My mother spent her life crying wolf, and it killed her horribly (Part 1)

My mother was a mentally ill person in a time and place where no one wanted to admit it or seek help, afraid of being institutionalized.
Like in a romance written in poor taste and imagination, she always had a rough life, and got pregnant at 17, after having an affair with a married man, who ran from her like the wind; he?s probably still running, and I never knew the *******.
Poor girls in deeply religious third-world countries aren?t advised that abortion is an option, and then I was born ? Christine, but it was more like my name was Ungrateful Child.
It seems like her post-partum depression lasted as long as she lived, at least towards me.
From the moment I could speak I remember her telling me how life was unfair to her, and how I was useless since I wasn?t good enough to make my father stay with her. How she wished she gave me away to someone.
I wish she did too.
The only person who ever made me feel loved was my grandmother, God bless her soul. She lived with us and took good care of me.
During the first few years of my life, my mother got her **** relatively together; sure, she hated me, but at least she had a steady job and the men she dated had all their teeth. The nicest man she ever dated came to be my stepfather ? Mario, an immature but good-natured and hardworking fellow.
After almost two years living together, my mother got pregnant with his child. Oh, how happy she was! I thought it would make her hate me less, but I was terribly wrong. Every little thing I did was reason to make her scream at me and spank me, swearing she would beat me to death if I made her lose the baby. She told me every day that I was the odd one out, and that I should go look for my father and never come back.
I was eight years old.
Mario was really gentle to me, not in a fatherly way, but like he was a nice uncle. I had learned early to be cold towards people, so the fact that he would never look at me like I was his child didn?t bother me; I wasn?t, after all.
I never wished for my mother?s love either, just to be acknowledged as a human of equal worth, but I might as well die trying.
My sister was born a few days after I turned 9, a day that would be completely forgotten if it wasn?t for my grandmother. Mario awkwardly bought me a small birthday cake and said my mother had too much on her plate. I didn?t say anything; I know it wasn?t his problem and he never signed in for that kind of ****.
Grandma and I silently ate my stale birthday cake quietly in the dark, something that made me smile. She loved creating little secrets with me.
Andy, my sister, was the most beautiful baby I?ve ever seen. All eyes were on her the whole time. The fact that I was a chubby and ungraceful kid started to make me feel self-conscious.
She was bathed with all the love and attention I never had. At least for one year and a half, then my mother was pregnant again.
She accused Mario of getting her pregnant against her will, said she hated the baby already. Again, abortion never crossed her mind; instead, she decided to take rat poison and die along with the baby, a tragicomic scene that resulted only in a bad stomachache.
After that, she only got worse.
My mother constantly claimed to be tormented by vengeful ghosts and demons, and that they were manipulating her family against her, and had implanted two evil babies inside her ? myself and her third child, Michael.
I loved my brother Michael earnestly because no one else would ? no one besides my grandmother, but she too was still awestruck by Andy.
Due to the dark color of his skin and complications during his birth, Michael was seen as an ugly baby. We were one and the same, and we bonded. At 11, I helped my grandma raise him like he was my own.
He was immediately rejected by my mother, and Mario, a white man of Italian ancestry, accused my mother of cheating. There?s no way he could?ve product such a dark skinned boy, he said.
As I said, Mario was the best. It didn?t mean he was great. Their relationship had been on the edge ever since she got pregnant with Michael, which only made her hate my little brother even more.
While I cared for Michael, my mother used her time pretty much for cheating on my stepfather, pretending to be sick and being with the only child she liked, Andy.
Michael was the cutest little thing, and I hated to see him being rejected by both his parents. I hated my mother so much.
It was around that time that she started claiming to have visions, inexplicable fevers and being attacked by invisible beings.
I know I was too old for that, but I believed her. She raised me to believe that I was always surrounded by her invisible spies and she would know if I misbehaved behind her back. She enforced it by randomly spanking me for things that I allegedly did while she was away.
After Mario inevitably left her, she never found work again; we struggled, surviving off my grandmother?s meager pension and what little alimony Mario paid for Andy. We were constantly having to move houses and losing our cheap furniture in the process, since she never paid rent.
