Mom 1.0

First, not every one us going to like this post. Tough shit. Second, reserve judgment, there's more to come.

My Mom, the Overachiever:

This goes out, with fondest memories, for my mom.
Now, initial reaction may be, why not “goes out with love”, or “Missing You” or some such stuff.
We didn’t work that way. Love was a four letter word, and it was one of the only ones not thrown around my house repeatedly. I remember being at a neighbor’s house as a kid, they were off to bed (the kids) and we were leaving, and they hugged both parents and said “I love you”. My PTSD addled brain just kind of exploded in WTF moments. I was kind of Gary Coleman in a “Whatchu talkin ‘bout Willis” kind of thing.
You went to bed, without being threatened with an assbeating if you didn’t do it soon enough. There were hugs and this “love” stuff? What The Hell?
In talking to my mom’s sisters, when my mom had one goal in mind in finding a potential mate. She wanted to find a man So ugly, that “no other bitch would try to take him away”. So, yeah, seems that in addition to a splash of crazy, insecurity runs in my family as well. To say that my mom accomplished this goal is to make the understatement of the century. My mom didn’t set a lot of goals for herself that I remember, those that she did, she accomplished with pride, but this shit? This, find the ugly-motherfucker? She went SO over the top on this one that she could have won the ugly-motherfucker olympics. That, in a nutshell is my “dad”. You won’t hear me use the term father, because that at least implies some level of “give a shit”. This troll, for lack of funnier word at 9AM on a Monday stood at 5’6 and was So full of himself that you’d think he was 6’3 and a pro-baller. Fortunately, at least in my opinion, myself and all 3 of my brothers favor my mom, and my mom’s family, ‘cause if we had his bits, well, it might require elective surgery. We Did have his ears at first, which pretty much sucked. Imagine being a super scrawny kid with ears that stuck out so wide you could almost catch flight, and you just knew you weren’t getting out of a haircut without at least 3 bleeding knicks to each ear. Anyway, back on track, this “man”, and that’s a gender identifier only, was ugly on both the outside And the inside. One of the things that my mom probably wouldn’t passed on, if she could have seen how it’d end up, was his alcoholism. The guy was an asshole on a Good day. Add any type of booze, (Usually PBR or Old Milwaukee, and no, he was not a hipster) and the shit started Really hitting the fan, and my mom, and my brothers, and me.... you see where this is going.
My dad is short, I’d guestimate at about 5’6, probably less now that he’s old and broken (silent cheer) but he definitely had “short man's syndrome” he had to be the biggest badass around, well, if by around, you meant around women and children. I can’t think of a time in my life, up until I moved out of my parents house at 17 that he wasn’t trying to drunkenly kick the everloving shit out of someone. Usually my mom, and then she’d get boring, and he’d turn towards one of us, only to have my mom jump back in the fray, to try to keep us from getting beat down. Though, the next day, she’d remember, and well, shit rolls downhill. I do remember trying to put a stop to all this stuff once. He was on one of his nearly daily drunken tirades, it was about 9pm, the neighbors had already called the cops twice by this point, but I’d had enough. I ran down stairs, grabbed my mom’s favorite “big knife” as she called it, and called the asshole out.I wanted nothing more than to split him wide open, and have his blood and viscera all over me.

Unfortunately(or not) that’s when the police showed up and we we were shuffled off, once again to either some relatives house or some shelter for a few days while he “cooled down” in a holding cell.
This may be the first, but certainly not the last of my “Mom” posts. If I’d understood then, what I understand now, looking back with the eyes of understanding. My opinion of my mom would have been worlds different. The only thing I can do now, is to move forward, understanding in hand, and allow it to reshape those memories.