A/N-Sorry for the long wait between chapters. I'm suffering from SVU new episode withdrawals. Have fun reading and dom't forget to review after you've finished. Thanks for reading and reviewing.
Everything I had ever learned about love was, at best, tainted by my mother. Serena Benson was an alcoholic even to her dying day (she died falling down the stairs with a bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand). Now I know what you're thinking. I really did love my mother but it's hard to love someone when throughout your life they are continually holding you back as if that was what they were born on the Earth to do. She was my ball and chain and I was the prisoner that had no choice but to keep trying to move forward.
I remember one time I came home from school and found my mother in the kitchen, screaming at the top of her lungs like she had just murdered someone. My prepubescent brain thought that she was playing a game and, casually, I walked toward her with excitement flooding my bones (To this day, I can't understand why I automatically assumed my mother was playing a game. The last time she played a game with me consisted of Patty-Cake and Down-Down-Baby.) I can't help but laugh as I reminiscence about these traumatic memories of my mother partly because of how stupid I must have seemed, running happily toward my drunken rampaging bull of a mother.
When I had finally walked the length of the kitchen and started to hold my hand out to my mother's shaking frame she did something that even to this day I'm still shocked by. Looking back, I honestly wish that she could have let me gone on believing the fantasy I had carefully constructed of my mother and her "issues" (In the 70s/early 80s being an alcoholic was looked on in the same way as having the flu. You were locked away during a binge but overall still expected to go through the motions of normal society after the said binges occurred. My mother was fine going through the motions during her sober periods but the main problem was that these sober periods happened less and less with each passing year.).
A couple of years before that fateful day in the kitchen, my mother "accidentally" hit me across the face so hard that a gash formed on my forehead that required stitches. She threw me out of my home and told me to deal with the problem before I got blood on her carpet. I stumbled onto the front steps of the apartment building with blood leaking everywhere and finally one of our older neighbors stopped me. He got me cleaned up and gave me one of his old shirts before asking me the inevitable. I tried using the line that I had memorized but he looked at me with that friendly smile and, stupidly, I felt my emotional barriers crumpling and found myself babbling about everything that my mother had done to me. I begged him not to tell anyone because if he did my mom would hurt me even more (ironically, when I came home with the nice man's shirt on, my mother spanked me anyway because "I look even more like him").
Even after this incident I kept the fantasy of my mom being "just like all of the other parents" alive; all of the drunken rages that were lashed out on me because I looked like a man I had never even known or seen, the times my mother left me at school while I was forced to walk home in tears while all of the other parents whispered and the children mocked, and whenever I was forced to call the landlord to tell him that the rent was coming even though I knew that my mother was spending the rent money on another bottle of "Grand Marnier" that dream was always the driving force pushing me to continue. Despite the verbal and physical abuse my mother needed me to be there. It may have been ignorance on my part but I couldn't help but believe this. Why? Maybe it was because that my love for my mom stemmed from this nonsensical need and, despite the abuse, I needed to feel some sort of love toward the only mother I'd ever known. No matter the reason, that one Wednesday of my sixteenth year when I was returning back home after school everything changed for the worse. On this day my mother let me know for the first and last time how she really felt about me. It all started with the typical dialogue that my mother and I had been giving each other seemingly since the day I was born.
My mother turns around to face my expectant face with a drunken scowl. "Why are you here? God…you…shouldn't be here. You always screw everything up just like he did. Fuck, you really are his child aren't you?"
"Mommy, what are you talking about? Did Ms. Petersen call you about my grade in English? She told me I could make it up with afterschool tutoring…"
When I was a child, my friends were nonexistent (the mocking that I mentioned earlier pretty much made sure of that) so my obsession with having a great grade point average took their place. But it honestly wasn't like I had much choice in the matter; my mother demanded perfection from me when it came to my grades as if low grades reflected badly on her reputation. Everything below an A was considered failing to my mother and I couldn't bear to disappoint my mother, at least until I went to college at Siena (my mother couldn't control me when I was hundreds of miles from her).
Suddenly, my mother's drunken scowl turned into a fearful smile and she began to give that bloodcurdling scream for a second time. These screams however were even louder than the last ones and were tainted by an invisible weight of paranoia that I quickly learned from experience accompanied these drinking binges.
She lunged at my throat with that same banshee scream echoing out her mouth and began to choke me. Oddly, I remember never being truly scared of her choking me because of that idiotic love I had for my mother that depended on her needing my existence. My face began to turn the same bright crimson shade that develops when my mother spanked me for defying her, my brown eyes became black as I tried to half-heartedly struggle against my mother's seemingly indefatigable grip, and all of the blood in my lower extremities started to pulse against the skin in my hands and feet. Despite this though my heart was telling me that she would stop; my mother would soon see that she was hurting me and after she let me go, she would cry, kiss the bruises around my neck away, and I would proceed to ease her out of her binge like I always do.
I was wrong.
I hardly remember much after that. The doctor that had been assigned to me after I was rushed to the hospital told me that if it wasn't for my mother's loud screams that alerted Mr. Edwards (an old and overly curious neighbor that lived in the apartment next to us) to call the paramedics I would have surely have died. The social workers came soon after trying to get my statement in that placating manner that only social workers have. Unlike the time with the nice old man, I kept my mouth shut about what happened until the swarm dissipated away in frustration. It didn't help matters when my mother tried to make up some half-baked tale that some kidnappers came into the kitchen (apparently they climbed up the fire escape…to the tenth floor and through the window which was roughly 12x15 inches) and tried to take me away. Her screams were all in effort to stop them from kidnapping me. As I watched my mother spin this story together I realized I had never felt as emotionally drained as I did in that moment. After that I knew I could never trust my mother again. My mother didn't need me any more than she needed the empty bottles of vodka and scotch I annually had to clean up from underneath my mother's vomit and piss stained mattress (when my mother really went all out with her drinking she would regularly forget to make it to the bathroom). Without that need our relationship didn't just fade away like a sunset, it burned down like a model city built of toothpicks trapped in a fire.
That was my first experience with love. The truly horrible thing about my mother and me was that because of the way our relationship ended I couldn't truly move on with anyone else in a beneficial way. My first real boyfriend in high school broke up with me because I was "too distant" and my last serious relationship with Kurt Moss ended because I couldn't trust him enough with the boundaries of my job. My love life is practically nonexistent because of my inability to let myself potentially get hurt again.
Given my track record with men I can't let Elliot know how I feel about him. If Elliot knew he'd do everything in his power to try to placate my problem with soothing words and soft caresses and I honestly don't want nor need that response from him. Despite all of his teasing, I know that Elliot cares for me in a platonic sense but sometimes I wished he wouldn't push it so much with all of that damn teasing. There is only so much I can take before I crack and do something I'll end up regretting.