My mother then started calling herself a clairvoyant and alleging to be able to see people?s auras, but never succeeded in finding clients. Still, she insisted, making friends with suspicious people that sometimes lent her money, sometimes freeloaded on us for days; our house was always messy and broken, no matter how much my grandmother tried to tidy it. strange people were always coming and going, grabbing stuff, and even leaving their own snotty children for me and my grandma to care of.
And the exorcisms. God, all the fake screams and seizures.
These crazy friends were the only people that endorsed her, and they decided that she was really powerful and could cure possessed people. They also supported her claims that evil had infiltrated on her side through her two bad kids.
By the time I was 14, I had been exorcized three times and my mother still called me an abnormal rebel ? I did great in school and was pretty much raising one of her child, I simply didn?t like her taste in what she called ?music? and ?clothes?.
She ?exorcized? people, then stayed in bed for days, saying it was her destined burden to be tormented by other people?s demons. She saw herself as so important, so enlightened and underappreciated.
Even those people eventually couldn?t take her bull**** anymore and left, only providing her with more ammo for her poor little me narrative. She started scamming and using emotional blackmail with the people that still cared about her, like her brothers and cousins, so she could get money to spend on stupid things; Michael and I only had two shirts each.
Looking back now, maybe her hobbies were not only stupid, but dangerous.
After Mario left her, she was constantly partying and smoking, and sometimes would disappear for days, coming back with large bruises all over her body. At home, she was chain-smoking all the time, and painfully coughing like her lungs would go flying from her mouth like a big lump of chewed gum.
Sometimes, she was missing large clumps of hair and her eye was so swollen she couldn?t even open it. Once, she came back with a permanent limping. She was only 31 and never walked straight again, or without a semi-metallic clanking noise.
She always blamed it on the demons, invisible people and ?dark forces?. At least once a month, she would snap and spank all the three of us, then change to a child?s voice and beg Andy to forgive her; just Andy.
Over time, our relatives learned to ignore her fits, and she was left completely alone ? except for her beloved golden child, and random men that she brought home. Not even them believed her bull****.
All of this was so tiring on us, especially on my grandma. Her fake rituals, fake clairvoyance and fake life took a huge toll on her mother, who was always sick and overworking herself.
When I was 15, my grandmother died. I was relieved because she would be free from all her thankless struggles, instead of slowly eaten away by an illness; still, I never felt so alone in the world.
I realized I had no one to look after me, and I was the one who had no choice but to look after someone.
I got myself a job, but after my mother spanked me and took all my hard-earned money to spend on herself instead of paying rent, I grabbed little Michael and left. We stayed a few weeks with an aunt, then another few weeks with someone else, being sheltered by people that pitied us but could never offer us a home.
I worked my ass off so my baby brother could at least have a decent life. When I turned 18, I got us a tiny bedroom-and-kitchen apartment, and my mother gladly passed his custody to me.
We were finally free, and that?s the last time I ever saw her.
She constantly called me, followed me and tried to break on my house, saying that I was an ungrateful child and now I was the one who had to support her.
Like she ever did anything for me besides ruining my ability to love and to feel happy or even normal.
Despite all the harassment I went through, and how damaged I was inside, I was doing fine. The years working double or triple shifts paid off, and I was able to provide a more comfortable and steady living for myself and my brother. Michael grew up into a sweet, helpful boy, and I was so proud of him.
Things were too perfect when Andy called me; she had just turned 18.
She admitted to hate me because I left her, and said she hated our mother too; she lost her custody years earlier, and Andy had been living with her father, Mario. Still, she didn?t want our mother to die alone on the street.
Bitterly amused, I made a mental note that the golden child had inherited the inclination for unproportioned drama.
Andy was just an intern and everyone else had turned her back on our mother. I was her only hope, she said.
My sister begged me to provide our mother some place to live. I wanted to refuse, but I felt like I owned Andy something; she never asked to be raised as the untouchable princess of the bull**** queen, after all.
I left her behind because I could barely take care of myself and another kid, let alone two; and she was the only one that would be treated acceptably by our mother.
I accepted that Andy hated me, and that she had the right to do so. The golden child could never comprehend the extension of what I?ve been through because, despite having to babysit her own mother ever since she was an infant, she was never abused. Neglected, yes, but not physically and mentally wounded as I had been.
