22 | October | 2013

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/daily-prompt-harsh/, DP, Daily Post

Tell us about the harshest, most difficult to hear — but accurate — criticism you’e ever gotten. Does it still apply?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us HARSH.

This is just too weird. This prompt’s topic and a poem I wrote earlier today titled, All Out of Love, https://terry1954.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/all-out-of-love/

It just is so darn freaky how the mind works. It is ticking even when I am not. After seeing this prompt and wondering why in the world I was writing poetry about my real mother, God only knew.

Before I started writing this I sat here a few minutes thinking. Looking at the date, the month and then I knew. It is almost my real mother’s birthday and also very close to the date of her death.

Oh don’t feel bad or say I am sorry. I heard she died from some stranger on Ancestor. com. I had forgotten that many moons ago I had went on there out of curiosity to see if her name may be there. When I found out there was a charge to belong, I chose instead to leave a comment asking about her.

And even this is plain stupid because I knew for years where she was. I had went to see her three different horrible times. I just wanted to bond so bad. After the last trip out to visit I put the pain and her out of my mind. She didn’t want me and she didn’t want Al.

What she did want was the babies she gave up. She didn’t like the adult part. I let her memories erase from my mind but every once in a while I would allow them to sneak back in and go over my past life.

After calling her with no answer and getting that familiar recording, the number has been changed, I thought that strange. She had lived in her home for years. Even when I tried to write to her, it came back undelivered. This is when I went on the man hunt and ended up at Ancestor.com

A stranger emailed me a few years later and said she had died. Well, that explains why the phone and address were no longer valid. I went through a mourning even though she didn’t deserve it and neither did I. I hurt and cried for a mother I never got to really know.

All she showed me was her bad side, and believe me it wasn’t pretty, and sometimes down right scary. She didn’t deserve us kids, but yet here today I was writing about her.

I had another mom who took care of Al and me since we were five and four. She and I never bonded but a lot of that was my fault. I was a messed up kid who probably didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere.

Life went on. She and I had many ups and downs but when I look back on my life she was the best mom I could have actually had. There was not much show of love, which is what I always have craved but she took good care of me and my brother.

But when I became a teenager I rebelled. I did silly things in my eyes but I knew I was hurting her feelings, but I, at that time, thought she was hurting me too.

One day she said the ultimate words. The words that sliced through my heart and play a big part of my lack of self-confidence today. She said she could not love me like she did her other daughter she and dad had. Wow, what a blow. The feelings I always thought were true were verbally confirmed.

I have forgiven her and I have forgiven myself for my teen years, but when the topic is brought up my insecurities rise quickly. I was a bad kid. I had two moms and neither of them really wanted me.

It is hard to rise above. I tell myself, she didn’t have to marry into a ready-made family. She could have walked a way, so I have to give credit to her for loving me as much as she did. She tried her best, but sad to say, when ever I think back to those times and that day and that one statement, I cry once again.

http://youtu.be/h8VGQTtENSs