Angry Orphan Breathing Fire

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.
-Alice Walker

The thing I can't wrap my mind abut is a mother wanting a colostomy bag for her perfectly healthy daughter. I was this daughter and my mother horns-waggled every doctor's ear she could get an appointment with.

I am an adult now and as I watch my friends cling mightily to their children at college time, I remember that my mother was also too afraid to let me go. I had begun planning my escape at age 5 when I vowed never to have children, and more seriously at age 13 when I stockpiled cast iron frying pans for my future apartment. I was Sonia's unfinished hopes and dreams and because of that I was cut into bits more than any other kid in the family. She abused me as she abused herself and she ate me alive as she devoured herself sucking the marrow out of her own narcissistic bones. But as my husband loves to remind me "You were a thousand times stronger than her," and I guess that was her karmic lesson. One she refused to even see. Instead she opted to go blind.

Sometimes I wake in the morning with the realization that I was an orphan. Not only was I abandoned by my father but I was abandoned by my devouring mouth-with-legs of a mother. For years I had recurring nightmares of her red lipsticked lips and gigantic white teeth following me wherever I went.