My Mother's and Father's Daughter ~Written By Sugar~

My mother was never supposed to end up like this - alone, depressed, even at times wondering why she was still wandering the earth, in search of another that would make her happy, that could fill the deep hole within her heart. As I watch her now, suffering through her trickling tears with her long black shiny hair framed around her face, I can't help but wonder myself; what was so special about him? What happiness did he provide for her that I cannot? Why is that hole in her heart not filled by me?

Have I not brought her any joy? Have I not been good? Is something wrong with me? These questions have plagued my mind since before I can remember, haunting me almost, and telling me that I wasn't any good. I was doomed to help her from the very start, in a matter of speaking. She was doomed and I could do nothing about it.

Another sob from her bedroom echoes through my ears, another hard fist slammed into the pillow. In the early days, I can remember whenever she would go to her room to cry these pain filled shrieks, she would always shut the door and leave me unattended to play in my own room, apparently oblivious to her actions next door. But nowadays, as I have grown over the years, she has stopped caring whether or not I can hear her; which she of course by now knows I can. I think she knew all along I could hear her sobbing throughout the night, and that I could hear her shouts and cussing through my bedroom walls as I lay there, in my bed as a small child which made to grow up faster than any child should have to.

The setting is dark and shadowed. The curtains are drawn all around our tiny Doxy infested house, making it near enough impossible to see without the flickering television in the background. I have come to learn, that this house, this atmosphere that she has created, represents what she is feeling inside, what she has become. I do feel so much for her, but it is hard not knowing what emotion or thought is passing through her troubled mind without ever experiencing the loss with her.

My stomach turns as I can see her from the couch, my arms dangling over the side as my eyes gaze to where she is resting upon the bed. A lump. She thinks she is nothing. I know she has this sick idea of wanting to die, to be left for dead upon his grave. I can't seem to imagine why. Why would she want this when she has me? I should be enough of a reason to live, I am hers after all. I have watched her cry, I have comforted her from a tender age where I should be in no position to be able to properly comfort anyone, and yet I did. I stroked her hair while she laid in the same bed, hiccuping cries in her tormenting nightmares. I would be too scared to sleep myself; all I wanted to do was protect my mother, my beautiful mother.

It was just us, alone. Me and her against the world, as she used to say. My grandparents didn't want anything to do with her since finding out, at just sixteen, that she was indeed pregnant with me. Not only do I have issues with the family members who abandoned my mother when she needed them the most, but I am finding that every day I'm beginning to have that same resentment for my mother as I do for my estranged family.

My mother has been so stupid. I can see this. I know this.

I don't know if I am this talented child she preaches about, or used to preach about, telling me I was precious, that she had to protect me, because that's what he would have wanted. I am beginning to tear up, once again, thinking about these ridiculous statements she would make that I cannot possibly live up to. So much pressure has been applied onto my shoulders, not just for me to be this amazing, god-like child, but for me to have to watch over her. For me to be too scared to go back to school, in case the last time I would see her would be when she waved me off from the train station, crying into her sleeve and it wasn't because I was leaving for school or she was even worried about me, it was him all over again. He has ruined my life. Oh, didn't you know this? Didn't you gather this? She puts so much focus onto missing him, wanting him back; needing him to be here that she has erased her memory of her only child, of her only daughter.

Again, slumped upon the bed, she cries for him. The television is now commanding my attention, but for a few moments there I can't do anything but let my gaze rest upon her helpless body. She outreaches her hand, forgetting I am watching like a hawk, circling above a prey. It is then that I stand up when she digs into one of her bedside table draws, pulling from it a bottle of sleeping pills. I am on both feet; eagerly waiting of how many she intends to drown herself with. How many will she throw down her throat this time?

She pops the lid off and settles it by throwing it carelessly onto the floor; out tips fifty or more so pills onto her bed, and now the empty bottle lays to rest right next to her, tipping to a side.

My eyes are not bold, my eyes are not wide, nor are they sad - they are blank. Her hands curl around a few pills, picking them up gently and bringing them to her lips, they are gone within an insensitive instant. She goes for some more, resting these ten or so pills in the palm of her hand, and as she goes to throw them onto her tongue. I step forward, my shoe stepping on a stray quill, snapping it instantaneously in half.

She stops, pauses and then looks up. My mother, my beautiful but stupid mother. Her eyes plead with me to pity her, to feel her pain and her sadness that hovers inside her heart but I don't and I never have felt her pain. I know she cannot accept that, it's what scares me. What brings her to breaking point?

Her eyes are focused on my own and without the slightest regard to myself, the pills fall onto her tongue and she closes her mouth, reaching her hand down to pick up more. I lash forward and grab her doorknob, slamming her door viciously and violently shut so I cannot see her anymore, so I do not have to. My back is slumped against the chipped wooden door and in my imagination I can still see her eyes locked onto my own as she continues to swallow back those pills.

She does not care, not about me anyway. It is all about him and I have come to know that it's all her life will ever revolve around if she continues down this dark path to destroy herself. She does not wish to live for me, she cannot live for me. Does this anger me? Yes. Does this upset me? Yes. Does it make me feel helpless? Yes, most of all. I have been there, always, caring and loving her since before I can remember, but most of all, feeling helpless because I should be enough when I am obviously not.

Tears; I can feel them jogging down my face, leaving those streaking marks as I quietly sit myself down on the couch. I know what I look like and I know my name, yet I do not know who I am. I can see my reflection in the mirror that hangs on the opposite wall, I look distraught, yet I am not sure if I actually feel so inside.

I can see my face and how well I resemble my mother, everything on me but my eye colour is hers and this is why my mother says I am special, because my eyes are a gift from my father. They are grey, which is not common in the Asian race. My mothers are brown, yet mine have to be grey. I don't want them to be, that's just more of a reminder for my selfish mother to remember him by, to cling onto lost hope that he is here, lurking around somewhere, not even taking it into account that it is merely genetics and nothing more.

I can see no traces of my father in me but my eyes, but my eye colour, that is. I have not got his white skin, or his sandy hair. How am I supposed to know who I am?

I hear the door creak open, but I do not wish to look as it will finally put the nail into my coffin I have been dreading, making me unable, without the slight chance that I thought I had, to escape this suffering brought on by ones selfishness.

I feel someone's hand rest upon my shoulder and with this I break down. I sob and so does she; so does my mother who has not, after all, abandoned me. She brings my shaking shoulders into her chest and kisses the top of my head, my eyes are closed the whole time as I imagine how pleasant this would be if it were real, yet I can feel her touch and kiss; I can feel her fingers wrap around my hair as she continues to show me the affection I so desperately needed.

She whispers to me that things will get better, that she cannot bear for me to go through the same pain she has gone through. She does not want me to suffer, but yet, I already have. Does she not see this? All I wanted was for my mother to be there, to be able to come out of her room daily without the sightings of a tear streaked face, and, happy because of me, because she had me.

Her fingers brush the side of my cheek and she tells me she loves me, that she loves me terribly so. I sob these words back to her; I have never said them so freely before.

I know who I am...

I am my mother and fathers daughter: Ashiwaya Chang-Diggory.