Elizabeth Daugherty
The inspiration to write was an portal to me born out of a psychological need to escape the hell I was living in at the moment.
I was born to alcoholic parents. My father was never a part of the picture and my mother was an illegal immigrant living in the United States. She and my father divorced when I was 18 months old and when I was three years old, she finally became naturalized. No one has ever or probably will ever tell me the real truth of why she waited so long to become a US citizen when she had no real intent of going back to her native country.
She was a selfish, cruel, narcissist who looked upon children as her own personal servants rather than as a family. She bore the "single mother raising three children on her own" flag very proudly and milked it for everything she could get, none of which she shared with us. She took care of herself and her wants first and then begrudged every penny she had to share with her children.
My father died when I was nine and my mother began to receive Social Security benefits for her three dependent children which she immediately spent on herself: fine clothes, gold jewelry, and on a collection of several of the most worthless men ever found. For her children, she cut corners and waited until we were bursting out of our clothes and shoes before she would buy new ones and fat shamed us for that. There were no dance lessons, art lessons, music lessons. There was no summer camp, nothing that would require her to write a check out of disposable income that she earmarked for herself.
She went out bar hopping every Friday and Saturday night without fail and in all kinds of weather and sometimes not coming home until morning hours. The weekends were spent waiting on her hand and foot while she nursed hangovers and endlessly smoked. She was a mean and selfish drunk and she was that way when she was sober too.
Life with her was absolute hell and so was living where she chose for us to live: in the southwest desert in a city where she could indulge all of her own hedonistic vices and where we walked to and from school in blistering triple digit heat.
I began writing short ghost stories in the third grade because I equated autumn months with the relief of cooler weather that was simply denied me in a desert climate until well close to Thanksgiving. Ghosts lived in colder months near Halloween and had things like autumn leaves and pumpkins and whispering winds.
As I got older, I started sneaking sandwiches out of the house so I could save my lunch money to buy books from the class book order. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I was reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte. When I read through everything I could lay my hands on, I started writing my own stories. They sustained me through long evenings when, as a pre teen, my sisters were out with their friends and my mother was out drinking and I was all alone.
I was born to alcoholic parents. My father was never a part of the picture and my mother was an illegal immigrant living in the United States. She and my father divorced when I was 18 months old and when I was three years old, she finally became naturalized. No one has ever or probably will ever tell me the real truth of why she waited so long to become a US citizen when she had no real intent of going back to her native country.
She was a selfish, cruel, narcissist who looked upon children as her own personal servants rather than as a family. She bore the "single mother raising three children on her own" flag very proudly and milked it for everything she could get, none of which she shared with us. She took care of herself and her wants first and then begrudged every penny she had to share with her children.
My father died when I was nine and my mother began to receive Social Security benefits for her three dependent children which she immediately spent on herself: fine clothes, gold jewelry, and on a collection of several of the most worthless men ever found. For her children, she cut corners and waited until we were bursting out of our clothes and shoes before she would buy new ones and fat shamed us for that. There were no dance lessons, art lessons, music lessons. There was no summer camp, nothing that would require her to write a check out of disposable income that she earmarked for herself.
She went out bar hopping every Friday and Saturday night without fail and in all kinds of weather and sometimes not coming home until morning hours. The weekends were spent waiting on her hand and foot while she nursed hangovers and endlessly smoked. She was a mean and selfish drunk and she was that way when she was sober too.
Life with her was absolute hell and so was living where she chose for us to live: in the southwest desert in a city where she could indulge all of her own hedonistic vices and where we walked to and from school in blistering triple digit heat.
I began writing short ghost stories in the third grade because I equated autumn months with the relief of cooler weather that was simply denied me in a desert climate until well close to Thanksgiving. Ghosts lived in colder months near Halloween and had things like autumn leaves and pumpkins and whispering winds.
As I got older, I started sneaking sandwiches out of the house so I could save my lunch money to buy books from the class book order. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I was reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte. When I read through everything I could lay my hands on, I started writing my own stories. They sustained me through long evenings when, as a pre teen, my sisters were out with their friends and my mother was out drinking and I was all alone.
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