Children are meant to be spoken to softly.
"Be quiet, Rose!"
"Shut up!"
"God, stop crying!"
"Go away."
Children are meant to play, and to be played with.
"Pick up this mess!"
"Stop bouncing all over the place! Sit still!"
"Stop it, you're too old to play with toys."
"Go do something more productive."
Children are meant to be hugged. They're meant to be cuddled, and held.
"You're five now, that's too old to be picked up."
"You're too old for this!"
"I'm not picking you up right now."
"There's a chair right there, don't sit in my lap."
"Leave her alone, child, she doesn't want to hold you either."
Children are meant to be regarded fondly. They're meant to be teased gently in good fun and helped up when they fall.
"Get up."
"You're fine."
"Stop crying over this. It's silly."
"All the other children can do it—why can't you?"
"You can do it yourself!"
"You're pathetic, aren't you."
Children are meant to be loved. They're meant to be payed attention to. They're meant to make your heart swell. Children are meant to be giggled at when they joke.
"Don't make jokes like that, you're old enough to act more mature."
"Be quiet."
"Just go read in your room, please."
"Later."
"Not now, Rose."
"This is my quiet time. Show me your drawing later."
"You can walk home by yourself. You don't need to be picked up, Rose, you're six now."
Children are not meant to be yelled at harshly. Children are not meant to play in the quiet by themselves. Children are not meant to be shoved away and treated harshly. Children are not meant to be mocked, children are not meant to be told to go away when they ask to be picked up. They're not meant to be silenced when they joke. They're not meant to be looked at with disgust or disappointment or anything tinged with the cruelties of the world their innocence has not allowed them to be exposed to yet. They're not meant to be denied hugs and warm kisses. Children are not meant to help themselves up off the ground and bandage their own scrapes. They are not meant to grow up lonely.
So why must you?
When you were four years old you drew your mother your first drawing. It was of a horse, a pink heart drawn with such love and care on the side. You made a valiant effort when it came to scrawling out 'mom' on the top, picking it up and scampering to where your mother was in the living room. Why was she always in the living room? You didn't know, but it made her easy to find so you didn't ever mind too much.
You held it up, grinning toothily and declaring, "Momma! Momma, I drew you a drawing!"
She'd glanced up at you, frowning slightly. "Did you get anything on the table?"
"I drawed it on the floor." You reply, pleased to not have made a mess of the table.
"Don't draw on the floor," she scolds you. "You'll ruin your back." With that she turned back to her book, ignoring you. You place the drawing on the coffee table by her for her to take when she wants it. You find it on the top of the trash when you go to throw away your juice box.
You remember not to draw on the floor next time. You draw a little cat, on the little table in your room, careful not to get any crayon on the table. Neater this time, you've been working on your letters, you write carefully on the top, 'to mom', and you pick it up and run down the steps.
"Mom!" You declare, because she's told you you're too old to call her 'momma' any longer. "Mom, I drew you a kitty!"
"Say cat, Rose, kitty is such a distasteful, childish version of the word."
"Mom, I drew you a cat," you correct yourself, holding it up with a flourish. She doesn't glance up. You decide this time that you'll put it on the fridge. Kids do that in the television shows you watch. Your mother can't mistake it for bills this time, and then she can't throw it away on accident! You stretch on your tiptoes in the kitchen and grab a magnet to stick it to the fridge, right in the middle.
In the morning you come downstairs to find a blank fridge and your mother sipping a red juice from one of her juice glasses.
"Don't clutter the fridge," she tells you flatly, reading the paper.
"Did you like my drawing?"
"I don't even know what it was, Rose."
"A cat!"
"It didn't look like a cat," she mutters into the cup, but says louder to you, "it was a very nice cat, Rose." Her voice sounds funny, the same way that it sound when she says, "oh joy," when your grandparents invite the two of you over. You think that means she liked it.
When you're six you start walking to school by yourself. That means that you're a big girl, now, says your mother. Being a big girl means that you can get your own breakfast and do your own hair and pick your own clothes. It means you walk a mile to school in the morning, and you are proud to be a big girl now.
You want to be smart and 'mature' like your mother is. She is doing her very best to help you become just that.
It's cold, walking that far in the winter. But you just dig through the closet for gloves and a big jacket and trek through the snow.
When you get home your mother scolds you for tracking in mud, and you remember to wipe off your feet on the mat when you come in. In art class you learn how to draw owls, so you draw your mother a little owl and hand it to her when you get home.
"It's very nice, Rose," she tells you blankly, not even looking at it. Aren't mothers talented, like that? They can see things without even glancing away. Someday you want to be able to do that, like your mother.
