My mother chose a man over me: how she betrayed me for a stranger
My name is Valentine, Im 17 and Im from Marseille. Ive kept this story inside for years, silent, but now Im ready to tell it. Maybe someone will see themselves in it. Maybe someone will rethink their actions. Or perhaps at least one mother will think twice before betraying her own daughter, as mine did.
My parents divorced when I was ten. I cant say we were a happy family before the arguments, the blame, the distance between them were felt even when I didnt understand everything. After the divorce things got worse. My mother and father seemed to fight over my attention, not out of love but out of obligation. I was shuffled from one apartment to another, like a suitcase nobody knew what to do with. My fathers place was cramped but calm; my mothers house was spacious, yet the tension grew more suffocating each year.
Everything collapsed when a new man entered my mothers life. His name was Christian. He was in his thirties, almost ten years younger than my mother, and he immediately acted like the boss of our home while I was treated as an inconvenience. At first he wore a polite smile, pretending to be interested in me. Soon the façade vanished. He didnt want me living with my mother. He didnt like my mother spending money on me. He didnt hesitate to loudly declare that my father was irresponsible, that I was a burden, and that I should already walk alone in life.
He manipulated my mother, siphoned money from her, convinced her she didnt need a teenage daughter, that she needed freedom and to take care of herself. And my mother she listened. She no longer noticed my tears at night. How I silently gathered my books in the kitchen, just to avoid crossing their path. How I locked myself in the bathroom for an hour just to sit in silence.
The final straw was a night when I heard them arguing again. The shouting was so fierce the windows shivered. I left my room to place myself between them, trying to protect my motherI feared he would hit her. But things went another way. He stared at me with such fury that my heart tightened. I shouted, Enough! Stop yelling at her! and immediately received a blow. A real, powerful punch to my face that sent me crashing into the corner of a cabinet. Everything blurred. I only remember my mother screaming and then silence.
I thought he would leave. That my mother would throw him out, hug me, call a doctor, tell me how much she loved me. I hoped for that. I looked into her eyes, searching for that rescue. Instead she whispered, You ruined everything. An hour later she told me I had to go live with my father.
I gathered my things in silence, my heart ripped from its roots. I didnt cry. I didnt scream. I simply left, realizing I no longer had a home.
Now I live with my father. He does what he can, but we lack the closeness I desperately craved with my mother as a child. I no longer expect her to call, to apologize, to show up Yet deep inside Im still that little girl waiting for her mother to open the door and say, Forgive me, my child. That wont happen. She chose a man. She chose himthe one who struck her own child.
I dont wish her harm. But I know one day hell leave her. Hell find someone younger, prettier, more compliant. Hell abandon her. Perhaps then shell remember me. I wont be the one who forgives everything. A mothers betrayal is a wound that never heals.
I tell all parents this: dont bring children into the world if you arent ready to be there for them, if you cant put them above your romantic dramas. We children are not responsible for the choices of your hearts. We didnt ask to be born. But if you decided to bring us into this worlddont betray us.
Mom, if you ever read this know that I survived. I got back up. Im strong. But I will never again come to you crying, like before. You are no longer my mother. Youre just a woman who once gave me life.
