because you wouldn’t let me or the toxicity go.
Saving me was the only way I knew to survive at the time. Running away from all the scary monsters, the small town holds, and the paranoid, obsessive drinker that loved me so hard she forgot to love herself. All of that pressure to be someone’s only reason to be is a lot to handle for any one person. I don’t think you will ever forgive me for choosing me over the option to take care of you.
The choice to raise my little brother or learn how to raise myself when no one else would. Maybe I’m selfish, maybe if I were a different me, I would have been everything you needed in a daughter and never have had anything left for me. But at this point, if you can’t accept my choice, then you can’t accept ME. I can promise you, leaving him. Leaving you. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Ever since I was young, around 7 years old, I knew I wanted more out of life than what I was seeing. Back then, I thought that when I played pretend and packed my Pink Barbie Suitcase to head to the imaginary airport to go anywhere better than this place, I was just a young girl living in a fantasy world.
That was until those imaginary dreams and endless fantasies never seemed to end. Instead, they just kept turning into what I wanted to become, what I wanted to be, and how I needed to get there.
The only problem was that I was now 18, still stuck with no way of escape by an overprotective mother who didn’t let me even ride a bicycle up the street. All I could think about was that I would never get out of these 4 brown walls with no way out, taking care of my mom every time she passed out from another drinking binge. Was this real life?
It couldn’t be my life. My reality. Anymore. That’s when I realized that “fairy tales are just true dreams waiting to come true.” It was now time to find a way to explore my real-life dreams.
The last thing I remember her saying was when I asked. “When will we start looking at colleges for me to go to?” She immediately laughed, “You thought you were going to college?” she said condescendingly. “Not this year, maybe next year. I don’t think you’re ready for the big bad world yet.”
That’s when I knew she would never let me out of the nest. That’s when I knew I would forever be stuck taking care of her existence. I would not be another Gypsy Rose. I would not cave to her unrelenting restrictions!
I found a way. I ran away using her addiction against her. Desperation consumed me. There was no other way. I never looked back and found my happy place. I got my experience. And I got my ending.
What I didn’t get was your love or your forgiveness. I don’t have you because, despite my thinking that without me you would quit drinking, you still chose liquor and found a new person to pick up your pieces.
I must admit I was shortsighted and naïve to believe that you finally understood that this is what I needed to be me. To exist. To not be chained by your fixation. But to be free from your addiction and overprotection!
When we were both strong enough to come back to each other, we would realize that we didn’t need to lean on each other to survive. We could have saved ourselves, rebuilt, and defined our relationship built off love and not control. We didn’t have to let everything we once had just implode.
How wrong was I? You will forever hate me because I didn’t stay. You will never attempt to understand what troubled me. Because to you, I make a problem out of nothing. Everything was fine, and you were perfect, so there’s no reason I could be destroyed by you.
I should have known you would never want to save yourself. Or even see yourself. Not when that bottle was saving you. So yeah, I’m not ashamed I saved myself!
Uncolored Reality 
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