[ 07-18-03 ] [ 10:48 a.m.]
[ Bad birthday ]

My mom can be a really hurtful lady sometimes. Yesterday morning, when she woke me up at 9:30, she said she was going to take me out for dinner for my birthday last night. But last night when she got home from riding lessons, she and Doug were halfway down the driveway on their way to dinner before I stopped them.

I asked her when she was going to take me out to dinner. She said that she would do it today. Then I reminded her that the reason she said she would take me out to dinner yesterday was because it was my birthday.

Her response to that was, "Oh, I forgot!"

I tried not to cry. I really, really tried not to cry. But it hurt like hell to know that my mother, my own mother, forgot it was my birthday.

Not that I totally blame her. She has a high stress job, and she just got out of the hospital on Monday from a nervous breakdown, but Christ! She forgot her fucking daughter's birthday!

To make things worse, I couldn't keep from crying in front of Mom and Doug. Doug called me a fucking crybaby and told me to get the fuck out of his sight. So I went back to my bedroom and waited until they were gone before I took the fifty-dollar check I got from my grandma and got the hell out.

They found me crying in my Nissan, parked along the highway shoulder about ten minutes later. Apparently Mom felt bad about what she had done and convinced Doug to turn back. For that I'm glad, because if the woman hadn't shown any remorse at all for forgetting my birthday, I would probably never see her again. I would be on my way to California.

But I'm still here.

I feel like I'm over-reacting a little. Everyone makes mistakes now and again. But to forget that seventeen years ago on that date you were in labor is a pretty sad thing. And worse yet, to hurt your own offspring like that. And now today, she's acting like nothing happened.

She just got home from work. She and Doug are going mini-golfing. I have to stay home and do the housework as punishment for being a "fucking crybaby" yesterday. Mom originally took today as a half-day of vacation to go mini-golfing with me.

Am I wrong for sitting here crying right now?

I used to really love my mother. She used to be my favorite person. The day she married Doug was the day I knew she would be my favorite person no longer. I was thirteen years old, and I could already see that Doug was going to change her, and not for the better.

Doug is one of those people who you would just love to make a voodoo doll of to stick pins in. He does mean and hurtful things to people he supposedly loves without showing one single ounce of remorse for it.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before my own mother started being the same way.

I feel like such shit.

I just can't live here anymore.

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