How can you hate yourself?
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Fiction
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Moral rights
S.E. Saunders asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
Authors Note:
While the assertion above states the stories found in this book are fictional, I will include notes where the stories aren't fiction. As is the case with the following story. This piece is based on events from my life.
Despite my stepfather's double-dealing behaviour, he and my mother continued their relationship for several years. Never once did he lay a hand on her. Still, I hated him with the fire of a thousand suns for how he would lie to his wife and come running to my mom. He taught me the duplicity of men. Mother's behaviour taught me that broken women accept scraps of affection like a hungry person sifts through the trash.
During these times I began to hate her as much as I loved her. How could she hate herself when she meant so much to me?
You might wonder where the romance starts in this story, as the tag states it's contemporary. It is, I swear, but it's the type of romance that explains all the human foibles first and then shows you what real love looks like when you find it. Or, I should more accurately say, when it finds you. It also highlights when it might be time to extricate yourself from certain relationships if you recognize the patterns.
I met my first husband through a friend. I was seventeen, and my son was just shy of two years of age. I remember these years vaguely. The importance of things was skewed. I continued to make decisions with my heart and not my head. Again, I wasn't looking for a relationship. After witnessing the fiasco that was my parent's relationship and being stung by my child's dad, I focused on education and improving my status as a high school dropout.
In spite of the circumstances, I never saw my situation as permanent. I saw stepping stones instead of roadblocks, and I consistently made choices that would lead to better outcomes as I saw avenues of behaviour that didn't serve me long-term.
I started high school again. This time, I was forced to accept that I couldn't take the route I had hoped for. I remember sitting with other students in a far-off corner of the high school. I was annoyed by the politics and how the people behaved—the weapons in their arsenal, hair, makeup, and the rumour mill. I'd left that world behind years prior and became an adult the first time I held my son in my arms. I knew that whatever I did from there on in wasn't about me but about him too.
They couldn't conceptualize anything of my life outside those walls.
I changed my hair colour and my manner of dressing and settled into what I viewed as the vision of what a mom should be. Gone were the heavy metal t-shirts and skin-tight ripped jeans. I began to embrace my femininity and I began weightlifting.
Somewhere between grade ten and eleven I discovered the weight room above the gym tucked away in some invisible part of the school. A distant memory informs me it was because I once tried out for a dance troupe there. I remember practicing and being terrible at keeping time. Always off by a half step. Sort of like my life.
Everything to that point had been conventionally unconventional.
I returned to check out the free weights and machines, and another mentor, like my reading friend, appeared. The gym/basketball teacher. He had long dreads and trained me to strengthen my body and mind. I was drawn back because I once lifted weights in a friend's basement, benching my weight of 125lbs.
I was skittish, but he and some other boys were friendly. For the most part, though, not one person gave me a second look as each focused on their journey against themselves. There, I learned to shatter expectations of myself. I realized that repetition is the key to success and, at the same time, muscle definition. When I trained hard, I felt good, mentally and physically.
There, I learned I could have anything I wanted if I were willing to exchange time, sweat and dedication.
I also found a group of fellow English students who would take a crack at analyzing the stories that we read. I remember us sitting and speaking of a mandatory piece and finding that I understood it very differently. Another proof I was there but didn't quite belong. It was also the first time I clashed with someone over the topic of faith.
The only limits I had were the ones I placed upon myself. Later, I read an analogy about a donkey falling into a well that fits this mentality. In this story, the donkey brayed for so long that the farmer thought he would bury it and let it die because he could not rescue it. He began shoveling dirt into the well. Instead of staying covered, the donkey shook off the soil and tramped it down, eventually escaping the pit.
I'm pretty comfortable admitting I can be stubborn like that donkey and determined not to let any circumstance get me down. I'll give up when I'm dead.
I set my sights on becoming a doctor, and I was relentless in my pursuit, making it as far as writing the medical college admissions test before I realized I was sabotaging every attempt because it was more important for me to be a present mother. Not the kind that leaves her kids at daycare and pursues her goals and dreams. I'll later revise this thought to include myself.
Why? Because I didn't want to be my mother.