By: Marc McMahon

*For my friend Aria, I hope your well.

When I was growing up as a little girl I was just like the rest of the little girls I knew. I liked pigtails, and ponies tails, tall tales, and snails shells. I liked Barbie dolls and doll houses and barbecues and bologna samiches, and I really, really, really, liked my mommy. Hmmm my mommy, now theirs a topic for discussion but I think I will just let that one go until a little bit later on in this. Let’s see where was I, oh ya, little girls and their likes. I think I have already had enough of the cute little girl stuff for one day honestly. I mean I wasn’t even able to be that cute little girl for very long anyways. That’s when I first started to notice it.

Let me try and explain when all the rest of the little girls were still busy being little girls, I was starting to hear “come on now I need you to be mommy’s big girl today. ” The time to play with my friends and have sleepovers at my house was quickly becoming a distant memory. As I watched my childhood slowly began to drift away, my little friends I had so much fun being with slowly began to drift away as well.  Let’s just say I had to grow up fast, too fast, and I did not even realize it at the time. At the time, I just thought it must be because I am so much more mature than the rest of them. I even found myself starting to look down on my little friends a bit for being so silly girly all of the time!

Let me ask you a question, do you know what it feels like to wonder if your mom really loves you? Or if she really ever loved you at all? Or how about, do you know what it feels like to hurt so bad inside that it almost feels like your soul has a stomach ache? I didn’t think so, well I do, and it’s not a good feeling, at all. It’s the kind of feeling that you would give anything not to have. The kind of feeling you start sneaking sips out of moms whiskey bottle to try and numb. The kind of feeling that you find yourself sleeping with many different partners to try and mask, to try and feel, something, other than that dull empty ache! To try and see if you can recreate the love that you felt that one time when you very young before the nightmare began. I hate nightmares, especially this one.

I can see you want to ask me a question but aren’t quite sure how I might react to it so you’re not going to, but I am going to answer it for you anyway as if you did. The answer, no, I do not hate my mother for raising me the way she did, for treating me the way that she did. Or even for letting her scumbag boyfriends touch me the way that they did when I was younger. I tell you what though, I hate those men. If given the chance I will castrate every one of them, very slowly. It was not my mom’s fault her boyfriends did those things to me, not at all, so how can I blame her.

You know how men are, especially drunk scumbag boyfriends who beat their women and love touching 12 & 13-year-old little girls. They are pushy, and demanding, downright scary to be honest with you. My mom would have stopped them had she been able to, but had she tried, she would have ended up like she usually does when she talks back to one them. Face down on the living room floor both eyes black and blue and blood gushing from a broken nose. So as much as I didn’t want to and as bad as it hurt, I let them, it was time for me to be mommy’s big girl again.

My life this past 21 years has not been easy, but no one ever said it was supposed to be either. I think maybe this is just the way it is supposed to be for me, hard. Not at all what I had envisioned it to be when I was young, not at all. When I was younger and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was not a drug addict or a prostitute, it wasn’t even a stripper.You wanna know what I used to tell them when I was young? I said when I grow up, I wanna be a mommy just like mine!

     When I was a little girl, I was just like the other little girls, at least for a moment anyways.

About the Author: Marc is a 48-year-old Author, Speaker, and Soldier in a war to loosen the grasp that Substance Abuse has on our society. He is a Father, Son, and friend to all those seeking refuge from this incorrigible disease. Marc resides in the beautiful Pacific Northwest where he enjoys, writing, hiking, and kicking the disease of addiction in the teeth, every chance he gets. As Marc always likes to say, “be blessed, my friends!”