Maternal Instinct.

By Anita Ruthjersen

Mother, mum, confidant, friend,

Words that describe someone of profound depth,

Someone who loves, cares, blesses and shares,

Someone who is meant to love you with everything they can. 

But what happens when they aren’t there?

When your giver of life is someone who glares?

Someone whose footsteps forces you to flinch,

When yelling is more common than normal,

And anxiety grips you like a harsh throttle. 

How do you love someone whose words cause you harm,

Whose hands don’t coddle but leave hatred marks, 

Whose words leave battle scars and cause you to starve,

Not from food but from fundamental and unconditional love?

This person is meant to protect me, 

Love me and shelter me,

So why do you hate me? 

What could I have possibly done? 

I was just a child, a flower in bloom

A beautiful soul just waiting around for you. 

But how was I meant to know what to do?

How to act or be around you?

I was just a baby girl,

No life had been instilled into my fragile world,

And yet I was meant to act like I was in the know.

But how long was I meant to take your version of ‘No’,

When all I asked for was for you to give motherhood a go,

For you to treat me as other mothers do, 

With gentleness and growth,

But that’s not how I lost my mother and code. 

I was 16 when you first called me a hoe,

17 when you told me you had to let go,

I was 12 when I lost all sense of myself,

And all you could think about was you and yourself.

I was just a kid when you became bitter,

A child who simply didn’t know any better,

But you took my childish tendencies as a scarlet letter,

And taught me to act lesser.

Mother, mum, liar and manipulator, 

You created a dangerous and unstable crater, 

Someone who was a cruel dictator, 

Who should not have been an aggravator.

By the simple existence of me as your daughter,

You stripped me of everything except my nature, 

I am grown now, with much more to nurture,

To the inner child you slayed with torture. 

I’m sorry you cant see me for all I am, 

For the person I have claimed and continue to plant, 

I am a glorious woman with values and cares,

Who continues to heal the parts you slashed and teared.

I will not let the history you sowed repeat, 

My children will be completely and utterly free,

To be who they intend to be,

With no harm or foul to their beauty. 

I am sorry I was not good enough for you,

Not good enough to be apart of your view, 

Not good enough for you to see from under your shoe, 

But I am a woman who now sees the hue,

I will heal from the love I did not get, 

I will love and learn to forgive and forget,

I will search and long for relationships I never got,

But I know that I will find that unconditional love. 

I know it will kill you to never know me,

To never know the children who come from my beauty,

Who have my lovers’ eyes and smile,

Who will look at me with the care of a child.

So mother, mum, destroyer and abuser,

How does it feel to know the consequences of your haunt? 

To know that you cant hurt me anymore, 

And I wont let you into my fort?

I will love you from afar, 

With my hands and feet in my own car,

I wont allow you to pin me for pain I didn’t cause, 

And you will find that I am not around the corner anymore.

I won’t be petty or rude to you directly, 

I wont follow in the footsteps you sowed so gracefully,

I am the biggest person you will ever know, 

Because I will now be someone that you used to know. 

By Anita Ruthjersen