I haven’t written in awhile. I haven’t felt the urge, but I need to write regardless.
For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been thinking about who the person I thought I needed to be is. What does she look like? What does she wear? How does she take her coffee? What type of books are on her bookshelves? Or does she prefer music? Or does she even give a shit about art? How does she process her emotions? Does she fight or freeze? What does she say to men who tell her to smile? Why do I think I need to be her?
A few weeks ago, I talked about the impact of my brother’s attempted suicide and drug addiction. Twice, I watched the man I love the most almost die, and I did nothing. That haunts me like a poltergeist knocking over plants, leaving the fridge open, and closing doors. I wasn’t able to be emotionally supportive. Sure, I was 6 and 15 years old. Of course, I didn’t know how to be emotionally supportive. But I thought I could not be emotionally supportive. I thought that since I did not show up for him, I could not show up for him.
My mother is not the most emotionally available person (understatement). Sure, she feels emotions and compassion for others, but as an immigrant woman of color in America, outwardly showing love and affection can often be perceived as a sign of weakness. My mother has been an OR nurse for over 30 years. She knows that sometimes, what a patient needs isn’t rainbows and love and affection, but hard love. The type that tells you to scream and yell and hang on when you’re in pain and scared. She’s not gentle. She’s tough. She makes you want to be tough.
When I was 12, my brother had a conversation with me. I remember it clearly, He told me that people would be scared of me for the rest of my life. Sure, for about....10 years I tried to be nice and sweet, but I’m not nice and sweet. I’m tough, like my mom. I’m emotionally effusive. I guarantee you if I wasn’t, I would probably crawl into a hole full of repressed emotions and die there.
So if I can’t be this soft and cushy pillow for loved ones, what/who can I be? I can be the bitch that comes in and fucks shit up. The person you call to clean up the mess. The friend you want on your side at a bar fight. The person made of steel, who will pull you back into reality.
I wasn’t an emotionally supportive partner most of the time. I criticized my partner’s goals and dreams, and called them unrealistic. When we were angry and he shut down emotionally, I would lash out and call him inept and incompetent. I made him feel small. Sure, he DEFINITELY DID HIS SHARE OF FUCKSHIT, but we’re talking about what I did. Taking responsibility for that type of shit is significant (which I will write about later on). Understanding why I did it is equally important. I thought I needed to be the cold, hard, steely bitch, because that’s all I knew. I didn’t think I was capable of being anything else. I thought I needed to be the breadwinner and the perfect housewife.
Young women are told we can HAVE IT ALL. SURE THING, GAL. GO TO SCHOOL, GET A DEGREE, GET A JOB AND BUY ALL THE GOOFY IPHONE CASES YOU WANT! MARRY A BEARDED TECH MILLENNIAL, CLEAN UP HIS MESSES, KEEP YOUR HIGH POWERED JOB, AND DO ALL THE EMOTIONAL LABOR IN YOUR HETERONORMATIVE RELATIONSHIP!
That shit is fucking corny. First of all, I realized I actually hate cooking. I fooled myself into thinking I liked it. But as soon as my partner moved out and I didn’t actually have anyone to cook meals with/for, I was like peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeace oooooooooooooooooout!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck cooking. I don’t like that shit.
I also don’t like being the person who “has it all together.” Over the last year, my partner’s life has basically completely fallen apart. I don’t necessarily view that as a negative thing. Shit needs to leave your life to make room for better things to grow. But his shit seriously fell apart. With his stability endangered, I became the “responsible one,” always reminding him of the consequences of his actions. And he did his part in creating that. If I fucked up, I was a monster. I wasn’t allowed to fuck up. I wasn’t allowed to be human. I needed to be perfect. Basically, I turned into the hall monitor in our relationship. Fuck being the hall monitor. I don’t like that shit.
I’m not a role model. I like to be reckless. I’m messy. I’m that scene in “Silver Linings Playbook” when Jennifer Lawrence says, “There will always be a part of me that is sloppy and dirty, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself. I can forgive. Can you say the same for yourself, fucker? Can you forgive? Are you capable of that?”
