said simply. \"You don\'t have to do that.\"
\"The words wouldn\'t come,\" I tried to explain.
\"I know,\" she repeated. \"You don\'t need to write. You don\'t even need to speak. I feel what you feel. I hear what you think. I know what you want to say before you even say it.\"
\"Are you some kind of god? \" I asked. \"Because I don\'t believe in him or her or them or whatever pronoun you want to use.\"
\"I\'m not god,\" she answered.
\"You\'re my mom?\" I asked.
\"Yes.\"
\"I have a mother.\"
\"Not really,\" she said.
\"You mean because she\'s so horrid to me? You\'re replacing her?\"
\"Not replacing. I\'m just here to be the mom you need and deserve.\"
\"You won\'t hurt me?\"
\"No, I can\'t. I don\'t have it in me.\"
I nodded in relief and laid my head on her soft shoulder and drifted into an endless sea that rocked me back and forth gently.


As I grabbed the piece of toast, her hand snatched it from mine so fast I thought I had imagined it. \"You aren\'t eating today,\" her cold words answered.
The hunger in my stomach was growing. She hadn\'t let me eat yesterday. I didn\'t have money for the school lunches, and she wouldn\'t give it to me. She was always home after school, so I couldn\'t eat with her around without being severely punished. I wanted to plead, to beg. *Please mother. Please love me enough to let me eat.* I couldn\'t give her the satisfication of the plea though. I couldn\'t let her see any weakness. \"All right,\" I said, grabbing my backpack and walking slowly to school. At least my stomach wasn\'t rumbling like yesterday. That was so embarrassing in the middle of class, but it was past that point today. Just a hollow, dull ache that made me wish I could go back to sleep and see my mom again.
Knowing she was all that I have was a scary thought. If she ever left, what would I have left? I wondered silently. Could I go back to the way I lived before her? To the complete despair and loneliness that were my constant reminders of my mother cutting me off from the world. Imposed isolation. All I could do was wait for the day when I became a legal adult and could break free. Until then, my mom was all I had.
I could hear the whispers as I went past the group of girls. I could see the look on everyone\'s face. These girls were my main tormenters, but every single one of the people I passed wore the same look of disgust and contempt on their faces. There\'s the strange girl who never leaves her house and walks by like a ghost treading over water. She is so quiet and unfriendly.


\"Why me?\" I asked her that night.
\"Because you know only hate.\"
My mind flashed over my mother\'s hand stinging across my face, the ropes around my wrists and ankles as I tried unsuccessfully to shift positions in the cupboard she left me in for days as the pee surrounded me and the hunger knawed at my stomach and the thirst parched my desert of a mouth, the locking of the door keeping me trapped in my room, the slamming of her door as she shut me out of her life with all the finality of abandonment.
But tonight my mom\'s embrace wrapped me in a soft blanket of comfort. Tonight my mom was here and the world was, just for this moment, all right again. I snuggled deeper and let the warmth pull me in to its depths of peace.
But her voice broke through. \"You know I have to leave right?\"
My mind snapped as though she had stepped on a twig in it. \"What?\" I asked in confusion.
\"I served my purpose. To show you love. Now that you know it, you do not need me anymore.\"
With my mother I never begged. I knew better. But with her the words came tumbling out, and I hated how much vulnerability I was showing her. The shame of letting her see me like this didn\'t keep me from going though. \"Please,\" I begged in desparation, my hands reaching for hers.
She pulled her hands away. \"I\'m sorry. This is all I can do for you. I have nothing left to give you understand?\"
\"No,\" I screamed hysterically. \"I don\'t understand at all. Don\'t do this.\" Then softer, the plea bubbling out of my mouth, \"Please don\'t leave me. I need you.\"
\"You need to learn to be on your own.\"
\"I\'ve been on my own all my life. You said it yourself that hate was all I know.\"
\"Now you know love. I\'ve done my work. Sayonara.\"
\"No,\" I screamed in confusion. \"I don\'t want to be all alone again.\"
But she faded away, and I was left looking around my dark, sparse room, clinging to the thin sheets my mother sometimes felt \"kind\" enough to provide me with. Darkness descended upon my mind. And I realized, light is dark wrapped up in a pretty, golden shell.