We all started out as parasites ...

[ashling]

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The Worst Thing You Ever Did to Your Mother

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An apology for all the manipulation, invasion, and theft.

Dear Mom: I’d like to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for manipulating you, stealing from you, taking control of your blood supply, and consuming part of your body. I, like everyone else alive today, did all this before I was even born, with an organ I no longer possess. Of course, I wasn’t consciously doing these things to you, in the same way I’m not consciously controlling my liver. It just sort of happened.

It all started when I was a zygote. I was floating through your uterus when I bumped into your uterine wall. I’m not proud of what I did next, but I really wasn’t thinking. (That’s not an excuse—I was just a clump of cells.) I used my outer layer of cells to invade and destroy parts of your uterus. This outer layer consisted of my trophoblast cells, and I used them like a horde of ravenous snakes: winding through your uterine wall, killing your cells, and sucking up your nutrients. With my trophoblasts I burrowed into your uterine wall like a parasite until I was completely embedded in your tissue.

Then I went a little psycho on you. In good embryo fashion, my trophoblasts grew into clumps that fused with your blood vessels. I grew hollow spaces within these clumps, and these spaces filled with your blood. Together, all these blood-filled spaces became my placenta, one of the strangest organs on Earth. The blood inside these clumps was all yours, but the tissue that surrounded them was grown from my cells. Because your blood vessels fused with my trophoblast clumps to create these blood chambers, my placenta was a hybrid organ made from both of us. (We shared an organ together—attachment and bonding!) I then grew wriggly little projections into these blood chambers. These projections were filled with blood vessels from my umbilical cord that let me pass my waste into your bloodstream and soak up oxygen and nutrients from your body.

Just when you thought I couldn't get any more demanding, I started actively invading your blood supply. This is where humans are especially destructive. No other animal is so ruthless in its invasion. For most animal species, Mom’s blood vessels remain safely hers, but humans are not like most animals. My cells began surrounding the arteries you used to fill my placenta with blood. These arteries provided your blood to the chambers of my placenta, and thus provided me with much-needed oxygen and nutrients. Slowly my cells began to replace your artery walls, effectively taking your placental arteries under my control. Once I had control of your arteries, I widened them to increase the amount of blood that entered the blood chambers, which increased the amount of oxygen and nutrients passing through my placenta (and thus to me). But that was just small-scale control—I wasn’t done yet.

....

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear ashling!

The thing is, you did this because she wanted YOU!

Remember that...

[ashling]

2. and she made me a Democrat

so there is that

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Also very important!