My Mother And I Are Both Female . . .
- The Narrator
- May 3, 2020
- 1 min read
I remember that I was eleven years old when sitting across from my mother at the kitchen table she explained to me how at the moment of my conception her life was ruined . She narrated the circumstances - her marriage at fifteen, her pregnancy being reported to the school by a neighbor, she being forced to leave school, my birth at seventeen. I went to my room, with a heaviness in my chest, feeling very strange about our situation. I realized that the only cure for her unhappiness
. . . for her ruined life . . . was for me to be dead, but it seemed too late for my death to be an actual cure. There was no cure. There was only our mutual despair.
I could not save her.
You and your mother represent opposite ends of the female spectrum. She: an insensitive but living organism able to reproduce. You: an incredibly sensitive and intelligent organism able but choosing not to reproduce. I am unnerved at the cruelty of a mother saying such damaging things to a girl about to cross over to her own child-bearing years. One wonders why she was married so very young. If life were logical it might be expected that her own bitterness and disappointment would be focused on that event rather than your birth two years later.
You and your mother represent opposite ends of the female spectrum. She: an insensitive but living organism able to reproduce. You: an incredibly sensitive and intelligent organism able but choosing not to reproduce. I am unnerved at the cruelty of a mother saying such damaging things to a girl about to cross over to her own child-bearing years. One wonders why she was married so very young. If life were logical it might be expected that her own bitterness and disappointment would be focused on that event rather than your birth two years later.