Mother and Child by MACKENZIE ROESKE

...
She’s my role model.
Or,
Is that a lie?
I can’t tell anymore.
She’s a woman who has endured so much, that much is true
But it is now that I see
She refuses to deal with her own things,
And instead puts them on other people.
It’s me, it’s me, it’s me.
I am the source of the guilt, I am the burden.
The biggest hardship she’s had to endure?
Me.
We have been struggling so much lately.
You see, I’ve gotten “too big for my britches”
That is to say,
I have gotten too confident,
But listen,
I have been put into a role that was not made for me,
I have filled shoes that I was not meant to wear,
I have become an adult in ways I was not supposed to,
Not.
Yet.
You see, I was robbed from a very young age.
My childhood was taken from me.
I endured hardships no child should ever have to endure
I became “mommy’s little helper” when I was 8 and I was taught,
Like so many little girls,
“Boys will be boys,” so, “Zip your lip” and “Smile.”
You see, when I came crying to my mother about a boy who almost broke my wrist,
She said so softly,
“Do you need to take a nap, you’re awfully upset.”
No mother,
I need you to go over there and kick his mom’s as-
Sk me how you can help.
Ask yourself,
What can ease my pain within your capabilities?
You see, when I told my mom about my abuse,
When I broke down in front of her,
Wracked with guilt,
With fear,
With anger,
She had the nerve
The goddamn nerve,
To tell me that what I had experienced
Was not real.
You see, we are in therapy now,
Trying to balance out our mother-daughter relationship
And you can understand why I find it so ironic.
I did not take this power,
And I certainly don’t want it.
I do not wish to be the adult, the mother,
No more than she wishes to be the child, the daughter
Except she does.
You see, she was robbed too.
Her own mother took her childhood,
And made her fill shoes she wasn’t meant to,
And my mother tells me,
Oh, she tells me that she doesn’t want to be like her mother.
She never wants to do that.
But she is so blind.
She blames me, for not living life the way she has.
For refusing these roles,
For not sucking it up and smiling like she was taught,
For living the way that I want,
So that she can no longer enjoy living vicariously through me.
The burden, the problem, the mistake.
It isn’t me.
I am not at all responsible for what she is feeling; if she is feeling sad, she needs to recognize that.