My partner fell in love with who I really am. More importantly, I LOVE ME. That’s someone who’s unapologetic, ambitious and adventurous. She laughs with her whole body and makes the white people 5 cubicles over really uncomfortable. She’s the first person who raise her hands up and scream out of joy. She smiles often. She cusses out people who tell her she doesn’t.
Over the course of our relationship, I lost sight of my confidence and identity. I needed to be the perfect lifesaver for him. We turned me into someone that we thought we needed, and ended up hating.
Last week, I basically wrote out a sorrowful, long ass goodbye because he wouldn’t see a duck for a duck. Of course, an hour after I posted that shit, he told me what I needed to hear to keep going to therapy. So today, at 11am, we had therapy.
I don’t know what round of couples therapy this is, but the shouting matches have begun. He is great at charming people. Much like his father, he talks a good game. And much like my mother, I call that flagrant shit out. So he starts talking, and I’m fighting the urge to look like Geena Davis in Beetlejuice with my eyeballs in my mouth. Finally, like an asshole, I cut him off and say “why are you saying a bunch of nothing?” FOLLOWED BY “WHY DON’T YOU TALK ABOUT HOW YOU REALLY FEEL AND WHAT YOUR HIGHER SELF IS SAYING?”
I should preface this by saying our therapist showed us both a matrix about Attachment Theory. You can look at this handy wikipedia article to learn more about it. I’m not an expert on this, and it could totally be full of shit, but for the sake of this post, I will go along with it. I pointed out that I grew up with a mixture of ambivalent/disorganized attachment behavior, but eventually learned to gravitate towards secure attachment behavior. There’s a bit of backsliding involved here, because there is no such thing as a person that is completely healed. Healing is not linear.
He, too, grew up in a mixture of ambivalent/disorganized attachment behavior, but is still there. He still does not think he is worthy of love, that others are worthy of giving him love and that he believes that people will leave him because of his flaws. So, at least we got there. To be honest, because we were both so angry and yelling at each other, I don’t remember exactly what was going on besides crying a lot, so here’s what I can say:
1) He admitted that he doesn’t want me to see all the ugly parts of himself. This is namely the rage, depression, resentment, grief that he harbors because of his childhood abuse.
1a) To which I replied in a crying fury, “BUT I AM TELLING YOU THAT I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU ONCE I SEE THE UGLY PARTS!!!”
2) He says that I have hurt him so that I have lost access to that part of him.
2a) I can’t really say shit to that. He’s right, I have hurt him. It’s inevitable in relationships and when someone hurts you, you have the right to withhold vulnerability.
4) There was a lot of floundering from his side, with snippets of, “I love her more than anything” type shit sprinkled in the “she lost my trust” shit.
5) At one point, he shouted at me, “MY FAMILY ISN’T LIKE YOUR FAMILY. WHEN YOUR FAMILY GOES THROUGH SHIT, YOU GUYS GROW CLOSER TOGETHER. WHEN MY FAMILY GOES THROUGH SHIT, EVERYONE BREAKS APART.”
6) He is the oldest (out of two) children. He protected his younger brother from a lot of abuse and trauma.
So after an hour of this, he said he wanted to do another session. We walked outside, and I stopped him and looked him in the eye. We haven’t looked each other in the eye in over a month. Looking at him was like saying hello to your best friend that you haven’t seen in years. It was a familiar feeling, like when you walk through your door after being away from home. He saw me breaking apart and held me for the first time in weeks. I fell into his chest like it was the most comfortable fucking bed in the entire world.
He told me it was going to be okay. He held my hands, and told me that I would be okay. Whenever people tell me that, I always say, “I’m always okay.” <---This is some residual shit from my mother. My mom always told me, “I never have to worry about you. You’ll always figure it out.” Hence, “I’m always okay, even when I’m fucking broken and the world is ablaze BUT I WILL EVENTUALLY BE OKAY.” That’s what sick and disabled QTPOC do. We fucking survive. We know when shit ain’t okay, but we persevere anyway because that’s our fucking legacy.
