Page 106 of Exposing Colorado

She slams her drink down on the arm of her chair. “You ungrateful little slut.”

“Ungrateful?” A bitter laugh bursts out of me. “You think I’m ungrateful for surviving a childhood that I'll need decades of therapy to process? For learning to lie to my friends about why I couldn't have sleepovers because my stepdad liked to walk around naked? For learning to take care of you every time he left when it should’ve been the other way around?”

Her cigarette trembles between two fingers, but she doesn’t drop it. “You don’t know what it was like. I had no one.”

“Yeah? Neither did I.”

The silence that stretches between us feels like barbed wire wrapping around my throat. I've learned to live with this, to let the “I want my mommy" moments come and go, but they always stick around like a festering wound. Sometimes, I don't know what's worse—having a parent who's actually dead or one that might as well be.

My mind drifts back to Logan, and the pain that swells in my heart takes my breath away.

“Well,” she says finally, sipping her drink, “you turned out alright.”

It’s not a compliment. More like… bewildered resignation, like she can’t fathom how I made it through when she never could.

I clench my jaw and blink away the tears that aren't for her. I stopped crying over this woman years ago. “Yeah. No thanks to you.”

I should leave it at that, but the weight on my chest is worse now than it was before, an aching loss burrowing so deep that I can't yank it free. It fucking hurts.

With a sniffle, I pull the camera into my lap. “You want to know why I’m here? The only man who’s ever loved me died tonight, and I want to know if I could have loved him back without turning into you.”

She scoffs in response. “So you’re here to blame me for that, too?”

Sighing heavily, I press my palms into my eyes. “No. I'm already doing a good enough job blaming myself."

A beat of silence passes before she speaks again. “Was it your fault? Losing him?”

My throat tightens painfully. “I think… I lost him a long time ago. I was too busy running from everything that reminded me of you to even give him a chance. And now I'll never be able to.”

She looks away and gazes out at the darkened sky. Crickets begin to chirp with the incoming nightfall. “When I got pregnant with you, I was barely legal. Hardly knew how to be an adult, let alone a mother. Your father up and left the moment he found out, and I did what I thought was best. Even if you think it wasn't good enough, it was all I could do with the cards I was dealt.”

I nod and bite my lip until it bleeds. “Yeah. I figured.”

Same old song and dance. No matter how many times we have this conversation, we always end up in the same spot. It's useless with her. She'll never admit she fucked up, and I'll never forgive her, so what's the point anymore? What's done is done. She can't change how she treated me, and I can't change how I treated Logan.

All we are, and all we'll ever be, is collateral damage in someone else’s story. Fucked up people raising fucked up people in a cycle that's doomed to repeat itself until the end of time.

Standing up, I sling my camera over my shoulder. “Thanks for the honesty. Your version of it, anyway.”

I don’t look back, because I’ve heard all I needed to hear. Even if the accident hadn't happened, even if Logan had survived and we'd gotten our chance to try again… I would have ruined it anyway. It's in my blood. Nature and nurture both play a role and in this case, I'm double fucked. I was always doomed to fail.

But just as I reach the sidewalk, intent on never showing my face here again, I hear the sharp click of a lighter. A soft inhale. And then…

“I’m sorry,” she calls.

I freeze, nearly stumbling. It's the first time in my life I've ever heard those words leave her mouth. That little sliver of hope inside my chest keeps me rooted to the spot.

Until my mother finishes her sentence. “I'm sorry if all I had to give wasn't good enough for you.”

Just like that, any hope I had left immediately winks out. The wind kicks up around me, rustling dead leaves along the curb. Somehow, it feels like my inner child finally saying goodbye to a parent who never existed.

I don’t turn around. No, she won't get that satisfaction from me. But I do nod, just once. Then I take a step toward my car, and another, each one more freeing than the last.

This time, when I drive away, leaving her alone in her misery, it’s not out of spite. It's not out of anger, or resentment, or cowardice.

It's just out of acceptance.

The kind that comes with letting go.