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By @Madison
It’s a painful memory, sure
But I try to think about that day as little as possible.
Today
In the here and now
Things are different.
For one thing
It’s not Candace and Mommy anymore
But Candace and Izzy
My mother’s sort-of sister
And my current legal gaurdian.
Now, I’m eleven years and a couple of states away from the scene of the fiasco
With an entirely different woman
As an entirely different girl.
Izzy is not my mother, nor my aunt
But the best kind of inbetween-ish something.
She offers me encouragement when I need it
And makes enough money with her interior decorating career
To offer grocery trips more frequently than on a biweekly basis
Keeping well-rounded meals on her cherry wood table
At least five nights per week.
She pays for my clothes and schoolbooks
Keeps tabs on my report cards
And makes sure that I go to sleep at a decent time on school nights.
Isabelle Noble does everything a mother should do for her child
And yet
I haven’t once let any maternal nickname pass my lips
In reference to her.
Don’t get me wrong
I love Izzy
And Izzy most definitely loves me.
Still
I can’t associate the term I saved for my birth mom with her face.
Maybe it’s side effects of the scars that I continue to hide all these years later
Or simply the difficulty of breaking a habit.
Whatever the case
Izzy is not my mom
So I do not address her as such.
I don’t think it offends her
In fact, she might understand
Because not once in the near twelve years I’ve been in her custody
Has she called me Candy.
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