A Farewell To Harms

Mother won’t be with us anymore. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the courts decision, but hers. Apparently it’s all our fault that she needs to drink and acts like a mentally abstract walrus every day, so she’s taken herself off to the city ‘for the good of her health’. It feels very odd. The woman who bore me and raised me is out of my life in an unexpected way, and now the burden of housekeeper has fallen onto my shoulders. On the plus side, though, I feel safe venturing from my bedroom for the first time in 18 months, and the smell of faint piss and spilt whisky is finally beginning to lighten in the living room.
It was never the same since I came back from university really. No, that’s inaccurate - it was never the same since I was thirteen, when mum decided to neglect her parental duties in favour of watching Supermarket Sweep and accepted liver damage into her life like the God she had searched for since puberty.
I wonder what she was like before puberty? Was she full of hope and ready to be thrust upon the world as a valued, trusted member of society? Was she planning a career in nursing, or working towards a dedication to academia? I suspect she was spending more time in the off licence than the classroom, and showing boys her fanny for the price of a cigarette.
She’s asked us not to contact her until she ‘settles down and finds herself.’ We’ve asked her not to come home before Hell freezes over, or she’s sober.
I bet I know which will happen first…

RC 27-8-08
1825 BST