Sweetened Cyanide

It’s a bit hard for me to put so much pain into words. But I’ll do the best I can to explain it.

I am not a strong person. I was never a strong person.  And by many accounts, I have no right to complain about my lot in life. I’ve traveled to many places, never been physically abused, and I’ve had many things provided for me. I have a roof over my head, and a pantry full of food. My own bedroom to hide away and enough toys to drown my boredom. The simple distractions may work for a time but when you stop feeling, nothing matters. Poison is still poison. No matter how much sugar you add to it.

I am the youngest in my family and typically, that means you’re babied. I was restricted. I wasn’t allowed to make friends with the ‘weird’ kids. I had to eat the same lunch every day. I wasn’t allowed to fail any tests. I wasn’t allowed to have special lessons in anything outside of school. I was to listen to my mother and do what she told me. A lot of this made me shy away from the other kids. I was stuck in the outcast group where no one wanted to talk to one another. My mother was the decider in my life.

You might not even blame her for the early days. I had been very sick as an infant, almost succumbing to a severe lung infection. But I lived, escaping with only some breathing difficulties. I can’t stay outside for very long. Regardless of the season. Summer, spring and fall bring plant pollens, seeds and decaying plant matter that irritate my airways almost instantly upon stepping outside. In winter, it’s not too bad. But if the air gets too cold, I can’t stop the coughing. Staying inside as much as I could wasn’t too much of a problem though. Since I had very few friends and didn’t like socializing. Lunch was hard. I know I was lucky to have gotten a lunch at all every day. But to have to eat the exact same thing, I’d rather not eat at all, Which I often did. A Ham sandwich with lettuce and mustard, a yogurt, a juicebox, a cheese string, and some fishy crackers. Not a bad lunch. But for every single day. Every week. Every month. Every year. That is what I had to eat. I started throwing out food around grade five when my mother wouldn’t listen to me asking for a change. That combination became sickening to me. I would become physically ill if I attempted to eat anything from my lunch. To this day, I still can’t stomach it. This is where I learned how to lie, and how to starve.

School became harder and harder for me. Becoming friends with the kids my mother approved of, then having to deal with them ‘ditching’ me days later. I was a weird person that nobody wanted to be seen with. My grades dropped, and so did what little self-esteem I had left. I barely scraped by with passing marks. She was furious. “Why did you fail this?” “You told me you knew what you were doing!” “Why wont you pass anything?” “Why don’t you know anything?” “Why are you being stupid?” Both of my older sisters had been at the top of their grades in school. She couldn’t comprehend the possibility that I’d be different. To her, I was doing it on purpose. So, in order to save myself the beating of her voice, I lied. I cheated and lied my way to better grades. Whatever it took, if i couldn’t do it the proper way, I’d find another way.

The lies grew more and more intricate. I had to tread lightly not to upturn any truths by accident. Like painting a pile of gravel. I got quite good at it. Towards the end of grade school, I had my mother believing I was friends with all the popular girls. That my grades were the best in the class. That I wasn’t miserable every time I had to go home. I was feeling better. Despite all this, a part of me had not changed. It was the part that I had been taught from the very start. Doesn’t matter how, just do as mother says.

Years dragged by, and during the time where most people grew into independent human beings, I was still having my strings tugged along. I had been perfectly conditioned to require her approval. I was her very own puppet. Nothing I did happened unless she said it was okay. I would stop talking to my closest friends if she told me she didn’t like them. Feelings were a bad thing too. I live in a very crude household, with many unspoken rules. Swearing was okay, but you’re not allowed to complain about something you don’t like. If someone interrupted you, you weren’t allowed to say anything about it. That one in particular was put into place for a very specific reason. If mother didn’t like what you were saying, she’d then decide on something better to talk about. I created a few ways to get by this, the easiest being to lie. Just tell her what she wants to hear. Nothing else mattered. Life wasn’t good unless she was happy.

The slight positive notes that came from all this is that I could no longer cheat my grades. But having no friends or things to distract me from school, my grades skyrocketed. I made the honor list in all four years of high school. I became drunk off of the praise that I got from my mother. That’s all I wanted. But like most drugs, the effects slowly faded. until it was back to simply being expected to be perfect. “Oh, you got a 90? Okay.” No more praise. But my fear of failure was enough to keep me from it ever again. I also met the one true friend who has, and who will stick by me for the rest of my life. She understood what I was going through, and has been my rock on many occasions. I owe my life to her. For without her, I’d have never made it through high school. Unfortunately, my mother hated her. She was a lesbian and to my mothers’ eyes, ‘fat.’ Therefore she was a bad person. Her friendship meant too much to me to give up easily, and was the first thing in my life that I fought for against my mothers’ wishes.

