My dog died today. I wanted to cry a lot.
Pepper was like a sister to me and we grew up together, putting up with all the things my real little sister would do to us, like dress up and playing school. She never failed to brighten my day and is irreplaceable to me.
That is why I am angry. My bipolar mother always needs to be the one with the most pain. She always needs to be the victim, the one everyone pities.
And so even though I am mourning the loss of someone dear to me, I had to spend my time comforting her as she explained to me all the reasons why she thought my pain was lesser than hers. How she obviously loved and missed Pepper more. Quite the flair for dramatics this one has.
She spent the day belittling my pain as she indirectly reminded me yet again that in a household with a bipolar parent, you are not allowed to have feelings and pain of your own. In every moment in my life where I should have had strong feelings, either good or bad, I have been forced to set them aside to take care of whatever she was feeling that day.
Every homecoming, my prom, my graduation, junior olympic qualifiers for volleyball… every major moment in my life revolved around my mother’s feelings. Each homecoming she made me feel ugly before I left, and I had to take care of her because she was in a bad mood. My senior prom I suffered through the entire weekend with glass in my feet because I was too busy taking care of her to remove it.
She refused to come to my graduation and support me, her child, because she was too ‘ashamed’ of me and the school I was going to. She was ashamed I wasn’t in the top five percent anymore. Oh no! I was in the top six percent of a class of a thousand students in one of the toughest schools in the state instead! The horror! Yet every single parent of my friends came up to me and said how proud my parents must be of me, so I had to smile and agree. I had so many ropes and honors and decorations and I should have been proud and supported, but instead my mother’s feelings came first.
My dog died today. I wanted to cry a lot, but I didn’t have the freedom to.
A Little Bit Stronger 