I Guess You are Human. (Personal)

[BaileyisDarcy]

DISCLAIMER:

This is not an informational piece, or advice column or even an opinion piece. This is me needing an out, and choosing this as my medium.

If you want a backstory you either make one up or go to the effort of reading each previous take and question that I have posted. You may find a clue in those. I'm not in the mood for explaining.

I want no complaints for length, you do not have to read this, and you don't have to comment. This is a purely selfish post.

I'm sitting in a cafe. Glancing at my phone, wishing I could pick it up and place it before my eyes so I didn't have to look at the person sitting across the table. But that would be rude and counterproductive, so I don't. The longer we go without saying anything however, the stronger the urge becomes.

I don't want to be here. Yet I initiated this meet. I don't want to talk to her. Yet that is my purpose today. I don't want things to continue on the way they are. Yet I know I would let it if I hadn't forced myself into this position.

I open my mouth to talk but before I can a waitress is there to take our orders. She wants a coffee and vanilla slice, I ask for a lime spider and a few rum balls. The non-alcoholic variant.

My heart is pounding and I can see my hands shaking. I move them below the table, hoping she didn't notice.

She starts.

'What do you want?'

'I just, just want to talk.' I can feel my heart in my chest now, thump, thumping away in my chest.

'Talk about what?'

'About what my friend said. About what you said. About what I haven't said.' The thump has turned into a bump.

'Well.' That look. That impatient tone. She wants to be here as much as I do.

'I'm sorry.' Everytime I open my mouth my heart bangs a little harder. My chest hurts. I regret not bringing my deoderant. I'm sweating up a storm. 'About what my friend said. I'm not sorry about talking about you.'

'You shouldn't be talking about me, after everything I've done you go and prattle to your little friends about how I'm a terrible person. About how -'

I cut her off. I don't know where the courage came from but I really cut her off. 'I never told her you're a terrible person. I told her you told me I'm not welcome. That there's nothing here for me. I told her that you it me. And I told her that you have done so much for me, that I can't hate you. If she decided that you're a terrible person then that wasn't my fault. Nothing I said was untrue.

I told her how you hugged me when Mum left. The only hug I can remember you giving anyone, and I got it. I told her how you gave me icecream after Lo had his episode and put a hole in the wall. How you told me in not so many words that I made the right choice getting Ja out of the house when that happened. Even if you told me off for going to the wrong neighbour for help. I told her how you have never told me good job, or well done. I told her how you are hard work to deal with, you are illogical, and impatient. You don't have eight arms but you expect us to. I told her how you threatened to send me to the hospital if I got heat stroke a third time. How you said it as though you were angry at me, while a little scared at the same time.

I told her how you wouldn't let Mum in the house when she visited that one time, and how you laughed when Ja called her "That weird lady". I told her that I always had clothes to wear, I always had food on my plate, I had a bike and a DS and a playstation. We had five televisions and used only four.

I told her that Mum could barely feed us and I went to school with no underwear. I even told her that my teacher kept a spare pack of knickers in her desk for the days I showed up to class with nothing beneath my school dress.

I told her how I was panicking that day you showed up at school without warning, how my hands shook for an hour after. How frightened I am of you.

I never told her you are a terrible person. She came to that conclusion herself.' I take a very deep breath and hold it a moment, letting her process all I said. Letting myself process all I had said.

'You've always been a liar.'

'I'm not lying. You might believe I am but I'm not.' I can feel my heart, every square inch of it, pressing on my ribs. B'dmp, b'dmp, b'dmp. My leg is shaking so hard that if the floor were not concrete, the table would have been shaking with it.

She doesn't have time to respond. Our afternoon tea has arrived.

Thankfully she allows a silence to settle. I am glad I ordered a cold drink, a warm one I'd have had to let cool and that would have given her a chance to dig into me. In fact I am surprised she hasn't already. Though, I don't usually talk this much around her.

The rumballs are delicious. What do other people call them? Dunno.

