Too Much To Ask

No matter how hard I try I honestly can’t hate my mother. She’s a cold, heartless, self-righteous bitch, but she is still my mother and she wasn’t always like this. She used to act like she cared about me. There are memories running around in my head of times that my mom actually loved me. Moments when she didn’t think I was a mistake. We were close, once. Even after Jack started hitting me.

I remember when I was younger, up until I was about eleven, my mom and I were really close. She’d try to stop Jack from hitting me. We’d talk after school and she’d make me cookies and milk, or sometimes cake. Our relationship back then was probably very similar to Justin’s relationship with Jennifer. She’d tell me that she loved me every night before I went to bed and I never once doubted that she did.

I’m not really sure what changed. I know it had something to do with one of my birthdays, but that’s all I know. I remember that my parents started fighting a lot more often and my mom started drinking a lot more often, and that’s when things started really going downhill. She started to hate her life and hate her marriage and subsequently hate the fact that Claire and I were born. She mostly blamed me because I was the topic of most of their arguments.

Not many people know this but I actually have a speech impediment. It’s very subtle and most people don’t even notice it, but it’s there and I’ve had it since I was born. It’s a minor little thing really. Rather than saying the letter “s” with my front teeth like most people do, I say it with my molars. If you’re paying REALLY close attention you can hear a difference. Whenever I was giving a presentation I would concentrate on saying my “s” with my front teeth. I have to really think about it in order to get it to work.

I bring this up because my lisp was discovered when I first started speaking in coherent words. Of course that means that it wasn’t truly discovered until I was about four or five years old. As soon as my mom found out about my lisp she wanted to put me in speech therapy to help me correct the problem. My dad outright refused. He said that I was costing them enough money as it was and there was no way he was going to pay unnecessary expenses to someone just because I couldn’t talk right.

Now, when I was a kid, the lisp was a lot worse. It was very noticeable. I got teased a lot at school because of it and I was a completely miserable child because of all the teasing. This is why my mother wanted to put me in speech therapy. She brought it up on several occasions. She thought if the lisp was corrected I wouldn’t get made fun of anymore and then I’d be a little bit happier. Yes, Joan Kinney actually wanted me to be happy. That’s when I heard the one sentence I will never forget as long as I live.

“He’s done nothing but make me miserable, why should he be happy?” My dad said this after my mom explained to him why she wanted to put me in therapy. So there it was. It was the first time I’d ever heard that my dad regretted my existence. I ran to my room and threw myself down on my bed and I started crying. My mom came up to check on me a little while later and I remember she just held me and rocked me a little and sang to me. I felt loved and wanted and I fell asleep there in her arms.

That’s why I couldn’t let her drive herself to church in the state she was in. I knew she’d get in a wreck and I just couldn’t live with myself if she got hurt because I was too stubborn to go to church with her. And she was actually being slightly civil, so I figured why not? The church service wasn’t all that bad. But I guess I was just actually happy to be spending time with my mom for the first time in a long time when she wasn’t criticizing me. I actually enjoyed myself. Of course the fact that my most recent fuck was the minister made it a little more interesting.

When she showed up at the loft I was so ready to tell her to just fuck off. I didn’t want her there because Justin was there and I knew that if she found out he was there she’d put two and two together, and I honestly didn’t want that because I knew exactly what would happen. The chocolate, chocolate chip cake was the clincher though. That cake is my one true weakness. It didn’t matter what kind of day I’d had when I was a kid, I would come home and smell that cake and she’d have a piece waiting for me with a glass of milk and my day was ten times better. Add to that the fact that she hadn’t baked one of those cakes for me since I was about twelve or thirteen and you understand why I let her in.

When she said that she wanted to be close like we once were I actually felt good. I really do love my mother, regardless of anything else, and I really do miss having the close relationship we had when I was a kid. I just didn’t know if that could happen again because I knew that eventually I’d have to tell her the truth about myself and I really didn’t want to do that. And then Justin came out of the bedroom and she found out anyway and suddenly she hated me. It was that quick. I went from being the loving son she wanted to get to know again to being a disgraceful sinner, doomed to Hell.

I think honestly that the only thing that has ever hurt worse than when my mom told me I was going to hell would have to be when my dad told me that I should be the one dying instead of him. I just don’t understand how she could change that quickly how she felt about me. I wanted to get close again. I wanted to have a good relationship with her. And she threw it all away strictly because I’m queer.

And then the whole thing with John happened. Her believing John over me. My heart literally broke into a million tiny pieces. I knew at that moment that any chance of ever reconciling with my mother was gone. The fact that she would think that I would actually do something like that hurt beyond words. And all because I’m gay. I’m a goddamned fag. So of course I would do something as despicable as molest my own nephew. Why not? It’s what we fags do, right? We’re all destined to burn for eternity so why not make it worth our while?

I just wish that she could get past the fact that I’m gay and want to be my mother again. I’ve been gay my whole life. I’m not any different now than I was when I was ten. But for some reason her having that knowledge changes everything. Why does it have to matter? Yes, I understand that she’s a totally religious woman. I understand that she spends more time at church than anywhere else. She has since I was in junior high. That’s just the way she is. But I am also her son and she’s supposed to love me no matter what. I just don’t understand why she can’t do that. I don’t understand why she has to think that I’m this horrible person. All I want from her is love and acceptance and understanding. But apparently that’s too much to ask.

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