deep wounds

Those 'depressing reminiscences' I mentioned last night seem to have made their way into my conscience on several occasions today, so I thought I would do some self-therapy and write them out here in an attempt to get them out of my head. I don't like polluting this blogsite with comments about my mother, but sometimes the painful past can bubble up into my daily life and annoy me, and I like to be an honest online host, and share with you the truth about how I am feeling, so here we are. A day of gut-punching horrible moments when the behaviour and attitude of my matriarch in my youth surfaced from their hiding place in my subconscious and affected me rather unpleasantly.
There was a spell; a quite lengthy spell, as I remember it; where Sophie would have to come in from school and sort out tea for both Hannah and I. Mum would have 'popped out' to one of her 'social gatherings' and then would have forgotten us, or where she lived, or both. She would either crash through the door sometime after dark, turn up with (on a 'good' day) a couple of fellow drunks or (on the days we really hated) some terrible example of maleness that she had latched onto for some physical company, or even get brought home by the police after losing control and threatening to attack whichever poor barkeep had refused to serve her any more drink. That stuff started as an occasional mishap but then became an alarmingly regular pattern that I think went on for about six months. Then she had some kind of remorseful awakening and toned it down to 'be a proper mum' again. There were brief feelings of relief for me and my siblings, but sadly mum's interpretation of what being 'a proper mum' should entail were a long way away from what young children really required. And in a terrible way, the terrible behaviour would be easier to deal with than the 'nice' stuff, because at least we knew where we stood with her, and what to expect on a daily basis. When she was trying to make an effort, she was paying us more attention and wanting something in return, and we were never able to get it right. Sit beside her for a cuddle and she'd accuse us of being needy.
Make her a cup of tea and she'd accuse us of trying to poison her. If we tried to force down the undercooked sausages she had cackhandedly cooked at an inappropriate time she would lose it and cry an apology, or angrily tell us we were patronising her. And I'm sorry if that last sentence or two didn't make sense, but when I start writing about her it takes me right back there and I lose all ability to think straight.
So I'll leave it there for now.

RC 14-10-24