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If Only She Knew / Our Saddest Mother's Day (2018)

The day after being discharged from a psychiatric ward after attempting suicide, it's Mother's Day.

There are so many unfinished sentences that I have anthologies pouring out of my fingertips, lies are still lies when you create poetry.

My mother tells me the day that I got home, that the neighbor's intellectually disabled son told her he saw an ambulance at the front of our house, and I lie and say that I must not have been home, they must have been lost and stopping for directions.

I should have told her that it was for me, I shouldn't have used ableism to imply that the neighbors son was confused. I shouldn't have asked our next door neighbor who saw me leaving with the paramedics to not tell my mother, because she doesn't need the worry. I shouldn't have hoped he'd put the burden on his younger sister too.

I tell my mum I went out to get her present, but really I went out to pick up some things I left at the hospital & then spent $14 on a bunch of flowers I was never planning to buy to cover up the lie. I should have told her that I saw Shiney again, and her daughter was there & I was so happy she wasn't alone for Mother's Day.

She asks me why I left my car at home for 3 days, and I tell her that there's no on-street parking at my "friend's" house, and not that the consulting psychiatrist said I wasn't allowed to drive while I was staying in the hospital.

I hold her hand while we watch a movie at the cinema, I don't know how to bridge this gap between us, I don't know how to feel close to her, but I give her this small gift, more important than the flowers, I give her a rose bud palm with curled finger petals to remind her that she can grow and bloom. My card to her reads "A mother plant's love in your heart and it grows forever". My mother planted love, but in equal part's planted codependence and resentment. I hope they do not grow forever.

At dinner my mum tells me she didn't want to go out while I was gone because she felt sad that I wasn't at home. I tell her she needs to talk to someone else about this. I tell her I know it's hard, but she can't lean on me through this. I don't tell her that she always does this, that she tells me things about how she is feeling that I shouldn't know, and she's been doing it since I was a child, making me feel responsible for her feelings.

I felt so responsible for her feelings I called my own ambulance so she wouldn't be the one to find me if I lost consciousness. I didn't tell her I was at the hospital. I didn't tell her I had been looking for somewhere else to live when I was gone. I didn't tell her that every moment I am with her, it hurts because of all the things I do not tell her, all the tongue biting, all the lip gnawing.

In the car on the way home, she says that its been cold the last few nights. I think back to the way the ward was overheated at night. To having to ask a nurse for a dressing to cover my scars so I could be in common areas sleeveless. "Yes, it has been" I respond. Even these inane moments require me to keep track of the marathon of lies that run out of my mouth.

She says she was sorry she didn't get to hear me wish her a Happy Mother's Day this morning before she went to work. I should say "I might not have been here to say it at all, we might have been having this dinner on the ward", but I just tell her that I'm glad she heard it from me eventually, that some people aren't so lucky, and thank goodness those people aren't us. If only she knew.

(ELM)

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