Anyway, back to my point about me in denial. He does this thing when I am pretending to be strong. A poet, Jason Bayani, once said, “Maybe love is a safe place to fall apart.” This is me falling apart. I turn into a small child and look at my feet. When I do this, he gently nudges me with a, “hey...” grabs my face (even as I try to keep my head down), brings it up to his and makes me look at him in the eyes. He told me that I’m not okay, and that I don’t have to pretend to be okay.
And he’s right, I’m not okay. Our shit is falling apart like an airplane still in flight with its wings, tail, everything slowly being ripped away by air pressure. Then he did this thing where his eyes started to tear up, and he started smiling. There’s a bitch inside my brain that’s like “IS THIS MFER FOREAL SMILING RN?!!?!?!?” which comes out as me sobbing “why are you smiling?” To which he replied, “because it’s not over.”
That is simultaneously the most annoying and hopeful thing I can hear. Like what 7th, 9th, 2003204018419041st circle of hell do I need to drag myself through?
But he knows me. He knows what I’m thinking. He says it before I do. He sees me.
Anyway, that’s somehow a segue into what I wanted to talk about. On my way home, I thought about him as a child. I thought I knew a lot about him, but there’s this whole part of him that I don’t know. I don’t know what he went through as a child. I know bits and pieces, but not all of it. I don’t actually fucking see him as much as I thought I did.
During our relationship, I would argue with him about how I wasn’t nearly afforded the same support and opportunities he has. He has rich grandparents that paid for his college and legal fees and everything else. He has a mom who, more or less, takes an interest in his life and shows up 10184901842901x more than my parents.
But there was a huge difference in how we came up. When I was 6, my brother was 12 and tried to kill himself. I remember the morning really clearly. I came into the kitchen and saw him taking something out of the medicine cabinet. Like a nosy little sister, I asked him what he was doing and he told me to leave him alone. So I didn’t think much of it. Later that day, my grandma was driving me home from piano lessons when I saw 4 ambulances parked outside our house. I didn’t understand what was going on. I remember asking over and over again and no one answering me. I remember my mom carrying a bunch of my brother’s clothes to the ambulance.
I remember sitting at the table at the psychiatric hospital and him crying. I wouldn’t realize it until I was in my 20s, but I have blamed myself for his suicide attempt ever since. I saw him take the pills out of the cabinet and I said nothing. When I was 15 and he started using meth and he told me not to tell our parents, I said nothing and watched him turn into a skeleton.
I said nothing and I watched him wither and almost die. Both times. The man who practically raised me, who shielded me from god knows what, was dying, and I did nothing to stop it.
When I was 12, I started middle school. I went to the same middle and high school as my brother, so the counselors and administrators knew me. In the middle of 6th grade, the counselor called me into her office and I didn’t know why, but she started talking about my brother. I immediately broke into tears and had a case worker assigned to me. I had this case worker throughout middle school, which is when I began attempting suicide. They both told me, very frequently, that my brother’s suicide attempt wasn’t my fault. It’s only now that I realize that my middle school counselor was taking pre-emptive actions because of our family history.
This support continued through high school. I had a 504 plan. I was also institutionalized (again). I had an AMAZING support system. I had counselors, and teachers, and even my principal carrying me through high school. Since the age of 12, I had people telling me that my parents’ neglect, my brother’s descent into addiction, everything on fire wasn’t my fault. After college, I joined a poetry slam group and had mentors, who also told me shit wasn’t my fault.
I have always had a support system. It has been INGRAINED in me to reach out and ask for support. But he hasn’t. Why? Well 1) he’s black. I don’t think I need to elaborate on the treatment of black communities in the U.S. unless you’re a Trumpeter. 2) he identifies as a man. So ring the wheel of intersectionality and you get a lot of institutional dehumanization. I might be the first person that’s ever told him that the abuse he endured wasn’t his fault. I remember what that felt like. To hold everything in. The black hole for a heart. The immense amount of energy it took just to get out of bed, let alone function.
