Monster Mum

The last time I looked at her before I walked out the front door, I wish I could have been standing in front of a mirror, window, pair of sunglasses anything with a reflection just so I could witness the look of absolute disgust and hilarity on my face as I picked up an old duffle bag, and my Ibanez acoustic and waltzed right on out. It was at this very moment I made a mental note, a vow if you will to leave my Mum altogether. Why this time actually stuck I will never know. This dance had become a ritual over the years. Tears and FUCK YOUs thrown back and forth: and nothing to show for it besides tired eyes, and a headache that never went away. I know this is the part where I'm probably supposed to say that I love my Mum despite the fact, and will always hold her in my heart, and while unconsciously that may be true, right now I see no other way than wishing I could forget her.
Throughout life we can't just turn people into bad memories, because we'll always know they are there, as long as we live in the same vicinity, we will always be looking over our shoulders, wondering. This is not that type of story; this is an ongoing event, an argument that never seemed to end until this night. It was here I ended the battle between a Mum and her eldest of kin. Here we are or--- here I am standing outside the cookie cutter house I grew up in, waiting for my best friend of ten years to come scoop me up, wishing I could throw a fifty pound medicine ball through the back windshield of my Mum's 2008 Acura TL.
I know as children growing up we often tried to imagine we were somehow magically separated at birth. I often thought this while I paced back and forth in my room, a place where I spent most of my days for various crimes I had committed throughout the house. There are times I'm sure we all wished our parents were not in fact out parents, just too dumb to realize they brought home the wrong child, and never thought twice about it. I may be entirely wrong here, and feel free to correct, but I'm not quite sure this is how we're supposed to feel at the age of twenty-two, nearing twenty-three. In the heat of our last argument I questioned my Mum, it went something like this:

ERIE: (Throws hands up.) "Are you sure this is right? You took the right child
home? There was no mistake?"
MUM: (Says nothing, just shakes her head and scoffs.)
ERIE: (Wide eyed.) "Are you positive?"
MUM: (No Reply.)

I can understand why my Mum effortlessly scoffed at this idea; I am the spitting image of my Mum. Sadly, we both share the looks of our Italian heritage: dark hair, olive colored fair skin, lightly freckled around cheeks, so rosy blush would never do them justice. I am my Mum's daughter looks wise, beyond our shared gene pool we share nothing else, unless you count countless and futile arguments, that got us nowhere except where I am now, outside of a house among rows of houses that never looked so unfamiliar before in this life.
What led to this final even, and this final goodbye was the fact that while I am twenty-two years old, I am still doing things an eighteen year old would do. After being out of the United States Navy for only a month, I managed to blow what money I had on alcohol and drugs, and was now faced with the predicament of being homeless and hungry. What child wouldn't turn to their parents for support? What I failed to remember was that bridge had long since been burned with my own match, by the shenanigans I had pulled over the past seven years. I was no home, in Mesa, Arizona with my tail between my legs at the mercy of my Mum and stepfather, George. George walked out of the room the minute I opened my mouth to explain, saying something about how he had already given me a "crapload" of advice, good riddens to him. My Mum just looked at me, and though she'll never admit it, there was disappointment smeared all over her face. Mum always had this issue with the "D" word. She was quick to deny any sort of disappointment in me; she liked to call it "worry." Mum grew up in a different in a different but yet similar situation as I did, only we went about it in completely different ways. She got pregnant to try and get out of high school; I popped a few little white pills to get out of my high school. I simply did this out of spite due to the fact that, while in the middle of trying to graduate a year early, my parents pulled the plug on me. Of course, neither plan worked, but at least in this case I wasn't saddled with a snot nosed puking infant.
Now, stop right there, and quit your judging for just a moment. In order to continue with this, whatever this is, I need to make one simple request; make yourself a cup of tea, and open your mind, don't be like my Mum, at least try to understand, because if you can't you'll never make it through this without a migraine.