It was a Saturday morning, and as usual, my family except for my mother to would get up early and get ready for our sports games. On this particular day, I had a soccer game.
My dad was the coach, and my younger sister was also on the team. It was always a great break from my awful home life to be able to play soccer.
On this morning, though, when I woke up, I told my dad I was tired, and I went back upstairs to go to sleep. I never would miss a soccer game, but I just wanted to stay home that day.
For some reason, though, I had a really bad feeling about staying home, so I threw on my uniform and ran downstairs just before my family drove off. I ran to the car and got in winded. My father asked why I changed my mind, and I simply said I just didn’t want to stay home.
So we had our typical Saturday of sports, and afterwards, we went across the street to the parking lot to get Italian ices from the ice cream truck. I remember my flavor of choice, which was rainbow.
All of a sudden, 2 fire trucks, an ambulance, and a few cop cars speed past with their sirens blaring. For some reason, I knew my mother burned down our house. I said to my dad we need to get home. mom set the house on fire. He looked at me confused and said, “Just eat your ice that didn’t happen.”
When we got to our street, I could see all the first responders right in the middle of the block, and I just knew our house had a fire.
My father pulled around the block and told us to stay in the car.
He was gone for a while. When he came back, I told him again I knew mom set the house on fire. He said no, she did not it was caused by the furnace. I knew what my mother did, I don’t know how I knew, but I did.
All I thought was, were our pets ok, and did they make it out? My dad told us that all the animals ran off and they didn’t get trapped in the house. That seemed believable, but still, I knew they didn’t make it out.
After my father told us what happened, he drove us down the street to a family friends house, and we stayed there for a few nights.
To know we lost everything that day was completely overwhelming to think about. We had to start over again, but I knew this time our lives would start over without our mother being a part of it.
No, my mother did not die in the house fire, but she ended up with bad third-degree burns. We didn’t visit her in the hospital. I guess that was just my father’s limit of us having her in our lives. At some point, she was transferred to a psych ward, and we still didn’t visit her.
I was angry with her, and I only thought about what if I stayed home that day. I’d be sleeping in the attic, and she would have killed me. I was just so angry she could have reached that point and even more angry all my pets were now gone.
How does a person get to this point to do something so drastic? Why would my mother do such a thing? So many questions went through my mind, and I was just so angry and now completely feared my mother. What type of person could do this? All I thought was my mother was an evil monster, and I wanted nothing more to do with her.
The Outspoken Advocate 