* I couldn't find a source for this art. Please let me know if you know so I can credit them.
Sensory memories of my childhood intrude.
Not the benign ones of past visits.
Unwelcome visitors.
I let them stay for a bit.
Lured in by the notion that doing my parent's dirty work might offer a return.
The song won't leave my head now anyways.
The rhythmic thump of musty swamp coolers.
The singe of sun burnt skin.
The red glow of a desert at sundown.
Petrichor, the smell of rain on dust.
The smell of vomit in the mornings.
Paralyzed fear of getting in the way.
Shattered windows and plates.
Screams and sobs, on rotation.
Cunt.
Bitch.
Whore.
And I am reminded of my mother. The first person to call me by these names.
Before the age of eight. Before I even knew their meaning.
Names that were familiar only because I had heard her called by these names herself.
An old wound that penetrates deeper than the physical ones.
Deeper than the punches, and kicks.
They scarred thicker. Carried further.
For her too, I'm sure.
Most of my life I lived helplessly confused about this emotionally unregulated mess
of a human who said she was my mother. She never felt like a mother.
Or at least what I am told and imagine a mother might feel like.
Confusion. Shame.
Fury. Rage.
Sadness burned away long ago.
Understanding unfolding.
Compassion yet to come.
No one ever put her into context for me. Maybe no one ever was able to.
Maybe no one ever cared to. For good reason.
A true DNR patient if there ever was one. Do not resuscitate.
Maybe the most compassionate thing you can do is to let sickness
die and let it be forgotten.
Through the years self destruction eluded her.
And we all knew we were just one accident away from a miracle.
A miracle that would have blessed us all.
I think I'll never forgive her for not dying so that my brother and father might live.
And there's blood on her hands that we can all see.
Perhaps she was soft and happy once, able to love.
By the time I met her life had already cut her into jagged edges.
Razor sharp. Temperamental. Tragic.
Always a victim. Never a survivor.
But even an informed judgement is still a judgement.
I'll never know all the places her heart had been.
I'll never know just how hard it had been.
She was 16 when we met. Beyond that, I still don't know how I came to be in this world.
She never told me her stories. I Just walked behind her, picking up fragmented pieces.
I knew that these fragmented pieces of story were gateways into understanding myself.
Even then.
And who was I to her but a burden.
A tether.
A repository.
A child born to a hurting child.
Part of an ancestral inheritance.
Entrenchment.
Her own pains took up all her heart space and didn't leave any room for mine.
I think she spent her life just trying to get witnessed in her pain, and refused.
Filling up the empty holes with anything that would pour.
Trying to find a chest to cut open and crawl inside.
And it's not like I don't know the feeling.
And I have to know that all the time and distance between us won't purge me of her blood.
And there's a certain kind of hate you get when there's no where else to go.
I've got nowhere else to go.
I can sever and disassociate, but never escape the ancestral line that produced me.
And I don't want to have to go there anymore than she did.
But I promise that I'll go there, and take her with me.
I'll try not to be too angry with her that she didn't go there so that I didn't have to.
Try not to blame her that my daughter will still have to go there.
Hold hope that her's won't.
Soundtrack to these thoughts:
Listener, Seatbelt Hands