The Neurotic Tendency: Part One

Friends and therapists always twitch and later gasp when I tell them about growing up with mama. Mama loved me lots, she sure did. she used to tell me so often.

"I'm the only person who really loves you, Alex. No one will ever love you as much as I do. You can't trust anyone the way you can trust me. You can trust me with anything. I'll always be there for you." It was a great comfort as a kid to think, wow, here's this person who will do anything for me, who will give her life for me and who absolutely adores me. but that's the skew isn't it? It wasn't love, it was a system of control meant to thwart my attempts to have a life outside of her.

I was six when Mama and my dad's mom had a falling out. Mama had me spy on grandma and report to her. Mama was convinced grandma hated her and was turning my father against her. Finally, she accused grandma to her face and grandma disappeared. I never saw her again. Dad never took me to see her, either, so as to avoid a big bang with Mama.

I was 14 when Mama had a screaming match with my cousin, Marqui. He was like a brother to me, he knew me since I was born and taught me to spell and write. I learned English thanks to him. He lived next door until I was 5 and I'd wait for him to get home from work with my alphabet books in hand. At 14 it was done. Over. Mama wouldn't apologize and she never wanted to see him again.

Always if I managed to make a friend, Mama would point out the friend wasn't as wholesome as I'd thought. That I was completely being fooled by my so-called friend. That my friend was in fact an enemy, a devil, a good-for-nothing. So I'd lose all my friends, too.

Time and time again the floor disappeared from under me as a kid and I'd fall...but always I landed snug in mama's arms. A wrapping, comfortor blankie of warm and happiness, nothing like it, worries away, joy. Surrounded.

Then I came out, and she rejected me. She fought me. I fell again into nothing. I feel like I'm still falling alone.