You’re a Monster, Mom! – Anna’s Journey from Small-Town Ohio to Chicago and Back to Herself

“You’re a monster, mom!” The words exploded from my lips, shattering the silence in our cramped kitchen. My mom’s face froze, her hands gripping the chipped mug so tightly I thought it might break. I was 17, trembling, angry, desperate—anything but the quiet, obedient daughter she’d raised in our little house on the edge of Millersburg, Ohio. In that moment, I didn’t care if she cried. In that moment, I wanted the whole world to hear me scream.

I ran upstairs, slamming the door so hard the picture of Grandma fell off the hallway wall. I pressed my forehead to the cool windowpane, staring out at endless cornfields, wishing them away, wishing myself away. I wanted city noise, people who didn’t know my name, the chance to be someone—anyone—else. That was the night I decided I’d leave Millersburg for good.

My mom didn’t speak to me for a week. My dad, always the peacemaker, would poke his head in at night, whisper, “She loves you, Anna. She just doesn’t know how to show it.” I’d pull the covers over my head, pretending I didn’t care. But those words—monster, mom—echoed in my chest, pulsing with guilt and relief. Monster, because she’d smothered me with rules and warnings. Monster, because I’d said the one thing I knew would hurt her most.

I saved every penny from my job at the Dairy Queen, applied to every college far from home, and when the acceptance letter from the University of Illinois at Chicago arrived, I packed my bags in secret. My mom found out the night before I left. She stood in my doorway, eyes red, voice small. “You don’t have to run, Anna.”

But I did.

Chicago swallowed me whole. The city buzzed with a pulse I’d only dreamed of. I made friends—Maya from my English class, who wore thrift store dresses and could recite Sylvia Plath by heart; Jack, who worked at the record store and smelled like cigarettes and rain. For the first time, I could breathe. I dyed my hair blue, pierced my nose, laughed until my stomach hurt. I sent my mom polite, sparse texts. She replied with, “Call me when you can.” I never did.

Then I met Tyler. He was everything I thought I wanted: older, reckless, brilliant. He played guitar in a bar on Belmont, wrote poetry on napkins, talked about escape and freedom and love like they were his birthright. The first night he kissed me, I felt like I was flying. He said, “You’re not like the other girls here—you get it.” I believed him.

But Tyler had shadows behind his eyes. He drank too much, disappeared for days, apologized with flowers and songs. He told me I was too clingy, too naïve, too much like my mother. The first time he yelled at me, smashing a glass against the wall, I told myself it was just the booze. The second time, when he grabbed my wrist and squeezed until I cried, I told myself I could fix him.

My friends noticed before I did. Maya cornered me after class, voice trembling. “He’s not good for you, Anna. You don’t have to save him.” I laughed it off, but her words stuck. Jack stopped inviting me to parties, said, “Call me when you remember who you are.”

My world shrank. Tyler became everything—my joy, my pain, my prison. I stopped going to class, lost my job at the bakery, avoided calls from home. Some nights, I’d stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, searching for the small-town girl who’d once screamed at her mother. All I saw was a stranger with tired eyes and bruises she tried to hide.

The night it all broke, Chicago was covered in ice. Tyler came home drunk, angry about nothing and everything. He threw my phone across the room, shattered it to pieces. When I tried to leave, he blocked the door, voice low and dangerous. “You’re not going anywhere.”

I don’t remember how long I cowered on the bathroom floor, shaking, praying he’d pass out. When the apartment finally fell silent, I grabbed my backpack—stuffed with whatever I could find—and ran. My hands bled from the cold, my heart pounded out of my chest. I called Maya from a payphone. She came, wrapped me in her coat, took me to her place. “You’re safe now,” she whispered.

I slept for a day and a half. When I woke up, Maya was there, making coffee. She handed me her phone. “Call your mom.”

It took me an hour to dial. When my mom answered, her voice cracked. “Anna? Are you okay?”

I cried. For the first time in years, I cried for my mom, for myself, for the girl I’d tried so hard to leave behind. She didn’t say, “I told you so.” She just listened, quiet and steady, while I poured out everything—the fear, the shame, the loneliness.

“I want to come home, Mom.”

The drive back to Ohio was silent, except for the hum of the highway and my mom’s hand squeezing mine at every rest stop. Millersburg hadn’t changed, but I had. I spent weeks sleeping in my old room, relearning how to eat, to laugh, to breathe. My mom would sit on the edge of my bed at night, smoothing my hair like she used to. “You’re not a monster, Anna,” she whispered. “You’re just human.”

Some nights, I still wake up screaming, Tyler’s voice echoing in my dreams. Some days, I can’t look at myself in the mirror. But other days, I see a girl who survived. I started therapy, went back to school at the community college, got a job at the library. I talk to Maya every week. Jack finally picked up my call.

My mom and I still fight. She still worries, still hovers, still loves me in ways I’m only starting to understand. But now, when I look in the mirror, I see all of me—the brave, the broken, the angry, the healing. I don’t have all the answers. But I’m not running anymore.

Sometimes I wonder: How many of us are just screaming to be heard, desperate to escape, only to find ourselves right back where we started—trying, somehow, to forgive and love the monsters in ourselves and each other? What would you see if you looked in your own mirror tonight?