So no, I was afforded and given so much more in terms of support than he was. I could not see him before, because of my own bullshit. And now, I see him. What does that mean? It means it brings another level of compassion. It doesn’t excuse his abuse or fuckery, but it helps me understand him better. It helps understand me better. And that’s all I can ask for right now.
I am a few days late. Tbh, on Sunday night, I was laying in bed, stoned, texting my friends asking if they wanted me to write about anything. All of your lives are boring (jk jk). I think I just had a bit of a slow week in terms of emotional processing. It be like that sometimes.
But TODAY, today I have lots to write about. My significant other and I are separated but we have been going to couples therapy. We had a session this morning. I didn’t want to go to the session. In fact, I was laying in bed at 8am wondering what would happen if I didn’t show up. We have argued a few times in the last few weeks leading up to this because I DON’T KNOW WHY WE ARE GOING TO THERAPY. He has a multitude of reasons, all of which end in nowheresville. “I want us to figure out how to move forward” or “I want us to heal in our own ways but check in with each other” or “I want us to have a safe space to sort out our feelings.” But why? What’s the point?
To me, couples therapy means you’re investing in the relationship. It means you believe there is something worth saving. It means that you don’t know how to repair it, but that you want to. If I break my leg, and I go to the hospital, that means I am in pain, something hurts, and I am TRUSTING someone who knows how to heal broken bones. What’s the underlying theme of this? I care about my body enough to try and heal it.
So why the fuck would you go to the hospital if you’re not interested in repairing a broken bone? If you didn’t give a shit about your leg, you probably wouldn’t do anything, right?
What does it mean to admit that you care about something? What type of leaps does it take for a person to be that vulnerable? What does that open you up to?
So an hour goes by, and I am more or less checked out of the session. By 9:55am, the therapist asks if we want to do another session. The asshole evasive fuckface looks at me. I tell him to stop looking at me. Asshole evasive fuckface pulls up his iCal and we set a date. I bring up the fact that I don’t understand why we are doing this again. And the bullshit reasoning ensues:
Him: “Because if we are going to communicate, then this place is better for communication rather then over text/phone.”
Me: “But why are we communicating?”
H: “Because you keep talking to me.”
M: “Okay, so I’m the reason we are going to therapy.”
H: “No, we are going because I care about you still and I want to know you’re okay.” (people who don’t know how to ask for what they need often use other people as reasons to do the things they want to do)
M: “But we can care about each other from afar, why do we need to go to therapy?”
H: “So we can communicate.”
See what he did there? He is a master at evading his own feelings. What does it mean to ask for what you want? It means opening yourself to rejection, to pain, to suffering. But shit, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, don’t fucking tell me that shit is a goose. Shit ain’t a goose. Shit is a duck. He insists it’s a goose. I get upset by this fraudulent activity.
I know what it’s like to have people refuse to face me. When you are a light, a truth seeker/teller, when you say the uncomfortable, dark, ugly things that no one wants to hear, you learn to deal with rejection. I have rejected these parts of me. I thought, and sometimes still think, they are ugly. I hate them sometimes. Sometimes, I wish I could just keep my mouth shut like all the stupid assholes want me to. And I did that for 3 years. I crumbled inside. I lost myself. I felt like I was dying.
Because 9 times out of 10, it isn’t you. It is them. A lot of self-righteous, annoying basic bitches and fuckboys will repost GIFs of annoying memes or twitter philosophy to justify their behavior and excuse themselves from any meaningful self-reflection.
I asked him to face me. To look at me. To see me. Because if he faces me, he accepts his own feelings for me, his hopes for this relationship. It is inescapable. That’s what it means to face one another in relationships. For me, to be seen is to be loved. I am a child of neglect. I am made invisible by the society I grew up in. I am a queer woman of color with invisible disabilities. I cannot say this enough...
To be seen is to be loved.
To be loved is to be seen.
He, too, is a child of neglect. What does it mean for him to go from being neglected and ignored, to becoming the apple of my eye? How frightening and overwhelming that must be. I tell him things like, “you are amazing, incredible, wonderful, beautiful, kind, and I love every fragmented, unpolished, broken edge of yours.” I chase him when he hides with fire and brimstone. I call him out, “you’re a coward and you’re hiding. What are you so scared of?” I tell him I see him. I see him. That scares him.
