This is me : Mom

Chapter 2:

Growing up, it felt like I had the perfect life.

I was the perfect child—at least that’s how it looked from the outside. I grew up with both my mom and dad in the same home, and for a while, everything felt whole. There was laughter, structure, and the kind of comfort a child doesn’t realize is fragile until it starts to break.

But things don’t always stay the way they begin.

My mom and dad started seeing less and less eye to eye. The arguments grew, the silence after them grew even louder, and one day, everything shifted. My dad left the home, and I stayed with my mom.

Just like that, life split into two versions.

I continued growing up with my mom, and even though it wasn’t the same as before, she made it feel like home. We moved to another place, and my dad still came around from time to time, visiting back and forth. I never fully understood the weight of what was happening—I just knew my world had changed.

Then my mom got sick.

At first, it was something we tried to manage quietly. But it got worse. She was struggling to take care of me, and I had sickle cell, which made things even harder on both of us. I was still a child, but life was already asking me to understand things I wasn’t ready for.

So my mom made a decision no mother ever wants to make.

She sent me to live with my dad so I could be better cared for while she took time to recover.

I didn’t fully understand it then, but I understand it now.

I went to live with my dad and started primary school there. Life continued. I went through my schooling, step by step, learning, growing, adjusting. I was doing what children do—becoming who I was supposed to become.

But as I grew older, something in me started to shift.

By the time I was about to enter high school, I wasn’t thinking like a little girl anymore. I was turning into a teenager, and I started feeling this strong pull in my heart.

I wanted my mom.

I told myself, I’m big now. I should be with my mother.

And so I made a decision.

I left my dad’s house and went back to live with my mom.

Life felt different again—but this time, it felt right.

My mom took care of me. We rebuilt our bond in the best way we could. I went through high school while living with her, and for a while, things felt steady. Like maybe, just maybe, life was giving us a second chance.

But just when everything started feeling stable… it began to fall apart again.

At the end of my high school journey, my mom got sick—really sick. This time, there was no pretending it was small. No waiting it out. No hoping it would pass.

It was serious.

It was me, my mom, and my younger sister at home at the time. And suddenly, I had to become something I wasn’t ready to be.

I stopped going to school.

I took care of my mom. I took care of my little sister. I made sure she got to school, made sure she was okay, and tried to hold everything together while still being a child myself in so many ways.

We were in and out of the hospital. My mom came back home, but she wasn’t getting better. She was getting worse.

And eventually, we had to take her back again.

I still remember that day like it happened yesterday.

It was one of those nights in Jamaica—there was something going on, fashion night, the world outside still moving like everything was normal. Life was loud in places it shouldn’t have been.

Then my phone rang.

It was my grandma and my uncle.

They asked me how my mom was doing.

I told them she was okay.

I had just spoken to her. I believed she was okay. I wanted her to be okay.

But then their voices changed.

And they said the words that didn’t make sense at first.

“No… she’s not okay. Your mom just passed away in the hospital.”

The phone slipped.

And my world stopped.

I screamed. I cried. I couldn’t breathe properly because nothing about it felt real. It couldn’t be real. It didn’t make sense. She was just here. I had just spoken to her. How could she be gone?

How could life change like that in a single moment?

Everything I knew… everything I was standing on… collapsed at once.

And in that moment, I didn’t just lose my mother.

I lost the center of my world.

A few days had gone by and life started getting extremely hard as we had used up all we had during mom's illness. No money for food, nor transport, school had to go onhold for my babysister, thats when her dad decided to take her and i was left hoomeless as the landlord said i had a few days to leave the one room dwelling.

But my story doesn't end here, this is only the tip of the ice burg.