Emergency Medical Dad

LXXVI: early december, present

"Of course," I manage. "Anything you need from me."

"Okay," she breathes in. "get in."

I wait, fidgeting, while she drives, ducking off the highway and stopping at a little gravel parking lot overlooking a lake. It's cute, but snowblown and looks cold enough to give someone hypothermia due to the wind and the way it's in a little basin.

She shuts off the truck, looking over the lake, lost look in her eyes, confusion on her features for a moment, then sorrow.

"My mom was never very nice to me," she breathes out.

I stay quiet.

"She used me as a second try for her life. She built me, ground up, to be a better version of herself to play puppet with. To redo what she was never given the chance to. She controlled my diet to keep me thin. She controlled my studying to keep my grades up. She controlled the sports I was in, my hobbies, my friends. She made me popular, she made me perfect. The model catholic school child. She picked the men I was allowed to be around, picked Evan for me before I even finished elementary school. She never let me be my own person, kept everything strict so I couldn't stray from it. She picked my college to be the one she dreamed of but didn't get into when I told her I wanted to go somewhere else, then, when I got pregnant with Connor, everything came crashing in on me. She realized she couldn't puppet her way through it and keep her views the same, so she made me carry it through when she knew that it was going to destroy me. I don't have an opinion either way on it. I would've been in a different spot in my life if I hadn't had Connor, I'd be a little healthier, I'd have a job, a career, a college education, and much different experiences. With him, I've experienced a lot of adversities that have made me stronger but I got very ill and it destroyed my chances at a career like the ones I wanted when I was younger. It's two different lives and I cannot compare them. That's not the point, though, I'm here now and she made sure that I kept him."

I watch her, keeping track of everything I can, the waver in her voice, the way her hands are wringing together, the way she's just staring at the lake, everything that could possibly give me a clue to what she's feeling.

"I kept him but her opinion toward me changed. I was no longer perfect and she made sure to tell me that. It was fine when she thought it was Evan's. She was fine with watching me suffer through it thinking I was going to get married to Evan the second it was all said and done. She even had it set up with his parents. But she called me names and she didn't help me, even in my lowest of moments through it all. I got sick, so sick. I was too small to handle it, and too underfed for my whole life, it wasn't pretty. I'm fairly certain the only reason I made it through was because my father made sure to be kind to me through all of it, he fed me extra, kept me out of her way, treated me with kindness.

"When the day came, I knew it, and my dad took me. My mom followed. It took almost forty eight hours and I was too exhausted and too sick and too injured at the end of it to process too much. They had me on oxygen, a whole bunch of things I don't remember. But they set Connor on my chest and I hated him from the moment I saw him. My mom saw it all, his skin was so dark at first and his hair was curly and brown from the moment he was born all the way until now. She realized then that he wasn't Evan's and called me a whore to my face, while I was trembling and barely alive."

My mouth is dry, begging for an emotion to send me to tears but I can't manage anything but shock and hurt, every part of me cursing myself for not being there. For not being involved, for not having her side through that. For not keeping her safe in that moment.

"I hated him," she breathes, closing her eyes. "For so long. And she made it worse, she hated him then, hates him now, call it the racism, the reminder that her perfect puppet girl isn't as perfect as she wanted, the fact that she never did like kids, any of it. She never liked him. And for a long while, I didn't either. He was a reminder that I'd ruined my life. My mom had convinced me I'd ruined my life. And then I realized that it was just a baby, he was just a little kid that liked it when I picked him up and liked tugging on my hair and didn't deserve any of it. He never did. He didn't deserve me treating him in the same way my mom treated me, so I was nice. And I still am. I raise him with all of the soul my mother never gave me and it's my mission to make him feel as loved as I possibly can. Through loving him, I started to heal myself from everything she said and," Jessie stops, her voice cracking. "And you've helped me finish it out, it's obviously a long process and it's going to take longer but you've taught me things that I didn't realize I needed to change, you taught me to say no and to not just be alright with my body but like it again and you've taught me that scars only tell a story, not the whole narrative and I'm here now. I made it here."