(Category: headmates)

After I reported to my mother the abuse that my father had perpetrated, she broke up with him. She, a then-single mother, had to singlehandedly raise a traumatized child who could barely function. She loved me with all her heart. Probably at least three, no, five, no, ten times as much as most parents love their kids. I was her reason to go on living. Even so, under the circumstances, it's little wonder she wound up hurting me too, in some ways. I don't blame her at all. Not in the slightest. In her place, I probably would have done worse.

She was my only real friend, the only person I nearly felt safe around, the only person who truly cared about me, the only person I could confide in, and certainly the only person I dared say I loved. I depended on her for longer and in more ways than age-appropriate, especially emotionally. So when she died unexpectedly when I was trying to finish up college, I withdrew out of grief, and then never really got over it. Her death stopped my whole life in its tracks for eight years before I could be close enough to okay again to go back and finish college.

Sometime during those eight years…

When my uncle and I went to her old bedroom to clean out her belongings, I found the stuffed rabbit that was the last gift I'd ever given her. I heard it calling out to me in my head, telling me to take it with me, so I reclaimed it and brought it home.

Ever since, I've projected my memory of her into it. Sometimes I ask it things. It rarely answers.