My Mom

When I was small, and growing up with my mom, she always taught me that violence was wrong, and being not only the only parental influence in my life, but my best friend, I of course believed her and hung onto every word she said. She was a very radiant woman, with powerful beliefs and she was very anti-war, anti-bias, anti-corporation, and I grew up in her image, even physically. I've been told that I look almost exactly like her (even feminine :p), because of our similair black hair and blue eyes, and I like to sing and paint--just like her.
This is no coincidence, and I know that. I was vaguely interested in painting as a kid, but never music, even though I was lullaby-ed on Death in June, and Bauhuas. I sat front row in every one of her small, scarcely populated conerts, when she sang her heart out and played the guitar and blew kisses into the audience. Being a young mother, I suppose she still wanted to be a twenty year-old, but I felt that I may have kept her back from a lot of her oppurtunities.
She taught me about God...not Catholicism, Lutheran, Baptists...just God,and how he loved all of us, no matter what race, religion, sexual orientation or gender. She said it was okay that some of us didn't believe, because their Gods (if any) love them, no matter what. She was very religious, and thus, so was I.
The last night I spent with her, we were sitting on her bed, and we were talking about going to babushka and dedushka's for Christmas, but spending Christmas Eve at our small house in Toronto. I was excited, 13, waiting for Christmas Eve and my mom's birthday (It was her 28th, incidentally the same day). I painted her a portrait of herself, based upon a photo of her and the Wynter (her band), and I was really excited with the outcome.
She finished reading me Le Petit Prince (Saint-Exupery), and we fell asleep talking about New Years Eve.
The next day she sent me to Conner's (mom's drummer) and I stayed there until about 6 PM. When I got home, I came to a scene that never left my head. Ever.
There were police cars and an ambulance outside, two guys carrying out a stretcher and a body-bag. It was dark outside, and lights flashes a constantly. MY mind was totally crystal clear the whole time. I don't know why, but I couldn't think and Conner kept snapping his fingers in front of my eyes, and asking policemen what was going on.
My mom had a stalker. They'd known eachother for years, in fact.
They took me to the police station before I could even fathom what was going on and it took almost an hour for the head policeman to tell me that my mother was dead; that she'd been stabbed to death in her bedroom. I couldn't even cry. I said "oh." and asked to go home. I was totally in shock, it didn't follow through.
It wasn't until nearly midnight, when I was lying in bed at Conners, smelling the marijuanna from the next room when it occured to me: My mother is dead. Those phone calls she got: it had been the killer. It was her birthday, it was Christmas Eve, it was a Monday and it was our day alone together.
Lance came over the next day, with a stuffed animal for me. His eyes were all streaky (he'd been wearing eyeliner) and he started hugging me and he didn't let go. I stayed at his house until the funeral, and even at the funeral, I stood in the freezing rain, with no umbrella, no tears, and only Lance's hand to grip while I shook in anger.
Despite all the evidence, even, they dropped the case as a suicide.

Even with this, I forgot my mom's talks about violence. When I got angry, instead of supressing it, expressing myself creatively, I began to hit things, break stuff and hurt people. It never occured to me that this wasn't what she would have wanted. It was all about God had taken what I had loved, and I'd do anything to make people feel the same way. That was my New Years Resolution: To stop giving a damn about God, to stop making an effort to like people, and to rant, and rave, and fight for whatever it is I wanted, even if people got hurt. If they were in my way, I figured they were expendable.
I was expelled a few times, sometimes for things I didn't do, but mostly because of my violence, my explicit language, my broad social statements. I never felt compelled to anything good from then on, I just dug myself deeper and deeper into the hole.
I was to go live with my father, a lawyer, a man who lived in a 2 million dollar house and a man I had never met before in my life. A man who had another family, and never even asked for a picture of me to put in his wallet. The man who abandoned my mother in favor of a woman he had met at their "wedding".
I refused, and lived on the streets for a year and a half, until he finally forced me to, by law.

My main point is that I was wrong. About everything. I took it out the wrong way, and I ended up eating twice a week, getting kicked out of school, landing in a coma, countless suicide attempts, psycho-analysis, falling into a deep depression and getting assaulted by strangers. Maybe worst case scenerio, but anyway: it's mine. Whatever it was my mother had said about violence, I had gone against that: destroyed her memory and it feels like shit to admit it, but it's true. I screwed up my life based on this and I wish I could tell her I was worry, but of course, I can't.

To be conclusive, it feels good: to write things down, to know the worst is behind you, to feel that everything will be better soon. Even with loss, and confusion, and deep self-loathing there is always someone out there to help you. I wrote this partly for me, but partly for a friend: someone who screwed up, and fell on their ass, and will recover (hopefully) soon.

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