Genetics are little gifts from our parents,
your mothers button nose,
Daddies thick hair, the freckles that dot your checks. The unique shape of your ears that curve in such a way.
And in conjunction with these we have family traditions, like ham on easter, driving up north every summer,
A kiss on the forehead when you say goodnight.
As we grow we make the decision to either keep alive family traditions, or we make our own way, stumbling forward re-writing the story bit by bit, Some things we will keep consciously or not, following the footsteps of those before us
like a good night's kiss youâll tenderly keep but also realizing you never really liked ham that much, so perhaps you'll serve turkey instead.
But some family heirlooms passed down cannot be escaped,
Like sounding like your father when your temper is lost on a broken plate,
Feeling like your lightweight mother when you finish your beer.
But where does one go when genetics and family tradition has both gifted you hereditary suicide?
It was the way of your father and the father before him, leaving a void in family scrapbooks, and being an elephant suffocating the room in every family gathering.
It's like the christmas gift of fuzzy slippers that arenât even your size but they haunt you by sitting at the bottom your closet, you know you donât want to wear them but no one give you the receipt
How do you build a legacy on a family that never gave you solid ground, it feels like youâre standing upon quicksand, there is no hero to hold on to, no standard. No role model of the loving family man
Instead The patriarch left his family decapitated as he earnestly kept the tradition alive by repeating what his father did before him.
And I have this grand epiphany that i cannot make the man proud by accomplishing his goals when his greatest goal in life was to lose his
So, when I have come to the fork in the road, glaring at me, asking if I will choose life or death.
The greater black or simplier white,
it simply not enough that I choose to kill such a tradition, I must take pride in making the choices i know he never did
I repeat it again and again
I repeat it when I visit my psychiatrist, her shopping list of temporary fixes and some stability that I can find in a bottle, we cross off another from the list. I take it home in a tiny orange jar pretending each pill is a small piece of hope as i swallow it down nightly reminding myself with each sip water to wash it down
âIâm making the choices you never didâ
I repeat it when it seems impossible to leave my bed, almost if my pain has me eternally bound but instead i get up and start the car to meet a
friend over coffee, knowing it would have been easier to borrow away, to be the shut in,never let anyone know how i am suffering, but rather instead i chose to laugh with a friend
âIâm making the choices you never didâ
I repeat it when I choose another self-help book from the shelf at the bookstore, and I try not to feel weirdly embarrassed when the shop clerk bags it.
I wonder if they notice the dark circles under my eyes and feel worried for me, a just wayford stranger.
âIâm making the choices you never didâ
And i repeat it over and over when i just want to be sedated by something, a temporary fix, something to lean against like a crutch, something to put me to sleep like a sick lullaby
But with all my willpower I have left, the wine bottle stays in its place upon the top of my fridge.
I nearly scream âIâm making the choices you never didâ
I repeat it when the tears will not stop, as if the floodgates where destroyed,
And I cannot convince myself of any good, and at the moment I believe the sun will not come up tomorrow, I am powerless and I'm at my wits end.
And I truly began to understand why you sought the meets to an end that was final, for a moment I felt empathy for you but instead, I put my weapon against myself down. And in what feels like a violent scream but was rather a groggy whisper for help I call that famous hotline, and woman with a soothing mature voice reminds me on the other end of the line ââyouâre making the choices he never didâ
I repeat it when i walk through the doors of the emergency room,
Feeling a tinge of guilt that my emergency wasn't one of a physical sense like the others in the room but rather of deep emotional turmoil from a brain wired differently that passed down to me. I donât even feel the needles pierce my skin as they fit me for an iv,
And they ask me to strip off my clothes and become naked in the cold sterile room. I think about how it parallels how vulnerable I feel. A team of nurses and doctors who cycle in and out my room ironcily are there to keep me from my greatest threat,
just like you where you own greatest emieny, and when they draw another vile blood from my sore arms I clench my eyes shut and whisper
âIâm making the choices you never didâ
Someday I'll repeat it like a pledge, oath. a sincere promise.
When i have a child of my very own and their tiny hand presses against mine, Iâll make sure with every ounce of my being that they will never know the pain of having a parent didn't want them,
They'll never know the knife in their back of betrayal of abandonment
Iâll refuse to be a coward, I won't run away from the responsibility of parenthood instead dive head first into it with the decision to make the choices you never did.
So, when it comes to family tradition I donât just rewrite the book, I have decided to close it.
It ends with me, I won't just never follow your footsteps, I will make my own in the opposite direction. The apple didnât just fall far from the tree, it never even grew there
And maybe i cropped off the block and perhaps we are cut from the same cloth but i am sowing
myself into something new, I am becoming something unrecognizable from your blueprint.
I am choosing the value of true autonomy cutting these family ties.
I am evolving, I am in every way changing. Transforming.
And this mantra that I scream in my soul, it's simply not just enough to never make the choices you did i am making the choices you did notâ
And in a radical moment of true self love and utter defiance of those who came before me.
I am making the choice you simply could not
