Acceptance

*Names have been changed to initials for privacy reasons.

Growing up I was always aware I was taken from my mom, L, after my dad left. I just never understood why. I would rarely ever see her except for supervised visits, and the only memory of my dad I have from when I was that young was staying with him and his girlfriend at the time at a motel for a couple days while L was sorting things out. I'd say I was around two, given the timeline of things. I got taken in by my grandparents on L's side when I was three. From there, I've heard different versions of what really happened. To my Oma, T, she had it coming with the way the house was being kept. To L, it was a false report and I was taken unfairly. After every visitation, I would get angry when we had to leave, and I'd keep that attitude for a while. I wasn't allowed to see her anymore, and my dad was completely out of the picture at this point.

I was adopted by my grandparents in 2006, and from there for a couple years my mom seemed to disappear too. As I got older, I began to put the pieces together. L had some addictions that were ultimately more important than getting me back, she never tried to get better or gave up too easily when given the opportunity. She'd come to our door whenever she was down on her luck, but we didn't know where she was living at the time. Due to Oma's soft spot with her daughter, even though it wasn't allowed, she'd let L stay in the house with us for a couple days at a time to make sure she had a place to go. Every time she'd come, there would be a fight within those couple days and L would storm off. We wouldn't hear from her again for weeks, maybe months.

There was a night where things really began to take a turning point. She showed up at our door around 10 or 11 at night, with her roommate at the time. We'll call him W. From there, we knew her address and where she'd been staying on and off for the past couple years. I tried to be optimistic, thinking she had finally settled into a place that looked far better than the way she kept the house I lived in with her. I was convinced she was trying to make a turn-around.

August of 2010 came. We lost our grandpa, her stepdad. She took it harder than a lot of us did. To this day, you can't mention his name or she gets worked up. We didn't hear from her for a while, and started visiting the place she and W were staying to see where she could be. W and her had started to fight more and more, and their apartment looked horrible. It was starting to clutter with her stuff. W had too soft of a heart to kick her out, and told us she would disappear for days on end, come back, sleep, and then leave again. From there, anytime we would see L she'd be irritable. I went from missing her to almost being afraid of her unpredictable outbursts.

Oma wanted to include her in family gatherings, since it was usually just the three of us. I can't name one peaceful thanksgiving or birthday I've ever shared with her. I'm ashamed to say it, but I was embarrassed of her behavior around other people. She was loud, rude, and always getting into arguments with Oma wherever we went. On a couple occasions, they turned physical. The police would get involved, but Oma never wanted to press charges due to the circumstances. L was her daughter, after all, and no matter how many times people told Oma that L wasn't a safe person to have around a child, Oma felt like she couldn't cut her off. I grew up with the same mindset. I was convinced that no matter how many terrible things L would say, or how much she took advantage of Oma and myself, it was out of my hands and she was "my mom". In more recent years, I took it upon myself to make sure she was okay.

Summer of 2016, things were civil. She began coming around more, and admitted she and W had lost the place they were staying. L began taking the couch in my room for a few days at a time. Into the fall semester of junior year, she was beginning to feel more and more parasitic, as horrible as that sounds. She slept all day, smoked, and would only get up at night to eat or shower. It began taking an emotional toll on me, seeing L like that. She looked awful. When she began to start drama again in the house with Oma and myself, my sympathy faded. She’d make side comments to me when Oma would leave the room about how she didn’t like Oma, or how she wished she’d “hurry up and die.” Of course I told Oma, but she’d just get a little upset and let it pass. When she began taking my things from me, that I was aware of, I began getting more hostile. She’d stay in the trailer out back instead of my room because I wasn’t allowed to let her in at night. L would still try to get ahold of me, texting and calling my phone because she knew I’d be up and see the messages. It was a scary feeling, knowing this violent person was on my property, and knew I was ignoring her. I stopped answering her phone calls and messages, and she’d start banging on the doors or yelling into the back windows because she “knew someone was home”.

I got worried for Oma’s safety in July of 2017 when L started messaging me things about her again. She showed up the fourth of July intoxicated and got furious when Oma wouldn’t let her into the house. That night, she messaged me asking about her cans and other items ( which weren’t hers to begin with ). I simply told her I didn’t know what happened to them and left it at that before going to bed. I woke the next morning to multiple messages from her. L continued to ride on the fact she wanted Oma dead and began stating how she wondered how soon that really would be, and considering the way she’d acted the night before I went from being a little upset to furious. Oma and I left the house before I told her about it. L was still on our property and I didn’t feel safe telling her these things without giving her time to understand what was actually going on. I pulled up the messages in a parking lot and explained she’d been doing this for a while now, on and off, and told her that at this point the only thing that could be done was to call the police. I’d been telling Oma, along with other people, for months prior to this incident, that she needed to leave. She never listened.

We got back to the house, and L was in the driveway throwing a fit about getting her car into our field where the trailer was, and Oma began to confront her about that. She didn’t bring up what I’d told her. I’m not sure why I did the things I did, but as Oma was walking off I pulled L to the side and told her I wasn’t going to be taking those kind of messages from her anymore, and that if she can’t respect me or the person she’s living with she should find a new place to go. I was tired of the tension.

She got in my face, shouting about how I was betraying her and stated, “After all I’ve done for you, you’re going to take T’s side in this.” All I could really say was, “ What have you ever actually done for me? ” before turning and rushing into the house. She was erratic and at that point I knew she couldn’t be on the same property as Oma and I, for our safety. I begged Oma to call the police, but she chose to drive us down to the station instead and finally make a report on it.

I broke down during questioning. It was pretty embarrassing, sobbing in the middle of a waiting room while Oma kept telling me to calm down. But I was mad at her, mad at the fact everything had gone on for so long and that it had to get this extreme for something to be done about it. The officers that helped us went down to the house and told her to leave, but told us that an actual eviction would have to take place due to the fact L had been taking residency on our property and had started receiving mail from our box. All they could do was tell her to not come back.

As the situation had finally died down, all I could really do was cry. I kept thinking about all the times L and I would talk, and I was dumb enough to believe she was trying to be a better person. L had told me things I can’t put into writing, for vulgar and personal reasons, but every single conversation we’d had was laced with manipulation the more I thought about it. Oma and I never talked about it again, every time L would get brought up Oma would get upset with me for my lack of compassion towards L. It was the basis of too many arguments to count, and the rest of that summer was miserable.

I was stuck at home constantly wondering whether or not L would just show up and cause more problems when I slept. I was on edge around Oma, trying to avoid most conversations with her. I understand it was her daughter, but sometimes I don’t think she understands that she was also my mother. But based on the way events had unraveled, “mother” wasn’t the right word for her. She never fought for me when she had the chance, and when I finally began to tell my closer friends about what’d happened between us, I realized it was okay to feel the way I did. Those conversations helped me realize that some people are too far along to be helped, and unfortunately L was one of those people.

I’m still currently in the process of accepting that I can’t have that type of toxic relationship in my life. I don’t want that type of future for whatever family I may have. I call L by her name now. Our last conversation was over a crude text, where she told me to lose her number, to put it politely. It hurts to accept that I only have one other family member, Oma, and that relationship is also very rocky.

Sometimes I wonder if raising L and seeing the way she ended up took an effect on Oma to the point Oma’s scared to end up with “another loss” , so she calls it. I’m pretty restricted as it is, and I still wonder about how wise it is for me to cut off L the way I plan to. I wonder who else I will ever be able to go to if things get rougher between Oma and myself. Despite what Oma may claim, we are two completely different people with different goals and outlooks on life. For now, the only thing clear to me is that through everything L and I had gone through, both our lives are better off without each other.