Yes, bitch. I see your ass. You are a person that has energy, and feelings, and a voice.
But it isn’t okay for me to ignore my own needs for the sake of his shortcomings. I did NOT ask for commitment. I did not ask for “forever.” I did not ask for anything besides for him to face me, to see me, to admit that he, too, cares about our fucking broken leg and we are at the hospital to fix the goddamn leg. Why the fuck are at this frigging hospital talking to the doctors about the stupid leg if he can’t admit he cares about it enough to fix it?
I needed him to admit he cares about the leg. That he sees the duck is, in fact, a DUCK and not a GOOSE. I needed him to face me and say, “yes, I love you, this is something worth saving.”
Maybe my light burns too bright. Rejection is a comfortable, familiar feeling, like drinking really expensive scotch every once in awhile. It hits you like you’re inhaling a plume of smoke but ends with a nice finish.
So I did good. I feel like I did pretty good this time around. In the words of dear Amy Gardner from The West Wing, “I fought you, I lost, I had a drink, I took a shower. 'Cause that's how it is in the NBA”
And it is sad, heartbreaking, and earth-shattering to imagine a life without him. It is terrifying to grieve him, the death of our relationship, of our future, but necessary. Necessary to heal and move forward. I mourn all the minutiae of our life together. Like the first time he told me loved me, which was in the green room of a club. We were drunk, and he held me and said, “hey, I love you, but you’re an asshole.” Like how he took hours to cook a meal because he cared so much about making it perfect. I will miss falling asleep on his lap while he drew. Mourning the past is jagged, little pill Alanis didn’t fucking tell me about.
And I mourn the future, too. We had plans. We were excited about the possibility of growing old together, raising a family where our children could be weirdos and feel loved and supported the way we never were. We wanted to honeymoon in Italy, because we both love Renaissance art and pasta. We were going to take Korean lessons so that I could become more proficient and he could know what my family was saying all the time. We talked about what our biracial kids would look like and how I’d need to learn how to care of black hair. He would say how excited he would be to get out of bed in the middle of the night to get me pickles and ice cream to feed random pregnancy cravings.
The plans you make as a couple turn into a thousand little origami cranes that you hang above your bed like a crib mobile. To set them on fire, sweep up the ashes into a delicate urn, and set it on fire again is necessary. To break your own heart is necessary, sometimes.
I love my mother. She’s an incredible woman. She is an outspoken, compassionate, hustling bad ass that commands respect, and will check anyone who doesn’t give it to her. My friends and family love my mom, too. They admire her tenacity and sense of humor.
And she’s also a huge asshole. When people judge me for not having a positive relationship with my mother, they make several assumptions:
1) my mom was/is a good mother.
2) I’m an ungrateful child.
3) even if my mom wasn’t a good mom, I still have to revere her.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of teaching children to overlook their parents’ fuckshit just because they’re parents. Did she do her best? Sure. Was it good enough? No. At the risk of sounding like every other whiny child of immigrants who weren’t loved enough, I’m okay with calling my mom a bad mother.
Why? Let me explain.
My mother was born in 1957, post-war impoverished South Korea. I don’t know every detail of her childhood, but I know that she was poor. Really really poor. At some point as a child, my grandparents, her and her siblings were homeless. She would sleep at motels, sitting up with her little brother’s head in her lap so she could kill any cockroaches that tried to climb on him. She was made fun of her entire life for not having money (even though pretty much everyone in Korea was poor as fuck). She didn’t go to the best school, but she did go to nursing school to pursue a career that would provide for her family.
When I was a child, my mom and I would watch true crime TV shows and she would always told me how she wanted to go into forensic science. If she had the chance to go back and do what she really wanted, she wanted to become a forensic scientists. But as a poor woman of color, she had to do what she needed to do to make sure shit was handled.
Not only that, she married a man who took her to the U.S. This man who would never cook, clean, or help raise the children they had. So, this woman worked a full time job as a nurse also took care of her family and home. Like with many women of her time.