My spider is fizzy, the froth on top thick and plentiful. Why do my spiders never turn out so well? Is it the glass I use? Is it the icecream? I use the same brand lime drink, so what? Regardless, the spider is delicious. The icecream tastes like it's Peters brand. Maybe I just use too much or too little. Or maybe homebrand icecream reacts to soft drink differently.

Nevermind. It doesn't matter.

I'm trying to keep my mind away from the issue at hand. Tears had pricked the corners of my eyes during my speech and crying is the last thing I want to do today. I'm sick of crying. Just yesterday I had upset myself over nothing. Spent fifteen minutes trying to stop myself blubbing. Because I was blubbing. I wasn't crying, I wasn't whingeing, I was blubbing. With tears and snot and spit and everything. Over nothing.

I'm good at crying. At getting upset over nothing. I'm good at pretending I'm okay when my mind forgets why I'm not, but the moment I remember I lose all pretence. I have days when my mind will go fuzzy. When the world feels like a dark pit that I have to crawl out of. I'm not in a pit with everyone looking down at me. I'm in the pit with everyone else. They just don't know it. It's dark and it's cold. Then I'll wake up the next day and everything will be fine again. As fine as it can be anyway.

It's a dangerous pit.

She puts her coffee down. The cup is half empty now. She's glaring at me as if it's my fault she's already drunk so much. Everything is my fault.

'You think you're special don't you.' Not a question. 'You're not. You're just a little girl who thinks everything's about her. Well guess what, it isn't. I'm the one who raised you. I'm the one who took you in. I'm the one who fed and clothed you.' I'm trying to get a word in but once she starts talking it's hard to make her stop. The tears are pricking. 'I didn't have to take you in. You're the package that came with your father.

Your mother doesn't want you. I'm the one that stayed.'

Fuck. That button. She hit the button. I have no control over my tear ducts. They've split open. The tears are running over my cheek, collecting above my lip and under my chin. Fuck.

I don't want to cry.

But I can't help it.

My chin is wobbling. I'm biting my cheek trying to stop it, and I know tomorrow my cheek is going to be hurting from how hard I'm biting it but still the tears flow and my chin wobbles.

I remember the words my counselor told me to tell myself for the times I lose it.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's going to be okay.

It'll stop.

It'll pass.

It's okay.

I used to yell at myself in my head whenever I cried. I called myself stupid for crying. I told myself to stop. Put so much more pressure on myself because crying is useless. It gets me nowhere and only leads to people thinking I'm weak.

'Why are you crying?' Shut up bitch. 'Why are you crying? Did I hurt your feelings?' Shut up bitch. 'Does the truth hurt?' Shut up bitch.

Shut up.

Shut up.

Shut up.

Shut the fuck up.

With every word she says I'm getting more and more upset. She's being childish, I know. She's the adult here yet I feel like it's me. She's never liked me. I'm a burden to her. A nuisance.

Yet she wants me back just to feel like she has control. A baby without her rattle.

I'm licking the tears from my lip. One upside to crying, my tears don't taste bad. Wiping them off my chin leaves a wet patch on my sleeve. I haven't had much water this week. A deliberate choice. I thought it might be harder to make me cry if I were dehydrated. Apparently my body's too used to dehydration to care.

That's how I got heat stroke twice. Not drinking water. A bad habit.

I want to say something. To defend myself. But I'm too upset now. The words won't pop into my head let alone leave my mouth. All I can think of to say is "Not true. Not true." I don't say it. There's no point.

I pull a twenty out of my purse and drop it onto the table. She demands to know where I'm going.

'Home.' I give up.

She starts talking again. Something about not leaving. We're not done talking. That sort of thing.

I've pissed her off again but right now, with tears still making tracks down my face I don't care.

It's been made clear to me this week. My stepmother is human and has feelings. That doesn't stop her from being a bitch. That doesn't stop her from having done everything she has.

I'm grateful for everything she's done for me. She just makes it hard to see it through all she's done to me.

I want to talk to her. This what I expect the outcome to be.

I'm allowing myself to hope that I'm underestimating her. Though I know it's going to hurt when it turns out I'm right.

[akanetuk]

This is interesting