History - Part 7

I think I gave up on my mother when I was thirteen. I stopped trying. I'm not sure if I ever tried for real again.
Just before I was twelve they send me to some therapist person from the RIAGG (which translates into Regional Institution for Ambulant (is that a word even?) Mental Healthcare), I think they changed that name now. I can remember looking at the carpet for the full duration. Not wanting to say anything, not daring. Our family didn't wash our dirty linen in public. I remembered that carpet again when I read one of the short stories of Roald Dahl where someone has to cross the room with a carpet that he imagines isn't a carpet but every color is actually swarming with dangerous animals.
I had one nontalk and never had to go again. I heard that my mother had called the therapist who refused to tell what we had talked about. Yes, I got severely punished for it, because she believed I had told the therapist something. But she made me sit up all night (or it felt like all night at least, it was after midnight before she let me go to bed (which is a looooong time for someone who got send to bed at 7pm every day)) to answer only one question: if I wanted to stay with them. She talked and talked and talked, that I would get send away to some awful place if I didn't want to stay with them. That if I wanted to stay with them I would have to behave well or they wouldn't want me anymore. That if I didn't want to stay I would never see them again. That people were out to take me away and that I had to choose.
For hours she kept on talking while I was trying to avoid making any choice. How can any child answer such a question. How can any parent ask that of a child. I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know what she wanted from me. My mind kept swirling around the real question: what did she want me to say. And up to this day I haven't figured it out yet. What in the world did she wanted to hear. Yes or no. I can't even imagine ever coming up with the idea of asking my kid that. I can come up with pondering if it would be better for her to not be with me. But it should never be her responsibility. I think up to that point I had just taken my life there for granted. I saw how other children lived (and yes, I automatically assumed they would be beaten up too whenever they were alone), but I never questioned the way things went. It was my life, my home, my family. And all of a sudden there came the thought that it could be different. Like the universe had just doubled in size.
And I think that that decision is about the only one in life I would do different if I had the chance. I didn't dare to pick the unknown. The only decision I regret still. My mother made me write and sign a letter with my decision to stay and behave well (the way she wanted me to). They put it next to the table where we always had breakfast (the playroom it was called). Every wrong from me got me dragged to there where she would point and almost stab the letter to tell me to read out loud what I had written. Oh the first few weeks things went okay-ish (okay-ish was usually what I hoped for most since more I never got), nothing new. But I hoped and tried so hard. It was my first year in high school and homework was hell with my mother. And from okay-ish it went to bad again. Also nothing new. My mother had the memory of an elephant. Every little (and big) thing I had done wrong in an okay-ish period got memorized and at some point it would explode. All the proof how bad I was, how wrong I was, days, times, events. All came out.
And I stopped caring and trying. Everything you say can and will be used against you. I stopped talking to them. They could punish me for whatever they wanted, I just quit with giving her more ammo. They stopped hitting me, since I didn't care anymore. It wouldn't make me talk. I can't remember if I stopped crying too, but I most likely did. I managed to not exist. If they didn't call me for dinner I wouldn't get out of my room. I stopped doing everything I had done in the house. I only went to school, came back and went to my room. For almost a year.
We went back to the RIAGG, the whole family this time. But I didn't talk there either. I couldn't think of anything to say. On my 14th birthday I got nametags to sew into my clothes. Three days after that I got send away to the hospital. Somehow I think that actually was a great present.