How many sacrifices did she make? A shitload. To consolidate…
Childhood? Sacrificed.
Career? Sacrificed.
Any life of her own? Sacrificed.
When I was a teenager, my dad made poor investments, we filed for bankruptcy and lost the house I grew up in. My parents’ marriage disintegrated, and my dad left for a year. During this time, my mother was incredibly depressed and broke. Then she met a guy. She moved me into my brother’s apartment, so that she could live with this guy. My brother became addicted to meth and I spent the good portion of a year not sleeping and if I was sleeping, sleeping with a knife under my pillow on the futon in the living room.
The guy came and left. I went to Korea for 3 months. When I came back, my parents were trying to give it another shot, so we moved back into a house together with my brother. But that fell apart after a month or so. And this time, my mom left. She moved to California and she hasn’t come back since. I was 15. And then I became my mom.
My brother and my dad did not cook or clean, so I was in charge of that. No one spoke to each other in the house. We were all just people living in the same place. I was also a high achieving student. I went to school from 730am to 430pm, and had probably 4-5 hours of homework every night. And I was depressed. My parents were divorced. My brother was a recovering drug addict. I was mentally ill. I had no one to talk to. No one to tell me that what was going on around me wasn’t my fault. I internalized everything negative and further drifted into depression. I would spend hours in my high school counselor’s office, folding under the pressure. I attempted suicide at least 10 times during this period. The most serious, I took a bottle of sleeping pills and recall my brother making me puke in my bathroom, then an asshole nurse asking me why I did it.
But, due to the great teaching and counseling staff at my high school, I made it through high school (barely). I got into college, and after I graduated high school, I moved into my own apartment with a friend. Most people would think, “great! this is when you get free, right?” Nah. Because I was still depressed, traumatized and hadn’t dealt with any of the shit that happened to me during my adolescence. I was still suicidal. I was accepted into the International Studies program at my school, which also turned out to be one of the most racist environments I have ever encountered (fuck the Jackson School and white Zionists telling you they don’t want to give up their white privilege). In case you were wondering, RACISM CAUSES PHYSICAL AILMENTS IN PEOPLE OF COLOR.
So you have my mother, a neglected woman who has sacrificed her entire life for everyone else around her. She deeply resented the sexist structures that she was subjected to, and eventually began to fight them in her own way.
Then you have me, also neglected, mentally ill, traumatized, suicidal, high achieving weirdo who regularly abused prescription pills and was date raped (but didn’t realize it was rape until college).
I won’t get into what my mom did or didn’t do. That’s not the point of the post. The goal is to understand where she comes from, and where I come from. The point is I was neglected and parented by emotionally inept people. In many ways, the goal to raise a happy and healthy child was abandoned for the sake of survival. In many ways, I was abandoned. The point is her dreams and her identity were neglected for the sake of her marriage and family.
So I hate her a lot.
Well, why don’t you hate your dad, too? Great question. I hated my dad, for a really long time. I hated him before the marriage. I saw my mom working her ass off, and I saw my dad never taking an interest in me long before the divorce. But, during my 2nd year of college, my dad apologized and he has been trying to redeem himself ever since.
My mother doesn’t think she needs to apologize. For anything. In fact, the only time she ever apologized was when MY GRANDPARENTS MADE HER. That’s right, I had to tell on my mom to her parents to get her to apologize for something small. That is unheard of in Korea. That’s just some weird, triflin shit.
You know, I get it. Moms go through hella shit. Of course, she did her best. But like we realize in many relationships, your best isn’t always good enough. And when we consider the relationship between parent and child, she failed in many ways, so we should hold her accountable to that the same way we would anyone else.
When parents fail, they should apologize and take responsibility. Because that teaches empathy, vulnerability, and accountability (dingidngidngdigndigdni) SO that when that child fucks up and harms someone else intentionally/unintentionally, they know how to say “I’M SORRY I DID THAT TO YOU. HOW CAN I FIX THIS?”
Instead of deflecting with the “WELL I’M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY BUT THAT WAS MY BEST.”
