Is 'I Died Begging For Mom'S Love' Worth Reading?

My mother was my father’s sugar baby. Every year, he would hold her in his arms and promise, “Wait for me. Next year, I’ll marry you.” He said it for five years. In the end, he married a woman from his own social circle instead. My mother never got the wedding she dreamed of. After that, she became unstable and cruel. She used me as a way to get my father’s attention. “Go. Call your father and tell him you’re sick. Tell him to come see you.” But my father only frowned and yelled at me. “You’re already learning to lie from your mother at such a young age? Always haunting me like this. Disgusting.” They blamed all the anger they had for each other on me. Later, my father’s wife gave birth to a son. He became the perfect husband and father in everyone’s eyes. My mother only grew worse. She hit me harder and harder, all just to make my father come look at her once. When I was seven, I fell down the stairs and broke my leg. I begged my mother to take me to the hospital. She slapped me hard across the face. “What are you pretending for? You fall once and suddenly your leg is broken? You’re just like your irresponsible father. You were born to make me suffer.” My father rushed over, but he only shoved my mother to the floor in irritation. “If you use this little bastard to fake being sick and trick me again, don’t expect another cent from me.” Their screams and sobs tangled together. I lay on the cold floor, slowly losing consciousness. This time, could they finally stop fighting?

From as far back as I can remember, I knew my mom hated me. She gives me sleeping pills when I'm three. When I'm five, she tries pesticide instead. But I'm hard to get rid of. By the time I'm seven, I've already learned how to fight back. If she refuses to give me food, I flip the table so no one can eat either. If she beats me up until I'm on the ground, writhing in pain, I go after her beloved son the same way, leaving him bruised and bawling. That's how we stay locked in battle until I turn 12. Everything changes when my youngest sister is born. I'm clumsily trying to help with her wet diaper when Mom suddenly shoves me against the wall. The look in her eyes holds both disgust and fear. "What were you trying to do to my daughter? I knew it. You take after that monster of a father. Why didn't you just die with him?" I hold my aching head. For the first time, I don't fight back. I believe she's right. My existence is a mistake. I should never have been alive.

When the half-mile sprint test is about to begin, Quiana Sullivan, the class president, and I have applied to be exempted from it. My own mother, who's the homeroom teacher of my class, approves Quiana's application with a smile. But she then throws mine to the floor. "You're having a chest pain, you say? I can't believe you're able to come up with such lies just to avoid the half-mile sprint! I'd have known if you had a heart condition! "Quiana is weak by nature, not to mention she's on her period right now, so she can't handle the agony. What about you, hmm? You've always been perfectly healthy, yet now you're telling me that you're suffering from heart pain? "Don't go around embarrassing me just because you want to slack off! I don't want others claiming that I'm being biased toward my own child! As long as you're still alive and kicking, you must finish the half-mile course no matter what!" Left without a choice, I can only return to the field. The cold wind makes me feel even dizzier now. My heart keeps contracting uncontrollably against my will. Suddenly, it just stops pumping. The next thing I know, I collapse onto the grassy field heavily. When my consciousness is about to flicker to darkness, my mom finally walks over to me. But she merely kicks my arm with a frown on her face, and her tone remains glacial. "Stop playing dead. Get up right now." She doesn't realize that I can never open my eyes ever again. Isn't this great, Mom? No one will ever claim that you're biased toward your own child. I've used my life to prove how fair and just you are. You must be happy now, right?

I have a secret. Every year on my birthday, I'm taken to the blood donation room and made to give 400cc of blood. All because my mom once told me that the blood running through my veins belongs to a rapist. This is the only way I can wash away my original sin. Because of those words, at eighteen years old and weighing less than 80 pounds, I found myself lying on that donation chair once again. But the second I stepped out of the donation room, a document came flying at my face. I looked up in shock and met my mother's icy stare: "Sign it, and get the hell out of my house." It was a legal notice cutting all ties with me. I stood there frozen, cold down to my bones. Mom—didn't you say that once I'd donated blood eighteen times, I'd finally be your clean child?

My sister, Laura Ward, died the year we were ten, the year we snuck out of school to play. From that day forward, my mother’s grief turned into a burning hatred for me, convinced that I was the reason my sister was gone. She treated me like a servant, like an unwanted burden, and filled the void by adopting a perfect, obedient daughter to replace my sister. She took everything from me without a second thought — my rights, my freedom, my very existence — and even demanded that I give up a kidney for her precious adopted girl. Alright, Mother, if you want a life, I’ll give you mine! But it was only when my body lay cold, my breath long gone, that she finally turned and looked at me.

My mother hated me, to the point that she wished I were dead. I knew I deserved to die. Sixteen years ago, if I hadn’t insisted on going out, my brother wouldn’t have died while trying to save me. Eventually, both of us got what we wished for. I got brain cancer. She had become a stranger to me as I forgot everything and went to die in blissful ignorance. Then, she went mad.