When you're eight years old you say that you want to learn to ride a bike and swim and that you want to play piano. You have a friend who can do all of those things, and you think that it all seems very fun. Your mother buys you a purple bike while you're at school one day and tells you not to lose it. You spend months figuring it out, but it's fun so you don't mind. When you do figure it out you ride it to school when there's no snow on the ground (when there's snow on the ground the ground is slippery. You learned that when you fell down a hill. That's also when your mother told you where she keeps the band-aids).
Come summer your mother seems to have remembered what you said because she signs you up for both swimming and piano lessons. You like the swimming classes, and are sad when they're over. You wish that you had a pool near you that you could walk to.
But the piano lessons don't end, much to your enjoyment. Your mother says to pay attention, and maybe it'll let you do better in school by making you smarter. So you work your very hardest at piano and come home one day with the brilliant news that you can now play 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" without even needing any music and isn't that great, Mom?
"That's very nice, Rose," in the same bland tone. You demonstrate for her. She doesn't even have to glance up from the book to listen to you. Someday you want to be able to read a book and listen to someone play piano at the same time, just like your mother.
When you were eleven years old you met your very first friend online. You like to use the computer and had met her through Pesterchum, which is what you used to talk to your friends from school, since your mother never allowed you to use her phone and you'd never had one of your own.
Her name is Jade and she lives on an island. You think that living on an island sounds wonderful. You tell her so, and she responds with a gleeful manner. Childish, you think, but you don't tell her so. You don't want her to stop being so happy all the time. It suits her.
At school you work on schoolwork the hardest you possibly can and win first place at the spelling-bee. Your mother didn't come, but that's okay because she was busy and 'she has to work to pay the bills, can't you see that, Rose?'
She's never around anymore. You're old enough to care for yourself now, but you think you kind of miss her. She was always sleeping on the couch, anyways.
When you're thirteen years old you agree to play your first video game. By now you know of your mothers inebriations and that the word for how much she sleeps on her couch is drunk. It's a mean word, you think, but then again it seems a good word to describe your mother.
You don't think that you want to be like her. Not anymore.
You think that you despise her for taunting you for everything you do. This is probably just a teenage phase, you despising your mother. Completely normal, probably. But completely childish, too.
You're not a child anymore. There's no need to do something so childish.
When you're fifteen years old you no longer live with your mother. In fact, she's dead. By now you've thought a lot of things over and you know for a fact that you don't want to be like her. She didn't mistake that drawing for bills, she never listened to you play that song on the piano, she didn't miss your spelling bee for work.
She just never cared, did she?
You really, really don't want to be like your mother.
Sad, isn't it, then, that you're so much like her? After all those years of striving to be so much like your guardian… it would seem you've succeeded.
You don't want to be like her, but it's a little late for that.
You don't even realize until after one of your bleary trips through a trip to "Drunk City" that Kanaya had come to tell you about something and you hadn't even listened. Now, Kanaya isn't your daughter, not at all. But she still matters to you and you shouldn't have disregarded her words the way that you had.
Too much like your mother, too much like your mother, too much like your mother.
Shame, then, isn't it, that it just makes you more like her when you try to be different? That it just makes you drink all the more?
Childish, isn't it?
Childish, this whole game that you're playing. Childish, the way that you're dealing with your problems. Childish, the way you hate your mother. Childish, the way you think you're in love with Kanaya. Childish, the way you love a city of cans. Childish, the way you befriend a cluster of aliens. Childish, everything about this.
God, you can't even tell if those things are childish or not! Childish! Childish! Childish! It's not even a word anymore, it's just an ugly gathering of letters that mean nothing to you and look like they're something from a different language. Nothing, nothing, nothing. They mean nothing to you.
You can't even tell who you are, at this point. Are you Rose Lalonde? Or are the woman that you always strived to be? Are you both? Are you neither?
Who can tell anymore.
Oh, who can tell?
Disregard it. Disregard it in a childish way, in a way that an infant would just disregard their problems in favor for a soft pile of blankets they see.
Disregard it, and forget.
Disregard it, and take another sip.
Disregard it, and let the red juice take away the problems…
Childish.
Disregard it.
That's nice, Rose.
It didn't look like a cat.
That's nice, Rose.
That's nice, Rose.
That's nice, Rose…
Childish, the way that this all has become a bother to you.
Let it go, Rose. Let it go, let it go, let it go. You, you tell yourself. You are Rose Lalonde and nobody else.
Place the inebriation behind you, place it behind you alone with the bits of you that are your mother and not Rose Lalonde. Now you are Rose Lalonde and no one else.
And when you tell yourself 'that's nice, Rose',it sounds less chiding and sarcastic than it always has.
That's nice, isn't it, Rose?