personal post- CW death, family tensions, intergenerational trauma/ abuse, chronic illness
big weird grief day. just gotta vent.
my ama died when i was 4-nearly 5. 22 years ago today. she raised me far more than my dad did when i was that age. possibly more than my mum did too, as she wasn't really equipped to be a parent.
it's odd because her death was the incident that scaffolded the shape of my life more than any other event. i grew as i could in the shadowed grief of my mother's loss of her own. in turn, my mother would treat me as child, friend, parent, or partner based on whatever suited her at a given moment. I would try to form myself to be for her.
My mum has told me at length the trauma caused by my ama being too chronically ill-mentally and physically- to really get put of bed much throughout the course of my mum's childhood. She has also attempted to rationalize the death, saying it's better that she died when she did rather than be miserable as an amputee. Just. deep ableist eugenics thoughts that I was steeped in to achieve a mighty brew of self loathing. ugh.
She was diagnosed with Lupus and with Chronic Fatigue, among other things. Autoimmune disorders and deep disabilities that only could be seen in what she did or could not do.
And now I'm realizing how much of my life is a struggle against my own autoimmune issues, a fight against my own body and its relationship to society and capitalism and to time and to just. All outside myself . and it's getting worse and i cannot get out of bed more and more often just like her and there is so much where I am just like her and I am scared because her autoimmune stuff is what killed her.
And i also base so much of my magic on this Feeling that I feel is of her. This community, creation-based hearth energy. Everybody who knew my ama says how warm she was. she made people blankets and food and grew flowers for people and cared so deeply and well in all those matrilineal ways. she made so many mistakes bjt she was doing so Well when she died, apparently. Therapy and volunteering and working on stuff with my mum.
And then an asthma attack after a tiff between them after thanksgiving. Then flesh-eating bacteria picked up from a hospital superbug. then back to the hospital and she was gone and there were just two of us in this line where there was meant to be three to do this work we have to do to heal what my papa did here.
And I always thought my affinity to rot would keep me safe- that eating bugs and foods long past five-second-rules and being at ease with filth and baseness would make me stronger and that I wouldn't go like she did- early and Wrong and rotting while alive.
Because now my sickness is hitting me and rot and mold and dust and plants all can hurt my battling body so quickly. Now I have asthma, and an inhaler for when I encounter those triggers. How long until that seething, leaking death comes for my throat? How long before poverty and disability creep up on me or chase me down and take what life remains in md?
And now my mum has chosen to take actions that mean I cannot be in her life right now. And she cannot and will not accept that despite her grief- the deep sacred grief of losing a parent- I might be physically Sicker than her. I might be just like her mum, and that she has failed Both of us in failing me in my battle against it all.
And she uses this false idea of my ama's love and Presence to manipulate and validate herself and her shitty choices.
Her grief on this day is about losing a parent. Yes, it was early, but that does happen to most people in life. For me this day is tied up with my grief for my own life lost to my disability, whether in time or experience, that is sure to come- to continue. And I don't want to compare grief, that is not fair, but my grief has never been properly cared for or tended to, while I performed my mum's grief back at her so that we might experience some type of Togetherness with it all but never has mine been held by her or the rest of my blood family and it just gets deeper and more complex and now due to having to put up boundaries with All of them I feel completely and utterly alone with it. I feel absolutely cursed for my blood, in so many ways.
And idk. I guess this is just some threads of the underworld work that's coming up around today. It felt like it needed to be shared, but not to many, hence: tumblr.
If you do read this, please like the post. Just need to know whether or not this is floating in the void. either is fine i just wanna know.