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Something Good Can Work

All I know.

Three years ago my mom and I moved from Jackson, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. It was about a 6 hour drive from all of my best friends and I was a little devastated, my mother informed me she needed a fresh start. She needed to get her head together so she could make sure my life was going to work out just right. I had no idea what she meant, I loved my friends. I was a cheerleader, top of my class, I was making all the right choices and I had somehow managed to catch the eye of the most popular guy in seventh grade! I was feeling on top of the world and then my mother decided to rip me from that and move me to Nashville. It took me a few months, but once school started I really got into living there. I made new friends, I joined the cheerleading squad there, and I was back on top of my game. Things were going back to normal.
Freshmen year was amazing. I was captain of the junior cheerleading squad and I was dating a junior! I am not trying to toot my own horn, but I was pretty much killin’ it. I had so much going on, cramming for acts, after school practice, I was in choir, I was in theatre. My plate was full, in retrospect I realize I was just trying to get away from my mother as much as possible. Our move had not been the fresh start she’d wanted, instead she’d met a man at an AA meeting and they’d instantly “fallen in love.”
He was at our house almost every night, they exchanged sobriety chips for all nighters at the local bar and I was left to take care of myself almost always.
Luckily, I had a very nice neighbor whose daughter went to school with me and we hit it off right away. She was on the squad with me so her mother almost always drove us to practice and when my mom was too drunk to remember to buy groceries, they always had enough to spare for me.
So, I guess you’ve gathered that my mother and I don’t have the best of relationships? My mother had moved to the states from England when she was about 21. She had met a man who was on holiday and she’d become smitten with him. They’d written letters to one another and had fallen deeply in love. So almost a year later she decided to surprise him, she flew to Mississippi and went to his address. She wasn’t greeted by this man she’d fallen in love with, but rather his wife.
Obviously that didn’t work out. She didn’t have enough money to get back home and she quickly fell in with the wrong crowd, she also found out she was pregnant. So my first appearance was at the worst possible time in her life and I think she really thought I was going to be her savior. It got better for a while, after I was born she had met someone who had a nice home outside of Jackson and they quickly got married. He was a wonderful man, he cared for me greatly. He’s the reason why my childhood was even halfway normal. My grandparents had begged my mother to come home. To help raise me, but my mother told them she was happy now. Everything was okay for a while, but when I was about 8 my mother’s drinking had gotten out of control. My step father couldn’t take it anymore. He left in the middle of the night. We never saw him again.
She had a lot of relationships after that, but she never really put me in any real danger. I mean it is dangerous to bring random men into your house, but she always made sure my door was locked. That’s something, right?
Despite all the shit my mother did, I loved her. She was the most beautiful and intelligent woman I’d ever met. I wanted to be her, just a better version of her. The “her” I knew she really wanted to be.
She died last week.
I always told her the drinking would kill her, unfortunately I was right.
She drove her car straight off of a ramp in Nashville, she died instantly.
Being as how I don’t know my biological father and haven’t heard a word from Finn (My stepfather) I had no choice.
My grandmother flew to Nashville, we had everything arranged and my mother’s body was flown to Manchester. I’ve never been here before, we visited London when I was about five, but we never went to my gran’s house. I had met my cousin Louis when I was here and we’d actually stayed in touch. I was glad for that, we were almost the same age and I’d have a friend for this new, new beginning.
Today is Friday, we bury mom on Sunday. Today is the day that I get thrown into a new life, even if I didn’t want it.
Turning 16 has never been so bleak.