The WORST, an upcoming short story collection

I'm putting together a collection of short stories I wrote (as assigned in my MFA) about my abusive mother.

It's so weird to read all these autobiographical novels about bad mothers and think...that's it? That's what you are so upset about?

Also they got the good titles first. Like I'm Glad My Mother Is Dead. That's a killer title. That poor girl, though. Okay, she really went through it. But I got furious at Crying in H Mart because the author was clearly not self-aware enough to be writing that book. And was also clearly trying to spin things to sound like less of a dick to her mom.

It's never going to come across great when you're a dick to anyone in autobiography. 

My stories were extremely rough to read. It was horrible being under her control, especially before I went to school. The stories where I was very young made tears pour down my face. I remember all this so vividly, but what's weird is a lot of it is much less vivid than it was in 2017 when I wrote all of these things. Writing them out changes your memories and puts them into boxes in your brain. 

I was not a perfect child, goodness knows, but I wasn't a dick to her. Well, she was far too scary, for one thing. She did not want a second girl (she told me) because if I'd been a boy she would have been done having kids. So it's my fault she had to have a third one to get my brother. Great! She hated me from the moment I was born, neglected me as a baby (she also told me this, that she forgot about me for a lot of the day), beat the shit out of me all the time, blamed me for everything anyone did, and made a scapegoat out of me my whole life. GOOD TIMES.

Anyway the stories are a huge bummer in that sense, but OMG so great in other senses, because I went to various genres to write that kid out of that situation. Consider "The Demon's Daughter," a classic fantasy, where a sorceress named Dagmar gets summoned by a demon to take care of this human baby the demon has. Difficulties ensue! There is a priest who keeps quitting priesting! There is an excellent doe goat!

"The Demon's Daughter" is great. 

I have to rewrite this story where Alison Bechdel showed up at my terrible job totally unexpectedly and lit a fire under me to get out of a truly awful situation. 

I found a list of things I'd forgotten about, reactions people had when my fiance and I told them we were engaged. Both mothers were very upset about it and extremely rude. Like, there are social conventions about these things. You don't turn your back and wash dishes, which is what both of them did. Isn't that amazing? Again, I'd forgotten all these things. That story was always going to end that way. I suppose it could go in the book somehow if I worked it up into an actual story.

Going through all of my old short stories was an Education, capital E. I only wrote them during my MFA. One was afterward, I guess, the one called "Seventeen, Ten, Three, and One Day." It's so good. At least, it's important to me in a lot of huge ways. It's about rescuing your younger selves. 

So I have to rewrite the Alison one and maybe work up the terrible things she said to me one (there's another document full in addition to the fiance one). Like for example saying to someone on the phone IN MY PRESENCE that all of her children were happily married and had good jobs. I was in the room. I was not married and did not have a good job.

Ohhhhh maybe I should talk about Ancestry and getting final DNA proof that I'm related to her. For reasons like that one just mentioned, I was positive most of my life that I wasn't her child. One, she hated me and hit me every day. Two, she treated me differently from my siblings. Three, I almost never got clothes that were new to me, always hand-me-downs or thrift store finds, while the others got new. Four, all my children are happily married and have good jobs. Five, see my collected works on bad parenting, and this story collection when it comes out. 

Six, I held out the hope for so long, until this year, that I had a real mother out there somewhere who would be so happy to see me, something my mother never was--when I came to visit, she would say nothing, or just, "Oh, it's you," never eye contact, and pay attention to the dog instead. She hated the very sight of me. She hated the sight of any of my possessions, even, and used to destroy them all the time. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so committed to hating someone as her. When she was forced by convention to give gifts, they were singularly inappropriate. Knitted things were always miles too small. Like literally four sizes too small. It's amazing.

This imaginary mother would look like me, would be happy to see me, would be interested in what I was doing, would be happy when I succeeded, would like the things I said and the things I made. She'd be proud of me. She wouldn't be perfect, of course! Maybe she'd have my short temper and ADHD. Maybe she just forgot where she left me! No, that's a joke. Maybe she was super young when she had me and gave me up for adoption. I want to know everything about her! What are you into? What do you like? What is your family like? Can I meet them? Do they look like me? Do they want me in their family, I hope so much?

It was awful to lose that hope. But what are you gonna do?

It's boring, right? I'm sure my friends are sick of it. Oh, she hated you, so what. Well, you have to deal with the fallout from that in so many different ways when someone who's supposed to be your main source of support and affection gives you negative one hundred of both of those. Like it drove her insane when I succeeded at something. It enraged her when I was happy. She would find me happily playing or reading and start screaming at me about something, didn't matter what. She got furious when I failed at something, because it made her look bad, and furious when I succeeded, because she didn't want me to be happy or proud of myself. You simply can't spend a lot of your life around someone who hates to see you happy without being affected by it. 

Here's just a taste of what it destroys: confidence, sense of security, ability to ask for help, ability to attach to anyone without terror they'll bail. Ability to approach any given human and feel like they will be nice instead of vicious. I expect vicious. So I don't approach. It's great. Wait, no, it's all terrible. 

Look at the upside: independence, extreme capability and competence on my own, which comes with the ability to tackle any task on my own, including ludicrous ones I never should have done, like driving myself to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder (luckily it was the left) and moving a queen mattress up a flight of stairs using a comealong winch attached to a chinup bar. 

Anyway look forward to a short story collection called The WORST. And another one called Normal People, Weird Stories. It should be two separate collections, really. But one has five stories and one has three. I thought there were so many more! There are some EXCELLENT stories in there, like "Marla Said," which I adore. The weird stories are always my favorite. I was astonished to find all these stories about normal people in real life. Ew. 

There's a great normal people one about my horrible job with the woman who made me change my name because it was the same as hers, then rejected my middle name also because it was her daughter's. She was the center of the world, see. So that's where I got the name Emma. She was a controlling nightmare to work with, but not even within light years of my mom, so I kind of just accepted the situation, until the explosion at the end, and afterward, looking back, I wondered what on earth I was doing putting up with this complete lunatic.

I like that story a lot too. But I have to change the names to protect the exceedingly guilty. 

What do we do with the terrible people in the world? It's a question worth asking. Most people end up working with someone awful at some point, someone who treats people terribly and pushes every button and does not want you to be happy.

I remember the day I realized my mom did not want me to be happy. That's really something, isn't it? With anyone, of course. Seeing my first string quartet performed in public, in the big foyer in front of the gym at my high school, sent her into a white hot fury, such that she lost control of herself and started screaming at me in a crowded gathering and my dad had to take her outside. My Finnish brother was such a voice of sanity in all this, my whole senior year. "There's something wrong with her," he would say. "That's not normal." You have no idea how much a calm, sensible, objective Scandinavian point of view helped me in my last year in that living hell. She stopped screaming if he intervened. Also she stopped hitting when he was around. Win!

Saved by a Finn. I should write *that* story. And really should have left and never, ever gone back. You're allowed to leave when people are horrible to you! Pack your things and leave! It's all right! That is the moral of the story, truly. 

I know, I said in the Matilda episode that often you just can't. But knowing you can and should get the hell away from what's hurting you is a huge part of the battle.