medusa

There was a cricket in my bedroom today. I had just gotten home and was undressing, when heard a tiny little "click" on the wood floor. I looked down and he or she or it was just there, on my floor, antennae twitching; and without a word, without hesitation, without even a thought, I walked over to the fatty book my aunt pressures me to read, picked it up, and simply dropped it on top of the cricket. Then I placed my right foot on the book, stood on it, picked it up, cleaned it off with a tissue, disposed of the smothered body, and was done with it.

Sometimes I wish that would happen to me. Part of me wished that I were that cricket, and that one day, without even knowing it, somebody or something would casually smother me into oblivion.

They started arguing again, and I don't know why. She's a strange one, my mom. She has these mood swings that I guess are triggered by actions or words or looks that she so unecessarily reads into, misunderstands, and gets all butt-hurt about. She doesn't throw tantrums and destroy things, but she destroys people. She picks on their weaknesses and all the things that everybody else knows, but decides to leave alone because he or she doesn't deserve or need to be reminded. She started giving him attitude, telling him, "So we need to talk about when you're going to pay me your share." My father was in the middle of taking off his shoes and socks, dusty and dirty and ridden with sweat. "I already paid you last week," he replied in a confused manner. "Yeah, well-- that doesn't matter. We need to set up a down so I know when the hell to pay the goddamn bills." My father just sighed and sat back, "Ok," he replied. My mom was mumbling to herself again, her eyes scanning the floor as though she were reading a script in a scene of anger, "Because I never ask you for anything-- ANYTHING--- and I end up paying all the bills! And you don't help, because of your stupid business, you don't even make any money at all!!" she burst out all of a sudden. And so it begins....

She was always doing that. Always forgetting the things she'd say when she was the good mom, the mom I wish I could always talk to and see and be around. But of the 30 days in a month, she was that woman barely 1 or 2 days. It's as though there are these voices in her head that are screaming out all the evil things a person thinks, making them clear to her, reasoning them out and making those evils the 'right' view. And when people are at their weakest, she'll kick them down and bring them lower and lower. She'll push the wrong buttons over and over again as though they were the right buttons, and just when you think she couldn't be more terrible, she unleashes another topic and more insults to the point where one would wish to commit mental suicide. I'd like to think that there's something sick inside of her head, something that makes her this way... because I don't like thinking this is really who she is. I don't want to believe that this is my mother.

MY mother holds me when I am broken and, though she knows that she cannot, tries to fix me anyway. She comforts my father after his tedious, grueling, and physically straining work day, and listens to his stories. She talks about home and relatives, in a nice and loving manner. She says clueless things and genuingely laughs. MY mother is kind and compassionate and patient; always trying to understand, never accusing, and never insistent.

This woman is evil, and breathes and sweats terrible, rancid thoughts, and does the worst thing any living person could do: she kills the fire of the human spirit, and stomps on the ashy orange sparks of hope, so that no dream or light may ever ignite again.

And she relishes it.