I’m going to cut to the chase.

About 2 weeks ago, my Mother sent me a birthday card. It came in a pink envelope, swathed in ribbons, complete with embroidered flowers and a sappy verse inside. It’s totally not my style, which I strongly suspect might be why she picked it out.

There was a return address on the outside of the envelope, but no name. She was very clever to do it up like that. After all, if I would have saw her name, I would have scrawled the words ‘Wrong address’ on the front and slipped it back into the outgoing mail unopened and unread.

On the inside of the card, there were but 3 words scrawled in my Mother’s familiar handwriting: Love always, Mom.

When I first read that, I vaguely thought to myself, Love always? Since when? It would have made more sense if she would have written something like, ‘Love, starting now, Mom.’

I’ve been totally fucked in the head since I’ve gotten the card. This, now that I think about it, might explain the pointless meandering posts you’ve seen on my website recently and the fact that I haven’t started my Birthday Charity Challenge yet, although I promised I would. The card put me in to full on avoidance mode. Hell, I haven’t even been to the DMV yet.

To understand what a big deal this is to me, you have to take into consideration my Mother has never, ever, in my entire life acknowledged my birthday. I didn’t even know she knew when it was. As a child, whenever I would innocently remind her, she always looked genuinely surprised. A couple of times, she’d insist, “I thought you were born in May.”

It’s absolutely mortifying to admit this, but when I first read the card, the little girl in me wanted to believe it was my Mother’s way of apologizing to me. I wanted to think she regretted the way she treated me and now that she’s gotten older, the realization of what she’s done finally hit home. I pictured her, old and lonely, in a trailer park kitchen somewhere, pouring herself a shot and lamenting the fact that the two people in the world who would have stood by her until the very end AKA her children, no longer want anything to do with her. I envisioned her gulping down that shot while simultaneously clutching her grieving, wounded heart.

Fortunately for me, I snapped out of this melodramatic fantasy fairly quickly. It’s just plain dangerous for me to consider the idea that my Mother is even capable of feeling emotions like ‘remorse’ or ‘love.’ The truth of the matter is, my Mother despises me and she’d be tickled pink to see me dead and buried. I faced this cold, hard reality a long time ago after she jammed a knife in my body a few times.

So what does she want? It’s possible she learned I’m doing well financially. Perhaps, she’s hoping to scam me out of some cash? I wouldn’t be the first person she’s laid a sob story on in order to get her greedy hands on some fun money. However, I’m too smart to be conned by the likes of her.

Could her motivations be more sinister than that?

When I first left home, I always made sure I had a roommate. But after a few years, the roommate situation got old and I longed for an apartment all my own. Finally, I took the plunge and got a little 2 bedroom in a gated community that featured a pool and an exercise room. For the first time in my life, I was able to do whatever I wanted in my personal space. I could paint the walls black or walk around naked, if I so desired. I relished the freedom.

Then, the nightmares started. Always in my dreams, I would be exiting my apartment. I’d make my way down the narrow hall, past the laundry room, towards the stairs to the door that lead out of the building. At the top of the staircase, I would stop short, shocked. My Mother would be standing at the bottom of the stairs, frantically rummaging through her purse. Then, she would look up, see me standing there and intensify her search. Finally hitting her jackpot, she’d remove a small gun from her bag and start walking quickly in my direction. I’d whirl around, panicked, scrambling down the hall towards the door to my apartment. Finally, I’d hear a shot and see little specks of blood and brains (My blood, my brains) flying past my eyes. I’d start to fall in the dream, in slow motion, and as my body made its descent, the lights around me got dimmer and dimmer until all I saw was blackness.

I have no idea if that’s really how it would feel to get shot in the head, but the dream was so real, so fucking real, that I had to turn my office into a second bedroom after all and beg a friend of mine to move in with me to make the dreams go away.

People wonder why I write anonymously. I have a billion reasons why.

I’ve had a many things on my mind these past couples of weeks. But every single one of my thoughts are fleeting. It’s like I’m thinking through mud. My heart feels as though it’s taken up permanent residence in my throat and I spend the majority of my time concentrating on slowing my breathing…much like I would if I were in a cycling class. Always, in the back of my mind, I’m wondering why she sent that card and what she meant by it and what she could possibly want from me.

But mostly, I’m wondering, how the hell did she find me?