A Letter to My Trauma on His 6th Birthday
My son,
You have put me through hell. You were born in a restaurant that went out of business just months ago. I tried to never go there after you were born. I did go, once, with my Uncle Jerry. Your grandparents insisted we go. Every part of it hurt me. I couldn’t wait for the day it died. But I’ve learned something about death since you were born.
They said it went out of business and everything started spinning. I wondered how it was possible. Something that meant so much to me, that was integral to my existence, sown into the very fabric of my body, disappeared. I was still here and you were still here, and your father was still here, and the sun and moon and the grass. And not the place you were born. It was everything and then nothing.
Flesh. And then brick.
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You’re a child. Everything is still on the precipice for you. I am an old man. I’ve been wondering more and more who you’ll be without me. And who I’ll be without you. Is that bad for a mother to say to his son? That I birthed you, that you were a part of me, that I carried you? And that I’m waiting for you to leave? To finally, fully move on with my life?
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I am so proud of myself. And I think you’d be proud to have me as a mother. I have talked about you in high schools and in colleges. I wrote a book about you. I made money off of it. I survived, though. That’s what I’m most proud of. I couldn’t talk the day after you were born. I just sat on the floor with my best friends and listened to them talk around me. I thought I was going to die that first year. I thought you were going to kill me.
And instead I just have you. I have six years of you. And goddammit I have me too. Thanks for making me, bud. Here’s to another year.
Love,
Mom.