Dating wasn’t even an option for me. When I thought I had found someone I could trust, her disapproval was an instant rejection. I remember feeling so excited, jumping into the car after giving him a hug goodbye, and then; “Who’s that boy?” “Just a guy.” “He looks ugly. Is that a game-thing on his bag? So he’s one of those weird people who spends all their time playing video games. he’s going to live in his parents basement for the rest of his life.” After that, I just didn’t talk to boys anymore. The depression that hit me when she said that dragged me down for two months. It wasn’t worth the risk again. I would try again later, long after I graduated. But they always felt empty and pointless. No one knew how to deal with my depression, or even accept it as part of me. I’ve often thought that my problem might be with gender. I’ve found girls attractive before, but both my mother and father have ripped that option to pieces. “If you ever bring home a girlfriend, I’ll take you out behind the shed and beat you straight.” I believe my father meant every word. I’ve never dated a girl before, nor do I even know if that is who I am. It’s just another thing that was decided for me.

But the lack of control was getting to me. I began to go days without eating, for the simple reason that it was all I could do for myself. I lived mostly off of energy drinks and caffeine shots. Looking back now, the most disgusting part was my mothers’ approval of my dangerous weight loss. Fat people were bad. To be skinny meant that you were better than them. To her, that was the most important part of life. Putting yourself on a pedestal to glare down at ‘other people.’ During my darkest months, my teachers’ concern had peaked, and they began calling home to try and inform my mother of what was happening. This scared me. If she found out, it would be my fault. So I began eating as unhealthy as I could to gain the weight back. Most of the time, I’d just end up puking my guts out. But eventually, the teachers stopped trying to call my house.

After graduation, I was presented with a whole other problem. Choice. Suddenly, it was up to me to decide what to do from then. But I had no idea how to. I tried to go back to school for another year to upgrade my english level. But changed my mind and only went for one semester. For almost a year I sat around and did nothing. I had been raised to only act if someone told me to, and doing otherwise would result in some kinds of suffering. If no one told me to act, I couldn’t do anything. I tried going to college, but dropped out. I tried getting a job at a fast-food place, but got fired after two years so they wouldn’t have to up my benefits. Tried to get my licence, but failed my G test and had to start over from the beginning.

I am currently working full-time at a department store.  I still live at home, having no where near enough money to move out. I’m being constantly reminded by my mother and father that I am a useless burden. That I’m nothing but a failure at everything I do. I don’t have enough money to go back to college either, so I’m more or less stuck here, for who knows how long. While my mother hits daily records for all time lows.

She often complains that I don’t do enough around the house. While she spends all of her time on the couch on her iphone, ipod, or ipad. She doesn’t like it when I try to spend money on something for myself. Her purchases from the last two months include a $4,000 purse, $500 on iTunes cards, and $100 on a mystery thing from Great Britain. She likes to criticize the people she sees on T.V who’ve been scammed by men online posing as boyfriends. The mystery thing from Great Britain being the stranger she met on her god damn dice game. While my father sits on the chair across from her, she sits and flirts with some random online fuck. She’s quick to make a sharp remark about me dropping out of college, when she never graduated high school. She praises gay rights and talks about how much of a supporter she is. She had a panic attack and said that I was going to contract aids from my bisexual boyfriend (Former, and the last time I’ll ever bother to attempt.). At least my father is straight forward about how much of a homophobe he is. She’s literally the worst kinds of people all rolled into one overweight over critical mess. In her eyes, she can do no wrong, nothing is ever her fault. Even if she’s doing the very things that she’s constantly judging other people for. That is the woman who raised me. At this point in my life, I am beyond loathing. I feel nothing for her but disgust, and often wish for her end.

I don’t know how much of all this I have managed to get across. The scale of the damage done is unmeasurable. I’m incapable of feeling trust for anyone. I lie constantly to almost everyone I meet. I can’t feel excitement or joy, I’m lucky if I feel anything these days. I’ve spent a lifetime of shutting out my emotions having been told they were wrong. I have no self-esteem, I can’t even defend myself when criticized. I’ll break down at even the slightest of failures. Larger ones with bigger consequences driving me into further depression for weeks. I feel like I’m incapable of breaking away and doing things on my own because I’ve been trained not to. Even though I WANT to and know that it would be better for me to. She’s fashioned a chain around my neck holding a weight above my head. I could pull loose, while risking the crushing weight, or sit quietly and choke to death.

Before you judge me for being selfish or spoilt, please remember that you shouldn’t have to pay for such things with your mental health. You can mix sugar with cyanide, but that won’t make it any less harmful. Some people out there are capable of taking much larger doses, some are not.