I’m so grossed out by the number of non-apologies I receive, witness, and hear about. If you don’t know how to fucking own your shit, then you don’t know how to forgive, and you don’t know how to love. And if you don’t know how to love, then you’re probably gonna conduct more fuckery.
So I don’t really know how to forgive her. I believe we can forgive people without them ever having to ask for it, but this one sits in my chest like a smooth, polished stone. It doesn’t budge. I have an immense amount of compassion for her. She did, after all, get some things right. I had a strong moral backbone, she did her best to take care of me when she was around. I had food on the table then, and clothes on my back. I got all the books and art supplies I wanted.
But I resent her ridiculous amount of severe parenting fails and her unwillingness to come to terms with it. So I wait. I turn my compassion into a butter knife and slowly chip away at the resentment and I pray to fucking God every time I remember, that this mountain will be a pebble.
it's ready or not
there aren’t any more
leaves on this branch
sure, it’s winter now
sure, spring will come
but it’s spring
right now
south of the equator
where i belong
where the birds,
so free
fly in the sun
so ready or not
the last root
is here in my hands
i’ve been watering it
with my tears
i have a hard time
with death
i guess i don’t understand
why some people
places
things
leave us the way they do
but you
i’m ok with you dying now
i’m ok with this part of me
dying now
when we die
it’s not just us
it’s the house we live in
it’s the kids we don’t have yet
the good
and bad
house plants and
children’s births and
our honeymoon in italy
the sistine chapel
and
this is our story
this is how it ends
unfinished and
rough around the edges
like you
like me
I’ve started this post about 5 different times. They’re all drafts sitting in my account. My friends have asked, “so what are you gonna write about next week?” Because last week, I said I’d write about how to transform your anger into compassion.
Currently, I’m in a grieving process, but my stages are grief are in a different order. I’ve gone from denial, to bargaining, to depression, to anger. I’ve been fucking mad. Like really fucking mad. After the dust settles, I saw how much shit my partner broke inside of my fucking house. My metaphorical house. My emotional house. What constellations has he pissed on? What wounds did he spit salt into? What scars will he proudly say he created?
So I’m mad. Pissed. Outraged. But anger is a secondary emotion. Anger is an indication of pain. If I want to transform my anger, I need to chase down the source. I’m inside of my brain, asking myself, “Robin, show me where it hurts, why does this hurt so badly?”
I stop there. I’m too scared. What will I find? Don’t turn on the lights. I don’t want to see how bloody and broken I am. Because that means I have to face the fact that I’m devastated. I’m devastated. Show me where it hurts:
How many times did he poke a sharp stick at you? Like the time you asked for his part of the rent and he screamed at you for nagging him when it was past due. Or the time you told him he could not drink and come home, because after the third time he came home drunk and beat the shit out of you, you called out for a neighbor to call the police and he ran off. Like the time he told you that all of his ex girlfriends were better than you. Like the time you were bedridden and sick, working two jobs because he didn’t want to get another job yet, and he told you that asking him to stay at home was infringing on his freedom. Like all the times he’s said “and that’s why no one wants to be around you.” Like the times he made fun of your “feminist shit” when your “feminist shit” is what kept you alive.
All the times he wouldn’t let you be human. All the times he said he’d forgiven you but really he just suppressed it and brought shit up over and over again later on. All the times you had to be perfect to “save” him. All the times he stole your light because he couldn’t find his. And all the times you excused his behavior because he’s an addict, because of his trauma, because of _______.
Did you fight back?
Yes. I did.
Did you do what you thought you had to do to survive?
Yes. I did.
Did you roar the way you did when you were 15, sleeping with a knife under your pillow in the living room, because you lived on the ground floor with your brother who was addicted to meth?
Yes. I did.
Why did you resist?
Because I value my life.
Why did you defend yourself and hurt him?
Because I wanted him to be scared. Scared enough to not hurt me again.
How does he hurt you, the most?
When he withholds.
What does it feel like when he withholds from you?
It feels like I’m worth nothing.
It feels like I did something wrong to deserve this absence.
It feels like I’m alone.
Who else withheld from you?
