Dear Mum

Dear Mum

There’s a lot of stuff that I often find I want to say to you but never do and in all likelihood never will. And even though I am writing this to get a few things off my chest I am actually glad you’ll never read it because, even though we argue, I would never intentionally say something or do anything that would hurt you, I am not that kind of person.

I have been bullied for the vast majority of my life and off all the bullies I’ve had you were always the worst, you were the only one I couldn’t deal with. There are only two ways, that I know of, to deal with bullies. You either have to show them they can’t hurt you or show them that you can hurt them more than they can hurt you. Neither of which I could ever do to you mum, you’ve always known how to hurt me the most. Over the years I’ve learned to live with the constant nit picking, the pointless arguments, the persistent name calling, the continual undermining, the threats of violence and the snide comments. It’s just become a part of my day to day existence, to put it simply it has become the norm for me.

I have spent the vast majority of my life feeling that I don’t belong, I’ve never really felt like part of the family and it’s only in recent years that I’ve discovered that you can make your own family, the one forced upon you by birth doesn’t have to be the be all and end all. Thankfully I have my own family now and even a place that I really do feel that I belong and can call home. It makes me happy to be there and be with my family, even in the relatively short time that has passed since I got my home I’ve had some of the best times of my life there. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been some good times with you, because there certainly has, but they’ve been very few and far between and are getting further and further apart with each passing year.

Throughout my teenage years and well into my twenties I would go to sleep at night hoping to not wake up, the thought most prominent in my mind throughout this period of my life was how I didn’t belong and that no one would actually care if I didn’t exist anymore. For the longest time the only things that kept me from doing anything stupid was my own stubbornness, the anger you caused me and a deeply ingrained dislike of physical pain. For the longest time those thoughts were never very far from the surface, thankfully they’re buried now and I never have to go back there again.

Mum, you have been one of the biggest influences of my life, you have played a major role in the person I have become and the person I want to be. Even though I know that it has damaged me emotionally and will continue to have an effect on my for the rest of my life, I have come to believe that my working through all the hostility you have often shown towards me has made me a stronger person and has made me better equipped to deal with many of the harsh things life will throw at me. Unfortunately it seems that no matter how old I get or how much I armour myself against it, whenever I’m around you, you still manage to bring out the worst in me and I hate that. For the last few years I have been slowly working to supress what you bring out in me and I genuinely believe that one day I will be free of that part of myself. Who knows, when it’s finally gone, when I am a better person, I might even be able to like myself.

Yours Sincerely.

Your loving son.