Blinding Reflection

I was a miserable and lonely character. My life was filled with reflection and fear. At thirty-three years of age I was still living with my psychologically disturbed mother. Her way of life was rubbing off on me. I was becoming the woman I feared I would never become. People would say we looked alike. They said we both had faded brown hair, only my mother’s was scruffy, short and worn out. They said our personalities reflected each other’s. I knew day by day I was becoming more like her. I was in denial. The way I approached things in this sickening cruel life was exactly like how my mother approached the world. I feared that I would commit the same sins that she had.

Most of my childhood was spent observing the behaviour of my mother and father. I was told that my parent’s relationship came to an end as my father couldn’t cope with the constant arguments over the lack of money. My mother told me that my father left and no one had heard of him again. She told me that it was probably that best decision the he had made during their married life. I later learnt the truth. My mother embedded my head with lies. My father did not leave. His life was heartlessly taken away from him. Taken away by a woman who claimed to have loved him?

I dreaded conversations regarding my father. My whole life was a lie! I knew that when my mother spoke about him, she would only speak ill of him. Somehow I came to the conclusion of bringing this topic up myself. I confronted my stubborn mother about what really happened to my father.

“Err, tell me, tell me again what happened to my father?” I asked nervously as I hoped that my mother would answer.

“It’s been almost 20 years, forget it” she replied in a lifeless tone.

I was beginning to become...

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...er and louder. Tick tock, tick tock. These slight noises were leaving me feeling agitated. I couldn’t help but think of the anger my mother felt every day for the past 20 years.

My knees began to wobble. I felt weak. I was going over my alibi in my head over and over again. I could visualise newspaper headlines “Widow mourning after daughter murders father”, “Widow lives with her husband’s murderer”. I couldn’t possibly endure any of this guilt. Sooner or later someone would know. I looked towards my mother, everything about her was undesirable. This burden would turn me into the women I had accused all my life. What did I do? What led me to kill my father? All these unanswered questions left me regretting bringing up the conversation of my father. Clutching tightly onto a picture my mother looked at me and sobbed muttering the words death really did do us apart.