Excerpts From A Book I'll Never Write

wretched mirror

If the voices inside my head was a person, it would be my mother. Sometimes it's caring, loving. Making sure I eat. Nourish. Cook. Provide sustenance. Sometimes it's motivating. Keeping me on the right track. Never stray too far away from what's good. Achieve things. Survive. Sometimes it's stern. It punishes. I've been bad. And I'm crying, locked in the darkness of my bathroom calling for my father. For I have always been my father's daughter. I call for him in distress. I call for him for a ride, back home from school, from my friend's house, from anywhere no matter how far he'll come fetch. For I am his daughter, his little girl, his princess. But I am none of that to my mother. I am her daughter. She loved me, I never doubted that. But there is a certain kind of love so complex it could only be understood by a mother and her first born daughter. My mother never meant anything she said, even when she called me a whore for wearing a skirt one inch shorter above the knee. But the voices inside my head does. It's cruel. It doesn't care about my feelings and when it's at its most ruthless it even wants me dead. My mother never wants me dead. But she did, die. Went ahead leaving me and my father and my brother and. The voices inside my head.

That sounds a lot like her.

— for i am my father's daughter and my mother's mirror