flow writing #114: ‘tell me what you forgot to say’

I forgot to tell you to fuck off. I forgot to tell you that I am still waiting for your apology – for you to take accountability.

I never told you that I would sit at the bottom of the stairs and listen to you fight. You would both lie so much the next day, trying to convince me that you were the better parent – that the other was to blame.

I guess this is how I learned to create my own safety in the house. It was the third house we lived in. Moved in when I was nine, Dad moved out/was kicked out by you when I was eleven.

I only saw him raise his hand to you once. You were fighting, as usual, but your bedroom door was open/ajar… I walked down the hallway to head downstairs and peaked in to see his jaw clenched and hand raised. Your back was to me. I think he saw me and stopped. No one ever talked about it again.

You liked being the victim though, didn’t you? The martyr. The woman who kept it all together – full-time lawyer, sending kids to private school, sports, cooking, cleaning.

Miss Susie Do-It-All – the most glorious mom who ever lived.

It’s interesting though, because those moments on the stairs – listening – those were my first moments of learning not to trust you.

Your version of events was always so stacked in your favour – like a precariously tall peak of pancakes tilting to one side and soggy with butter and syrup.

It’s interesting, I forgot to tell you – that as the executor of my Dad’s estate I could see the emails you had sent him.