This is Where We Talk Things Out

by Caitlin Marceau

To my mom and dad, Thanks for not being f*cking crazy. To Kyle, Thanks for being there when our parents were absolutely f*cking crazy.

Growing up, her mom had always made a point of overstepping Miller's boundaries and expecting her actions to result in few consequences. She’d always apologize and beg for her daughter to give her a chance to make things right, for them to “start fresh.” And while Sylvie had a bad habit of extending poison ivy disguised as olive branches, Miller had a worse habit of accepting them.

“Talk about what? The fact that I’m not your ‘mom’ or the fact that, for some reason, you seem to hate me so much that you want to cut me out of your life forever?” “I don’t hate you,” Miller says with an eye roll. “It feels like you do.” “Okay, but how you feel doesn’t dictate the truth of the situation.”

“I’m your mom, you don’t need to ask me,”

“It was an invasion of my privacy.” “Why are you being so mean this morning?”

This is what it was like growing up with her: every event, every memory, rewritten and retold to you enough times that you couldn’t help but wonder if the version you remembered was wrong.

And, quite honestly, I think it says a lot about someone if they can’t love another person unconditionally unless that person’s their offspring. It’s narcissistic.”

“I don’t hate you. I never said I hated you,” Miller finally snaps. “But I’m tired of you acting like we’re friends. Like we’re close. Like I had a picture-perfect childhood where everything was happy and easy and good. I didn’t. It wasn't.”

I think you think you were a great mom, but you were selfish and you were mean and you made everything about you. Why the fuck do you think I cut you out? For fun?”

“I think it’s just incredible how you can look at everything around you, everything I’ve done for you, and piss all over it,” Sylvie finally says, making her way up the trail ahead of Miller. “I can’t believe you think so little about me that you feel like I was a terrible mother who didn’t love you.” “That isn’t what I said!” Miller shouts. “That’s exactly what you said!” Sylvie screams back.

I just… I miss us,” she confesses. “What do you mean?” “It’s just, it’s been so long since you’ve been my little girl. Ever since you met that hussy,” Miller knows she means Florence, “you’ve been different. You’re argumentative, you don’t listen, you’ve cut me out of your life.”

Her mother either fails to understand or chooses not to: it’s not that Miller is argumentative, she just stopped blindly agreeing with her mother; she hasn’t been ignoring her mother, she's just trying to live her own life; she didn’t cut her mother out, she just set boundaries.

She can’t help but pause in front of the photos on the wall, wondering what her father would think of all this. Would he understand that she has to get out, has to run, has to escape? Or would he tell her to give her mother a chance? Would he lie, like he always did when he’d try to make peace between them, and tell her that her mother just wanted what was best for her?