She wants to push me to breaking point. She wants to push me until I’m as bad as her. Until I’m as bad as she pushed my sister to be. So that she can excuse her behaviour, so that she can play victim, so that she can turn to people and say ‘this is why I did what I did, look how bad she is, look what she did to me’.
I swear I will never be bad. Not to her, not to anyone. I will be good. I will be good for myself. I will be good for others. I will be good so that when she looks to make those excuses people will finally respond with, ‘she didn’t deserve that, you shouldn’t have done that’. So that one day she will look in the mirror and see herself for what she truly is. She will think of the child she made bad and think herself better and then she will think of the child who stayed good and see that she is not better. See that she did this.
See that one child was lucky that there was another to bear the strain for so many years. That I was lucky someone else took so much of the heat for so long. The ‘bad’ child, she wasn’t so lucky. She is bad because there was no one to protect her enough to allow her to be good. She is bad because she protects herself.
One day The Woman will see herself in the mirror and see the bad she may create in the boys. See the good I am trying to show them. She will recognise that the bad she sees in me is the vicious protection of those two young innocents. That the bad in me is to save them from becoming bad, or having to fight so hard to be good. That the bad in me is to allow them to be good, the way the ‘bad’ child fought to allow me the privilege to hope for good; to become good.
One day The Woman will see the bad she brings out of others because she allowed herself to be consumed by it. The Woman is the cautionary tale, what one becomes when they allow their demons to rule them, when they allow their pasts to destroy them. The Woman is what you become when you’ve spent so long playing the victim that you know nothing else, you seek the role of victim in every interaction, until you become the poison.
I will not become The Woman. I will own my mistakes. I will modify my behaviour. I will grow. I will move on. I will walk towards freedom from her heavy hand, from her poisonous words. I will make a life for myself that is filled with goodness. I will not speak unkind words. I will not wallow in self-pity without seeking to remedy my situations. I will push on. I will find better. I will do better. I will be better.
I will be Good.