Polarized personalities have always been something I’ve been drawn to, and I’m sure it’s because of her. From no alcohol content to a twelve pack of beer later, my mother is a very different person. She is harsh and unrefined, and sadly, this is how I’m used to her. Aggressive. Offensive. Unloving.

Her words are hard to pick up but I’m well-versed in “too drunk to communicate”, a language she taught me from years of picking up the pieces of her mistakes. “I’m just gonna take you up to bed, maman,” I say sharply, ignoring the poorly aimed swat at my hands as I lift her from the couch, pulling one of her arms around my shoulders.

She's grunting unintelligible words but seems to have given in, unable and unwilling to fight against me.

This is the same as it’s always been. I know the nooks and crannies of the house like the back of my hand, though I’ve never lived here. I know which parts of the couch have had spilled water, spilled spit, spilled piss. I’ve seen all the ugly parts of it, of her, carried the weight of them with me.

I know the parts of her life that she’s too afraid to share with anyone else. With my father, who was never really there, too old for her, “stealing my fucking youth” as she’s always called it. And me, born too early in her life time, a spot on her history that she’s never quite reconciled her feelings for. “I love you, but I hate you for what you took from me.” The words are acidic, impossible for me to swallow, impossible for me to understand because through everything, through all of the shit she’s done to me, I’ve never hated her. I couldn’t imagine hating her.

We’re hobbling up the stairs, a drunken unit, a small hole in the wall from a time where we’d done this before and she’d pushed me away, falling afterwards. There are telltales signs all around the house, minute memories all left abandoned and unfixed. Scratches on the lock of the door, each one deeper than the last, marks of drunken returns home to something that feels more like a mausoleum. There’s liquor in the fridge, there always is, scars on the counter from beer bottles opened against the surface in a stupor.

I love you, but I hate you for what you took from me.

Her bedroom, shared with a traveling second-husband, a man I’ve never called father, is abandoned and empty. The sheets are disheveled and untidy, blankets thrown to the ground, pillows in disarray. “I don’t want to go to bed,” she slurs, insistent, pushing one of her palms against my ribcage, desperate to get away. She tried and she fails, just like she always does, the strength of my will to look after her greater than any drunken desperation, long-forgotten by morning.

With adept and learned skill, I roll her onto the surface and pull the sheet up around her thin body, tucking one of the edges around her back. She murmurs, something I don’t quite catch, before speaking louder.

“You’re such a piece of shit, thinking you can boss your mother around like this.”

It’s nothing I haven’t heard before, not new words, no new orchestrated wave of feelings coming from it. I’m gentle as I reach and brush the hair away from her face, her eyes already closed. It’s a quick kiss to her forehead and I’m fleeing, abandoning my post.

Taking only a moment to look back, I hover in the doorway, thinking if there’s something I should say. But I remind myself there’s nothing I could say that I hadn’t before, nothing that wouldn’t be falling on deaf ears.

So I leave, and in the morning, we act like everything’s still alright.