Just after my thirteenth birthday, unceremoniously I got my period.

That’s about as dull as toast until I mention I got my period while staying at my 75-year old great-aunt’s house with two post-menopausal other women. Meaning, I had no Womanly Implements at my disposal.

Other than skittering about looking for a tampon, it was a day like any other.

I didn’t announce, “Self, NOW, NOW you’re a WO-man,” nor did We Ladies go for a celebratory lunch. Not that I minded, because if we’d done lunch or if I’d thought that, I’d have wondered who had finally jumped off the deep end. We just weren’t That Kind of people.

That’s the last time I can recall my mother and I being friendly. From that point on, it was Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots, but with less heads popping off. Maybe it was the extra estrogen. Maybe it was because I was now clearly less a child and more of an adult. Or maybe I was just bitchier. I don’t know. What I do know is that suddenly my mother and I couldn’t stand each other.

So what, Aunt Becky? I hear from the Peanut Gallery. Typical mother-daughter conflicts. Happens to most of us.

There’s a glimmer of truth in that: mothers and their teenage daughters rarely get along.

But there’s more to this story.

My mother, for your reference, is mentally ill. That’s not a bash or an insult, or an attempt to shame her, it’s simply the truth. She changes who she is every couple of years, eliminating memories of who she once was thereby confusing the hell out of her daughter.

The older I get and the more distance and perspective I’ve gained has given me a different take on that time in my life. I firmly believe that this time in my life happened to coincide with one of her crises. Was it spurred because I had, at long last, become a woman? Time and distance say yes.

For fifteen years, my family consisted of my father, my brother and my mother. Try as they did to have another baby, they could not manage it. Finally, they gave up, my mom went back on her medication, and BAM! I was conceived. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d guess that being dethroned as the queen of the house knocked her through a loop.

It might sound wild, claiming that my own mother was jealous of me, and a couple years ago, I’d probably have scoffed at the idea myself. It’s not like I was receiving the same types of attention from the men in the house as I was.

My brother could hardly stand me. I couldn’t stand next to him without hearing that “I was breathing wrong.” My father and I have always had a special bond, it was the same type of bond she shared with my brother my brother. Either way, it’s not as though I was lavished with special attention and showered with gifts while she sat chained to the radiator in the corner, wearing rags and fending off rats, but I don’t think that this mattered.

However subconsciously, I think she she resented the hell out of me.

Suddenly my house was a war zone. Things that were once okay (“don’t talk to Aunt Becky in the morning”) became Very Not Okay. Temper tantrums and histrionics followed everything I did until she’d eventually flounce upstairs to sob openly in her room. Things were much, much worse if I dared to defend myself, so I learned to nod and apologize. Once my father came home, in a desperate power-play, she’d insist that he Have A Talk with me. He was in a terrible and unenviable position.

Halfheartedly, he’d have A Talk, therefore reinforcing my status as Evil Aunt Becky and serving to remind me of how very alone I was. No one ever took my side, stood up for me or bothered to see things as they were.

The Guilt of Making Your Mother Upset was a powerful motivator, and to this day I struggle mightily with guilt. Guilt over things that may or may not be related to me. A therapist once told me that children who grow up with mentally-ill or alcoholic parents struggle with this, along with many other things, and as she was self-medicating her problems with booze, it’s a miracle I’m half as well adjusted as I am.

Shut UP, I am!

When I was 16, my best friend Rory came over to my house, which was a gathering point for most of my friends. That day, Rory and I decided (in a fit of marijuana-based brilliance) that I needed a haircut. I agreed.

He gave me a cute, messy haircut and we hit the town.

Weeks later, my mother insisted upon a professional haircut, but I wasn’t hearing it. I just didn’t want to get it cut. I hated the salon then, and I hate it now.

Eventually, she wore me down, gave me a blank check and sent me to the salon.

I informed the stylist that I wanted an overall trim, nothing insanely drastic. She agreed. Hairs were cut. I went prom dress shopping with my friends.

I came home that night and as I readied myself for bed, my mother came to the bottom of the stairs. She peered up at me suspiciously. I knew I was in for it the moment she started stomping up the stairs, faster than I’d seen her move in years.

I’d been in the bathroom brushing my teeth, but she grabbed my head, pulling me down from my perch at the edge of the sink, as she examined my head. I wondered if there had been a lice outbreak.

“You didn’t get this cut, DID YOU?” She thundered.

“Yes,” I said, “I did.”

Her eyes sorta bugged out. I knew I was screwed. She yanked my hair and inhaled it. I still had no idea what was going on so I tried desperately to pull away, but she pulled my hair even harder. She screamed she was “smelling my hair” to see if they’d “actually cut it,” like I’d said. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar.

This made her even angrier.

I was trapped inside the bathroom, but managed to escape to my bedroom. Upset, I called a good friend of mine, Emily. During our conversation, a series of *thwack* noises rattled my door. I stopped breathing for a minute, cold panic creeping in. Five minutes of *thwacks* that sounded like mini-bombs.

I had no idea what was happening, but when it stopped, I opened my door and saw my mother, standing there, screaming incoherently, snot running down her face and crying obscenities about me, throwing my shoes at my door.

Before I could react, she ran for her bedroom and slammed the door, leaving me standing in my doorway, baffled. Surely this was a bit of an overreaction on her end. I had cut my hair.

Like anything else, this never was resolved. My father, also baffled, took me aside to Have A Talk. My punishment required repayment of the money given for the haircut.

Several weeks later, she checked into a mental hospital.

I never got an explanation or an apology.

I never will.