(Esmee) Loved you better

Loved you better

Esmee

“What the hell mum?” I screamed rounding myself in on her position throwing my arms in the air in my annoyance at the same time as Emmet came around to stand at my side. “What the hell do you think you were doing? I told you to shut up in the nicest way possible. I gave you an excuse to leave the table but you decided to keep on pushing the situation! What the bloody hell did you think it was going to achieve? I almost screamed my blood boiling inside my veins from my annoyance. I loved my mother but at that moment I hated what she had become. Her encouragement to try and make Mia eat was nothing more than unjustifiable black mail and she had used a baby to make her point, a tiny human that couldn’t speak for herself and she turned her into a weapon to destroy. She put Crystals petty remarks to shame  and in the proses she had sent one of the most precious people in the world to me run from the room in floods of tears is she was anyone else her cruelty would have been unforgivable.

“I was simply trying to move the situation on a bit we had all been sitting around the table for ages and Mi had to eat her soup and your approach of sitting there and mollycoddling wasn’t getting the job done. I thought I would try the tough love approach.” My mother said trying to justify her cruel words like they were OK. Like her approach hadn’t caused any problems, like Mi hadn’t ran from the room crying but had downed her soup and claimed that she would never have any more problems with food again because someone had told her that her problems were stupid.

“Tough love doesn’t work,” I said exasperated trying to stop myself from shouting. My anger wouldn’t make her listen. Raised voices would make something inside of her shut down like it always had. I could never get her to listen when I raised my voice even when I was a teenager and shouting all the feelings I couldn’t understand at her because they were bubbling somewhere under the surface of my scared skin and burning me from the inside out would she try and comprehend that some feeling were too big to be whispered. Some had to be shouted and screamed about before they caused you to bleed out.

“Love works mum.” I said firmly pulling away from Emmet and sitting down on the chair Mi had been sat on so I could try and look into her eyes. There had to be a way to drive my point home. A way to make my mum see that anorexia was so much more than a phase. She had some wisdom as she had seen it devour me so fully but years had passed since she saw anorexic Esmee, since she saw an Esmee that was so under control by a part of her that she called Amy and years made memories blurry in anyone’s memory.

“Pure love works, a pure loving understanding of the way an anorexic mind works is what works. Gentle loving guidance and encouragement is what helps. Mi needs someone to fight on her side. To stand up beside her and fight whatever demon lies in that bowl of soup not someone to tell her that it should be easy and to just get on with it and to make up some crap that she is in some way hurting another person because she herself is being tortured is just cruel. You were just cruel mum.” I moaned trying to take a deep breath to calm my racing pules and erratic breathing even though in reality I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry out. I wanted to tell her that the words she used had sliced over my skin as well, that the task she called easy had pushed me to the very edge of my resolve and I almost hadn’t made it either. I had almost lost a fight to orange despair.  

“Well that’s a load of rubbish isn’t it, all this about pure love. Love doesn’t mean a thing in this situation. I couldn’t have loved you anymore. They gave you to me so tiny and new and said that I could take you home and I felt nothing but love for you more love than any other parent in the world. So imaging my upset and disappointment when every other person’s child was heading off to college and I had to section mine into the new state of the art psyceatric home because she was damn set on starving herself to death. I damn sure loved you enough Esmee, I damn sure loved you enough. You had everything you ever wanted. We protected you from everything. Nurtured every interest, praised you hugged you, talked to you, spoilt you and you repaid us by starving yourself, cutting your skin and trying to end your life without so much as a thought about us. So I am damn well sure it’s not about love, because I love you. I will always love you more than you can ever know and I am proud of what you become but even though I try to understand, I will never be anything other than disappointed in what you did to yourself because I loved you better than that.”