The Brief Cycle

21 years and 8 months and I am still terrified. It comes in flashes and waves and I could be at work or in bed and I still stop and wonder if I am like her. Conversations will send me flying back and all of a sudden it hits me that I am being too loud, talking too much, if I could just time travel and take those last 30 seconds back and say something different.

I catch myself in a que, in a Sainsburys snack aisle and the small part of my brain will lash out- ‘oh god what is she wearing’ or ‘Jesus Christ is it really so hard to move out of my way’. These are things that she would have said, out loud and followed but a dramatic sigh or a harsh singular laugh. I catch myself before I can even finish the thought and remind myself that that girl was brave to wear that, that the person in my way had every right to be in this aisle the same as me. The world does not revolve around me.

There was an instance when I was 12 where she chased me up the stairs screaming like she was made of pure hellfire, and when I was cowering on the floor I caught a glimpse of her face. It reminded me of the evil queen as she offers snow white the poison apple, twisted and angry. I always found it sweet that she stopped screaming when she saw how petrified that had made me. I now realise that no decent parent would have taken it that far. I know I never will, even with the other inevitable parenting disasters I’m sure to be the cause of.

There are many things I know to never do with my own children when I have them- and they are all from the things she thought was okay too. My children will never sit in my living room getting high with me, they will never wait in the bathroom with bloody underwear for an hour as I call everyone I know to laugh about the fact they have their first period. My children will never have to console each other at 4am as I scream that I’m going to kill their father. I will never grab them and throw them to the floor and scream and I will NEVER belittle what they look like.

Every day when I look in the mirror there is yet another tide. It’s a tide that has been building since my memories began. Snide comments about my hair, my eyes, my nose, my skin……I draw on eyebrows because I was told my ginger ones basically didn’t even exist and so ‘I look like an alien’. I practised eyeliner for hours because that’s what women do and’ I was basically a boy’. I learnt to run in heels because ‘I couldn’t live in trainers.

But then I remember- its 21 years and 8 months and I am nothing like her. When she was my age she was spiteful and bitter and a mother. 21 years down the line and she is still the same.

I had the option to be all of these things, but I put them aside, I changed my path. I took control of everything I could, and I have run with it. I dress how I want; I drink what I want. I watch what I want and whenever she insults me, it gives me a thrill. I am here, myself and trying. In 21 years, I will have made even more progress.