Tales of Mothers and Monsters

“I came out of my mom’s snatch kicking and screaming, and stayed kicking and screaming for years. Then, around elementary school, they introduced ABA therapy. I was emotionally and mentally abused all through elementary and middle school, and became a terrified, depressed shell of a kid who would do, say, and repress anything I had to just to make my parents happy. So they wouldn’t yell at me or grab me or take away something vital to my mental health.”

“Then high school came around, I’d just hit puberty, and I decided I’d had enough to being bullied by my own parents, my teachers, and the other students, and I became an A-grade bitch to everyone. Just to try to give myself control and empowerment in my life, I went from one extreme to another. I was a dumb, emotionally repressed teenager who jumped back to being a rebel, so I did a lot of shitty things. I had anger issues, was violent, and hung out with a lot of bad kids. I didn’t bully anyone, really, but I got into a lot of fights and only barely avoided getting arrested from vandalism and underage drinking a lot. Smoke weed a lot too. I was a rotten kid, but… honestly, it felt better than letting people grab my hands, shake me, yell at me and push my around… I was 14 and stupid, sue me.”

“Yeah, I make it sound like Aaron was one of the bad ones, but he was actually one of the only decent kids in high school at the time. He came from a pretty well-off family and kinda took pity on me. He wasn’t scared of me like some of the other kids, but he didn’t really pick a fight with me either. He was a good kid at the time, or at least that was the impression I got as a dumb, naive fourteen-year-old. He was nice to me, gave me rides home when I felt scared to call my parents, hung out with me, got me out of weed, booze and crime, talked to me, listened… He was good to me. Not sure whether that was genuine and he turned into an asshole or if he was always an ass trying to get into my pants, but it doesn’t matter. He’s a dick now.”

“I fell hard for the guy, being the idiot teenager I was. I was convinced that he was an angel there to save me from my shit-hole situation. Needless to say, we… did the deed. A LOT, actually. And finally, of course, we conceived Frisk when I was 15, had them when I was 16. Of course my parents weren’t happy, but that worked out for me because I hated them at the time. Was under the mindset if they hated it, I was doing something right. But even my grandmother, who was the only other decent person in my life, was voicing concerns about how fast I was jumping into things. And… like a dumbass, I ignored her. I was…”

Her glare finally falters and her face falls. As dumb as she always remembers she was in hindsight, she could never deny that she really did love the guy back in the day. At the time, he’d saved her, as far as she was concerned…

“I was in love… I… really thought he was my soulmate. So… I moved in with him after Frisk was born, and at first, everything was just great. I just stayed home with Frisk while he went to work, and we got married a week after I turned 18. But… once we made it legal and I was actually tied to him, things… started changing.”

“He never wanted to actually take care of Frisk. They were like a cute commodity to him; he never wanted to feed them, change their diapers, put them down for their nap, or look after them after daycare, it was ALWAYS on ME. Which I mean, fine, I didn’t wanna work and was controlling and protective over Frisk. But he never picked up the slack at home, he just went out to work, went drinking with his work buddies, and came home with dinner eventually.”

“And it just… got worse. No matter how stressed or sick I was, he’d never pick up the slack. He just enjoyed the perks and fun parts of fatherhood without trying to put in any actual work. Which I always justified with him being the breadwinner and being tired all the time. But when we learned Frisk was autistic when they were three…”

“He completely. Fucking. Abandoned them. All of a fucking SUDDEN, he had zero patience for just about anything Frisk ever did. Completely ignored them, got impatient with them whenever they started stimming–which, you know, I got onto him about. We fought a lot, and Frisk would always start crying because he’d convinced them our marriage problems were THEIR fault! Because I wasn’t going to let him snap at Frisk over shit they couldn’t help as a fucking four year old!”

“He deteriorated over two years’ time since we found out Frisk was autistic; he did his best to be good to me despite his mental shit, but he wanted absolutely nothing to do with Frisk. He was a pathetic shitstain of a human being. He started coming home late, getting drunk, we fought just about every goddamn day, and he kept getting onto Frisk, trying to make them be like me. ‘Your mom was like you and she learned how to be normal, why the fuck can’t you listen and learn to be normal–’ Like, asshole, do you even know me?! Since when have I ever been normal?! All that shit he sold me about accepting me as I was turned out to be bullshit.”

“I tried so hard to make it work, I tried to patch things up between me, Aaron and Frisk for years… I’d always been able to wrangle him in whenever he started yelling at Frisk, help them sort things out, and most of the time, he’d apologize… but the second he actually put his hands on them - grabbing their hands to make them stop stimming when they were crying, hard enough to bruise them, just after they turned five - I shut the whole thing down right then and there. I knew where this was gonna go and I wasn’t gonna see it through with Frisk. I wasn’t gonna let Frisk go through a worse version of what I went through.”

“In hindsight… I should have shut everything down when he started neglecting them. That’s just as much abuse as putting your hands on a kid is… but I was delusional. I was selfish… and wanted to make my relationship with the man he used to be work. But no matter how much I may have still loved him… I wasn’t gonna let him put his hands on my child a second time. Yeah, we fought physically and we damn near killed each other… pretty sure I scarred Frisk with that, but… ya know. I won, and now that prick knows better than to show his face around me or Frisk ever again.”

“There’s… a lot I should have done differently back then; a lot I should have done for Frisk’s sake. I know I wasn’t the best parent in the world for them at the time. I put my relationship before their wellbeing at the time, even if I didn’t realize it, and to be honest… I’ll be ashamed of myself for that ‘til the day I die. It shouldn’t have had to escalate to physical violence for me to wake the fuck up and get Frisk and me out of there, but it did…”

“So… it’s just me and Frisk now, and even though I had to step up and find work out of nowhere, start being the breadwinner AND the child rearer while still having shit support from my ‘told-you-so’ing family… we’re better off without that asshole in our lives. I know there are a lot of people who… might be better for Frisk, as a parent, but… I still wanna do the best I can for them and their future little sibling now that I know better.”

“And if that prick shows up again, this baby’s gonna have to deal for five seconds so I can suplex the dickweed. Not that he really would, he already only begrudgingly pays child support, but… ya know. Always good to be prepared. So yeah. I hate my ex’s fucking guts and I was an idiot for ever marrying him.”