My mother and I have always had what I’d consider an unhealthy relationship, even from the very beginning.

When I was born, I had a bad case of colic. Postpartum depression draped its arms around my mother and squeezed. The love that felt so hard to give in my infancy became the plastic bag she would slip over my head and twist tight around my neck to smother me as I grew older.

The night before my first day in kindergarten, she remarked on how quickly I was growing. I still remember her puckered, wrinkled lips pulling wine into her mouth; the awful way she slurped as she sucked it in, “I nearly shook you once, you know. But then you stopped crying as I picked you up. You looked at me with the widest, bluest eyes and smiled. You’re a survivor, Chet. You always have been. You just need Mommy’s help.” She pulled my covers up to my chin, brushed her tight lips against my forehead, and lingered briefly at my doorway before leaving me in the dark.

I had my first sleepover in the third grade. Making friends hadn’t come easily to me, but Shawn wasn’t much higher up in the popularity hierarchy than I was. He’d invited all 6 boys in our class and I was the only one to show up. Shawn’s parents found my mother in the bushes, peering through his window. Shawn’s dad roughly pushed his fingers from his forehead and through his hair while he told me I had to leave, but they didn’t call the police. Shawn didn’t talk to me anymore after that. No one did. When my parents divorced, my mother and I moved into a shoddy apartment and I got a second chance in a new school. I got invited to sleepovers there sometimes, but I’d always declined. The sensation of tears running down my burning cheeks as I walked to my mom’s car parked on the curb were too fresh.

Speaking of the divorce, I remember being put in charge of mending my mother’s broken heart. My mother would take me to the supermarket once a week and have me pick out a bouquet of flowers. I would use my allowance to purchase them myself. At first, I liked it. My mother would smile and tell me I was her perfect little man. Sometimes we’d even get ice cream after, flowers laid between us on the table. Eventually those flowers got in the way of my wanting to purchase myself candy and comics. I begged my mom once to let me skip just one week. I’d buy her two bouquets next week, I swore. The storm behind her eyes and the swift smack across my mouth let me know courting her wasn’t optional.

In middle school, I had a girl over once. I told my mother we were doing a class project and we were, but mostly it was that Shana was beautiful. It took a lot of psyching myself up, but I finally asked Shana to be my girl. Before she could answer, my mother pounced from the closet like a rabid jack-in-the-box. My mother didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. Her eyes bulged and her chest heaved with uneven breaths. Her nails dug into her fisted palms. Shana left screaming. How she got inside my closet without us noticing, I still don’t know to this day. Shana didn’t tell anyone at school what had happened, but the following day, she was no longer in my English class and I was assigned a new partner.

Eventually high school rolled around. My mother tried to tighten her constrictors grip, but hormones and the couple good friends I’d managed to make at school proved a worthy adversary. She came into my room one night after I’d snuck out for a joyride with the boys. She waited in my room behind the door for me to return. When she lunged out, I laughed. I was much too old for her to slap now, but it didn’t stop her from barring up my windows while I was at school. The next time I snuck out, I simply used the front door.

In college, she took my firm demand for independence as a challenge. At first she begged me to stay living with her at home, but I’d managed to scrape enough money together for a shared student apartment. She threatened to slash the tires of my roommate’s truck when he picked me up. Tommy’s tires remained intact through our lease, but on more one occasion I returned home from class with my mother’s perfume thick in my room.

Much like a frog in a pot, I didn’t realize just how dangerous things were getting until I was already boiling.

During my time in college, I’d started dating Bethany. She was a sweet girl. I’d given her the rundown on my mother and her antics, so she was fully prepared when my mother managed to track down her phone number. A week later there was a note under Bethany’s windshield wiper. We decided to move into an apartment complex across town together to finish out our last semester. Our room smelt like Bethany’s lavender lotion.

Two weeks later, I proposed and Bethany accepted. I’ve never been so happy in my entire life. On our way home from dinner, a white Ford Focus zoomed up into the lane of opposing traffic, swerving beside us. Before my brain could fully process that the wild haired, screaming woman with makeup streaming down her face was my mother, she slammed hard into the side of my car.

My car flipped twice before plowing into a tree, passenger side first. My mother’s great escape was halted by a semi. I made it out of the hospital in a wheelchair. My mother and Bethany left for the morgue. If there was a God and if he was kind, it would have been two different morgues. The thought of the two women who made up the most opposing spectrums of my life being freezer neighbors tore me to shreds. But we live in a small town, and if my southern Baptist upbringing is proves true, God is vengeful. Drowning in grief, I mulled with the idea that perhaps this was my punishment for not honoring my mother.

It’s my first night home and what began as a light scratching from the inside of my closet door has progressed into dragging sounds across the carpet towards the bed Bethany and I shared. With each drag, she whispers my name. I won’t turn around. I won’t look. And no matter how much she begs, I’m not buying her any fucking flowers.