... like a rat. An innocent little rat who can't seem to watch the implications of her tongue.
Sure, when I say that I've got "homework" to finish up at eleven thirty at night, and you've been hearing me giggling at Rowan Atkinson's antics for the past half-hour, and you know I have to get up early the next morning for school, it's only natural to want to question the legitimacy of my work ethics. But asking me angrily whether or not I've been doing this, that, or the other thing? Trying to box me into some admission of guilt, some kind of stumbling confession? That's ridiculous, and reeks of Parenting.
I'm seventeen. I don't want a Parent, I want a Person. I'd even settle for a halfway-friendly one. If it comes to that, a Friend would be even nicer. But I can't imagine my mother is even capable of regarding me as anything less than Someone Who Needs Disciplining. Sorry, Mom, but it's not "your way or the highway", not just yet. Of course I'm not too old to acknowledge authority, naturally, and I never will be, but it's BLOODY HARD to remember that you carry legitimate authority behind you when you try and badger my actions into something that you can Parent.
I remember the night I cried because I thought I didn't love my mother. It was the most horrid thought I could think of, and I wept for the misery of it. I was completely inconsolable, weeping in the privacy of my own room, keeping my tears quietly to myself, lest anyone hear and invade my thoughts in attempts at consolation. Now, for some indecipherable reason, I have driven a steel wall betwixt that thought and my emotions. I can't see now that I do love my mother, but I certainly don't hate her. She's become more of an emotionally-driven object, one to fight with, to tiptoe around in fur-soled slippers, and even occasionally to laugh at. It's horribly sad that I've reduced my own mother to such a state, but at the moment it seems to be the only thing that keeps me from crying every time she gets that tone to her voice.
Not that she's the most unreasonable being on the planet. It's merely that when I say that my mother doesn't understand me, it's the utter and terrible truth, not just some preteen angst covered with too much black eyeliner. I more than wish it weren't so. She doesn't comprehend how I think, and I don't see any way around the matter.
God, help me. This is my prayer. Knit us together. I am her blood, and she is the authority you have placed over my cradle who will forever hold that position above me. I do not like it, and I constantly try and forget it, but Lord, if you would have me survive, teach me to love her like I do my father.
I'm almost crying now. The tears well in my eyes. Do I dare to let them overflow, escape down my cheeks? But such water does nothing, saves nothing, prevents nothing. Tears are useless to me. Better to save them for later.