i spent a great deal of time wondering why she couldn't understand me, why she couldn't get me. i am- i am- before i can ever finish my sentences, she cuts in with her own. she remarks that someone said something really funny about me. do i want to hear it? in my heart, i say, no, but it doesn't really matter what my answer is because she is already in the process of telling me. that someone said, that i wouldn't understand anything, because i am too young. just not matured. really, the thinking, is just not there. she laughs and asks me, isn't that funny? no, it isn't funny. oh, comes the retort, but it's funny because it's true. no it isn't true. over and over again, i am slammed and shot in the head, in the chest, right in the pit of the heart with the words, immature, childish, ignorant, and shallow. you're so shallow, she would say. you're so damn shallow.

in the process of trying to heal herself, in the process of trying to talk out her issues, she breaks me down and crushes me into smithereens. it is as though we are both in the middle of the ocean, and she can't swim, and neither can i, but i can keep myself afloat somehow, and she can't. so she holds on to me and she pushes me down. she pushes me down in order for her head to stay above the water level. and i am underneath, my eyes wide open, looking at how blue and how green the water is, and wondering if i should struggle, if i even have the right to struggle against my mother, or if i should just accept my fate and enjoy how blue and how green the water is. eventually i will stop breathing anyway. it is only a matter of when, and how.