Narcissist
Content Warning: Mention of Suicidal Ideation
I was my mother’s emotional support animal. As a child, I would bring her tissues from the bathroom to blot her eyes and blow her nose when she cried and I would hold her until she stopped. She cried a lot and I never knew why, just that I could sometimes make her stop. Once, when my mother was crying, I told her that the angels said she shouldn’t cry. She wasn’t an avid Christian―she didn’t have it in her to be dedicated to anything but bad habits―but for some reason this stuck with her. I think it made her believe I was some kind of prophet or medium; that I had an ability to commune with forces unseen and she took comfort from it. In reality, I was a child that needed a larger and more magical entity than myself to comfort my mother and decided the alleged words of an angel speaking through me was something my mother would listen to. She did. I never received the same comfort. My mother never kissed, hugged, or told me she loved me. One night, I went to her room, hugged and kissed her goodnight and told her I loved her. For a long while, I did this every night. When I realized it was never going to be reciprocated, I never did it again.
When I grew older, she would keep me home rather than allow me to go to a friend’s house. She would tell me no, and when I asked her why she would say, “Because.” I grew frustrated with this and took initiative. I started planning everything precisely with no obligations for my mother. I planned a ride there, I planned a ride back, I did my chores and then some beforehand, I finished my homework, and then I would ask her. She would tell me no, and when I asked her why she would say, “Because.” I stopped taking no for an answer, and found that if I became a thorn in her side, and if I kept asking why, and if I kept telling her all of the things I did to be able to go, and all of the arrangements I made, and if I got loud, and if I got persistent, and if I pestered, she would break and let me go just to get me to stop. I didn’t care what I had to do, as long as I got out of that house. I realized later she didn’t want me to go because she didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to spend time with me, she didn’t want to have dinner together, she didn’t want me to help her clean. She just wanted the peace of mind of having me in the same house; the peace of mind that if she was going to be alone, I was going to be alone along with her. The more she tried to keep me close and caged, the more I fought to get away. I would leave the house for months at a time, washing my underwear in a friend’s bathroom sink until the spell broke and I was dropped off at home and I went back to devising a way to break free again. She blamed me for this later, telling me I left her in that house alone when she needed me, but I had lost interest a long time ago in preening and tending to her preservation as if she were a troubled plant determined to rot.
She would tell me things that other parents knew to keep to themselves. I asked her if she loved me and she told me she didn’t because I was being annoying. She would complain about my father not paying child support and sent me as a collector for my father’s debt. She would tell me of all the things she could possibly take him to court for and all of the petty ways she could possibly do to make his life worse. She would tell me that she was struggling to pay bills and that we were going to lose the house. She told me it was my fault I didn’t hide my Christmas and birthday money better and that’s why it was stolen by the drug addict “friend” she let roam the house unsupervised. She told me if I didn’t start behaving she would send me to live with my dad. Then―when she realized I would go live with him of my own volition―she told me she would kill herself. She told me I was a selfish, heartless bitch. I asked her who she thought I got it from.
Haley Smith (she/her) is a fourth-year Creative Writing major with a certificate in Copyediting and Publishing at the University of Cincinnati. She was a poetry editor for the Fall 2023 issue of Short Vine, the University of Cincinnati’s undergraduate literary journal. She wants to be an editor and author in the future. She loves fiction, poetry, and is recovering from her life being swallowed whole by the Sarah J. Maas universe. In her free time, she likes to spend time with her daughter (who also happens to be a puppy), read, and find reasons to buy “a little treat.”