My ex’s. Former friends. My mother.
My mother.
The lights are on. Now, I can see every injury. I’m covered in blood, my bones are broken. My eyes are swollen. My throat is dry. I can singlehandedly sustain all the saltwater bodies with my tears. Water tastes like hell. Sleep is the only respite.
The source of the wound is my relationship with my mother. My mother withholds from me. What does she withhold? Love, compassion, knowledge, understanding, empathy. Don’t get me wrong, my mother is an incredible woman. She is resilient, outspoken, and all around badass. She’s got a sharp tongue and will call bullshit on ANYONE. She has her shit together, and she has survived so much.
But most days, I figure that she probably didn’t want to have children at all. Due to the circumstances of her time, she was obligated to choose a career that would support herself and her family rather than following her dreams, if she was allowed to have any. We didn’t understand how much work she put into holding up a home. She sacrificed a lot. She sacrificed herself.
And we all had to pay for it.
My parents divorced when I was in high school. My mother moved to LA when I was 15. To her, I was an attachment, another burden. Our relationship has always been horrible. She wants me to be a certain way, and I don’t think she has a place to do so anymore. She wants unconditional acceptance, but doesn’t give it. My mother loves to tell me that she never has to worry about me, because I’ll always figure it out. What she really means is “I neglected the shit out of you, and this is my way of hiding my shame for not being a present parent.”
She covers her shame in a remarkable way. To this day, she has not once apologized to me nor had a conversation about her absence. So, I really fucking hate her sometimes. I hate her for not being the mother I needed. I hate her a lot. I’m angry. I feel betrayed. I feel like I got screwed over. Why? Because I was the fucking child.
I want to move through my anger like it’s not there. I want to immediately cut to---
I can understand what it’s like to love someone deeply, and to be terrified of showing your vulnerability to that person. To feel guilt, shame, disgust with myself for the things I’ve done to that person. To fear that they’ll reject your olive branch and light it on fire. I understand what that’s like.
When really, my heart grows full with so much conflict and fire that I don’t know what to do with sometimes. Anger is useful. It is a way of saying, “what in the fuck? This is so fucked up. I’m fucking mad, I want and deserve better because I love myself and I know I deserve better”
So where do we go from here? How do I go from “WTFWTFWTF” to forgiveness and healing. I don’t know yet. More next week.
by Sandra Cisneros December 24th and we’re through again. This time for good I know because I didn’t throw you out — and anyway we waved. No shoes. No angry doors. We folded clothes and went our separate ways. You left behind that flannel shirt of yours I liked but remembered to take your toothbrush. Where are you tonight? Richard, it’s Christmas Eve again and old ghosts come back home. I’m sitting by the Christmas tree wondering where did we go wrong. Okay, we didn’t work, and all memories to tell you the truth aren’t good. But sometimes there were good times. Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep beside me and never dreamed afraid. There should be stars for great wars like ours. There ought to be awards and plenty of champagne for the survivors. After all the years of degradations, the several holidays of failure, there should be something to commemorate the pain. Someday we’ll forget that great Brazil disaster. Till then, Richard, I wish you well. I wish you love affairs and plenty of hot water, and women kinder than I treated you. I forget the reason, but I loved you once, remember? Maybe in this season, drunk and sentimental, I’m willing to admit a part of me, crazed and kamikaze, ripe for anarchy, loves still.
i
hate
being
angry
though
you’d
never
believe
me
because
you
tell
me
i
have
anger
issues
but
you
don’t
let
me
be
angry
so
fuck
yeah
i
have
anger
issues
wake up every morning with salt on your tongue you did this to stop yourself from licking your wounds in your sleep this is not a foreign feeling oh, certainly we've been here before
hey you yes, you the one with bleached hair stuffed under a cap do you remember what it was like before you decided to be a shell washed up abandoned by the sea your face tells me you miss the silhouette of pine trees against mother of pearl sunsets when was the last time you ran your hands through tree leaves or laid on the floor for hours like when you were a kid you used to show your magic in your laugh like a dozen miniature fireworks where did you go
stormborns
areudirty
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
