A Prison

It's Christmas today.

I've spent nearly 5 months away from home, and this is my first extended visit back since the summer. After so long away, I've forgotten what life was like back here. My sister used to call me, nearly every week, with new stories about dealing with a mother who runs her family like a dictatorship. My response was always neutral, and I thought that it was a sign of my maturity that I was able to let go of my petty teenage quarrels and deal with things like an adult. I thought my sister was just immature.

Unfortunately, as this holiday has proven, it wasn't my maturity that made my mother easier to deal with - it was the distance. I've spent so much time away, I've actually forgotten exactly how difficult life is at home, and I assumed it was just because I 'grew up'. No, my mother is still the same as ever, made even worse by the fact that I'm no longer a child, or even a teenager. I'm a 20-year-old man who is upset because his mother is pointedly ignoring both her children on Christmas day, for no reason at all.

Maybe she woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something, but it's a terrifying day when you realize you are more mature than your parent. When it comes to the point when you realize all the flaws that are inherent in your mother, and you wonder if those flaws have been subconsciously, subliminally, taught to you. I watch my mother treat arguments with the "My word is law" routine, and I wonder if I learned that from her. I hear her telling her friends about her humility, her charity, her generosity, and then as she tells me, "Don't help him shovel his driveway, he never helped us."

Don't get me wrong. I owe my mother everything. But I'm beginning to lose faith in the opinion that my mother is "The Best." I'm beginning to see her flaws, her obsession for control, and most of all her inflexibility. I can see the way my own personality has split from the way she has taught me - in a sense, the idea that children are always an improvement on their parents has come true. I've taken the good points from my mother, but now I can see what parts need fixing.

It's just gotten worse, because I'm no longer used to it. I come home, and after a few days, I can feel the walls closing in. It's literally like a prison in the sense that I feel so trapped by the tension. Even worse, I can escape, back to Hamilton. But would that make me a coward? In any case, I can't leave my sister behind, and I can't take her with me, because she wouldn't have anything to do.

That's how to make a prison. A prison isn't a physical building. Walls and bars are just objects that hold your body. A prison is made of pain and hurt and anguish. So that even when the doors are opened, you can't even find the courage to run.