I agreed, as long as the place was an assisted living for the mental ill. It was time our mother got her much-needed psychological treatment. Andy didn?t object to my terms; she knew I was right.
I?m not usually a miser, but I decided to put our mother in the shabbiest place of the sort I could find. One can say I?m being vengeful, but I just thought it served her well. My efforts towards her would be minimal.
I never visited her, but Andy talked to me occasionally, reporting about her complaints, how the food was tasteless and the caregivers were evil to her. My mother was, like always, a pain in the ass for everyone around, and caused trouble the whole time.
She kept asking for cigarettes, expensive food and ?at least a phone?. Surprisingly, they complied with the cellphone part, because listening to music on it and pretending to text Andy calmed her down, and anyone would do whatever they could to make her shut up for a while; it was one of those old phones with no internet access, though.
She tried to escape a few times, and was put in some sort of solitary for it.
That?s where she died, three years after I sent her to the ward. I didn?t attend her funeral, and felt nothing but relief. Michael barely remembered her, so it didn?t affect him the least.
Our life carried on normally. Michael enrolled on a university and moved away. For the first time in my life, I had total privacy, and a whole, quiet home all for myself.
I never got closer to my sister, but I kept checking on her from time to time. She kept mentioning something about a phone she really needed to get, but I was somewhat dismissive, worrying that her mental health was declining as well.
A few weeks ago, Andy called me. Said she was finally legally allowed to retrieve our mother?s cellphone by the occasion of her death, and she found a disturbing recording on it.
Due to that, Andy requested an exhumation autopsy.
I didn?t even know that it was possible, but I learned that as long as the body exists, it can be done. When she died, there was no investigation, since her health had been frail for years, and the causa mortis seemed to be blunt trauma due to accidental fall.
That?s what Andy told me as I accompanied her to the forensic facility. When she called me, the autopsy was already scheduled for later that week, and she asked me to accompany her to get the results. She also wanted me to show the file on the phone.
It was one of those old phones with a single camera that produces very grainy, diminutive images. Still, it was enough to see and hear clearly what had happened. I had been skeptic of her allegations for years, but I had no doubts.
Our mother died doing what she loved pretending to do: being possessed by a demon.
***
By the time of her death, not even Andy believed our mother?s demon stories anymore. That?s why it was so hard to believe when, after having seizures for over two hours, she died and all her organs looked like blackberry jelly.
But I?m getting ahead of myself.
The recording on the old cellphone showed her lying on the floor and grumbling. The solitary was a grim place, a naked and cold room with rusty metallic walls. Other than that, there was a thick old door with a little doorway for food, a very tall ceiling with a lonely lamp, and no objects.
There was only herself, the cellphone, a plastic bottle of water and a mattress on the floor.
My mother was talking to Andy, and her face was so old, so wrinkled and helpless that my heart broke. I almost had forgotten how she looked like, and how old she had to be by now. ?Hey, angel, mom was a bad girl again?, our mother smiled with no joy; she had lost almost all her teeth. ?I miss you. I?ll get out of here and get us a good place to live. Your evil sister won?t hurt you there?.
She laughed on a delirious, deranged manner; Andy involuntarily squeezed my hand.
After a few moments, she muttered. ?I don?t feel good?.
?I don?t feel good?, she repeated a few more times, progressively louder, until she was screaming. Still lying on the floor, she slid a few inches, until her feet reached the door, and started kicking it. ?Let me out! Let me out of here, Christine, you ungrateful child!?
She kicked and screamed for no more than three minutes before half the screen went dark. Something was partially covering the camera, but it couldn?t have been her hand, the bottle or the mattress, since those were all visible.
I felt Andy shuddering on my side.
Then everything was silent for a fraction of second, and you could hear the coldest voice, that sounded more like screeching:
?I?m finally strong enough?.
?No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no?, our mother begged, to no avail. A blurry shadow moved closer to her; my sister covered her eyes.
?Didn?t you want to be possessed so badly??
She didn?t answer. Instead, our mother cried on the floor, cowering and withering like a wounded animal.
?This noise is so unholy?, Andy remarked, still shaken. ?Where is it coming from? Is it the metal or something??
That?s when I realized that my sister wasn?t able to make out Its words. Just me.


Source.