Life as I've sensed it - 1 - Not Loved

Life as I've sensed it.

A Memoir

Part-1

Not Loved

She was gone, I knew she was gone because she wasn't there anymore. Come to think of it I never even knew she was there. Hold on a minute. Now I am confused...thats because I can't remember her I rekon. A heart wrenching fact that will stay with me always is that I cant remember her. Not in a physical sense anyway. I've seen the pictures and I've heard the stories. She bore me, she birthed me, I am told she loved me fiercely, but I don't remember her, an unnatural state doubtless, to not remember my carrier, the one who would love and protect me with all of her maternal being. All I know is that I am motherless and a stranger is standing in front of me telling me she is now my MOTHER. Who is this spectre come along all unnatural and untrue? She's telling me I must call her Mother. Mum. Mummy maybe? Certainly not by her given name. I'm a child still...3/4 maybe and what I am being told to do I must do, I must do it because that's what kids do...what we are told. Because what do I know? But this feels wrong, I am but a tot still but I know this is wrong. Dad is broken, I try to ask him if I have to but he is broken. His mind and heart numbed dull and sad...She was the love of his life and she's gone and died and broke him.
A woman standing in front of me, who is not my mother, telling me that she is now. The very first file on my hard drive...My first clear recollection of statement of fact of feeling is this... I HATE HER

I was later told that the flat had burned. The combination of a hardworking, exhausted widower and a chip pan will take care of that. Flames don't grant quarter to babes and heart broke daddies, we are sure proof of that fact. On the doorstep of his mam he stood. My brother in his left paw, me in his right. It was gone...It was all gone, reduced to memory and carbon waste. I don't know the details in full but they took him, they took my brother from me, from my father, from where he belonged. Doesn't do to look after two boys when your a hollow shell of a man I suppose. So lets forgive dear Father for this woman. He thought we needed a mother, just so happens what we needed, she could never provide...But he wasn't to know that...he was broken.

It was a queer sort of feeling at the beginning of my memory bank. At the time I did not know any different. I could not remember my mothers love, so how could I in fact know that this was not the love of a mother? I remember my brother and I fighting for the scraps of something that might resemble love, some kind of affirmation of affection. But they were not there those scraps we desired so greedily, so needily.

The closest semblance of love I have ever felt from "A mother figure" was when I somehow manage a seat aboard her sacred Chair, this was the taste of love I'd longed for! Sitting next to Mummy and in reciept of contact so warm. This is it I thought! Looking back of course I know she was vested in her chosen sensory delight and simply tolerated my presence. but that didn't matter to me then, I craved that moment too fiercely to ruin it now it had come. A ridiculous moment, a non moment,entirly forgettable, admissable to most and rightly so. But to me it was everything. That one time I felt sweet fleeting maternity.

I knew we were unwanted, my brother and I...and I look at it now as a grown and settled man looking back like this. My Father. My beloved Father. Was a package deal and we were there to be put up with... not loved. Never loved.

Average Chris