she’s still listening

a few years after i got married  my mother told me that she found a big box full of years and years worth of journals. i started writing one when i was five and still write them today. she asked if i wanted them. i said yes but i was terrified because all my emotions were there, all the things that i experienced in my life as a child and as an adolescent. everything. i’d poured it all into those journals. i found that my fears were well founded.

she called me a few days later to confront me with things she read in the diaries about her. she laughed as she told me how funny it was that when i was five that i said i hated her. she read the lines in the journal out loud and laughed some more. i was so filled with rage and fear i thought my heart was going to bust, full of so many negative emotions  that i couldn’t contain them anymore. she never sent them to me and i never forgave her for that.

those boxes were in St.Louis and i was in northern California.  there was no way i could have gotten there  before she read everything. for days i dreaded the required one hour phone call each morning. that’s right, she insisted that we talked on the phone for about an hour every fucking day. i was panicky before the call and a disaster afterwards. she talked on and on and on and prompted me to reply to everything she said. when i got off one of those calls i was always sobbing. i had to hide everything that i thought and felt because i believed she was telepathic. she said she knew what i was thinking. she said i couldn’t hide from her. she could see inside of me.

in my mind i had to hide all my bad feelings and thoughts, even inside my own brain.

i haven’t had contact with her in almost ten years. but she still haunts me. i think she’s still listening.