Defining Moments

It was Friedrich Nietzschehas who said, “What doesn’t kill you makes, you stronger”. I like to call these moments in a person’s life, “defining moments”. Additionally, I like most people, have had a few of these “defining moments”; probably more than one person should. Growing up, I had a hard time accepting one of my “won’t kill you-make you stronger” moments. It was a moment of betrayal and deceit, inflicted upon by a person I trusted fully and completely, with my life. My mother.

My mother had it rough growing up. Forced to be out of the house nearly by dawn and only to return by nightfall, she was ignored and turned away by her mother. All throughout her childhood, and most of her young adult life until she ran away, my mother was pushed onto other family members. When my grandmother ran out of family members, she would leave my mom with foster parents for months of a time. She wasn’t a bad kid; she didn’t misbehave. She just wanted someone to want her around, someone to love her. Regrettably, the reason my grandmother went to such lengths to get rid of her own daughter, was for a man. Moreover, it wasn’t just one man it was every man. When grandmother was single mom was allowed in the house and was treated quite nicely, as a daughter should be treated by her mother. However, it was sayonara for my mom when grandmother was seeing a man. Given her upbringing, my mother always swore that we, my sister and I, were the most important things in her life and we always came first. If I could trust anything, I could trust this.

My mother and father divorced when I was too little to remember. He got heavily involved into drugs and we never saw him again. I have no memoires of him, just a few pictures. Shortly after the divorce mom...

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... I finally gave up on trying to protect my mother, when it was so apparent that she didn’t want to be saved. I took my son and myself out of the equation and pressed charges against him. Not surprisingly, my mother bailed him out of jail.

It took only a few more years until my mother got rid of him. Once she did, she began seeing a counselor and working on mending her wrongs with Jelly and I. My sister is clean and sober and my mom is actually seeing a good guy. I have moved on from this whole experience, but I will never forget. I will never forget the betrayal, the disloyalty, the humiliation, and the utter deceit I experienced by the hands of someone who promised never to hurt me. My defining moment has taught me understanding, patience, and that I can’t be mad at someone for who they are; I can only accept them for who they are or not accept them at all.