part of my life, in veiled language...may trigger

possibly triggerring




If I could just get out of this life, take a rain ticket, and promise to come back at another time when I am stronger, I would walk and not look back. I will take what you must give me and take it with my head up and I will look you in the eye. I will try my hardest to show I am not hurt and you will only see slight vulnerability if you should surprise me. It’s amazing that you can still surprise me. Even in my dreams. Still.

I will come to your rescue when you are hurt. And then I will realize that I cannot protect you, could never protect you from your own mind. But I will think the child SHOULD have. I will make you smile, telling you something funny about my day, guessing when the moment is right. Sometimes I will catch you at the right time, and you will smile at me and I will know a mother’s love. Just like a child, you will hook me again. I will fall again and wish to anyone above that you could be at peace. If I knew you were okay, I could live. Even thrive. But things would never be okay.

And then my mind would split into a thousand pieces, too many parts, none of them together. And they would turn against another, easier to hate one of them than the actual deliverer of pain. And one day, we would wake up, and it would be over.

There would be you, my father, and my brother placed in graves, me imagining the tiny coffin of my brother, every piece at a different stage of decay. I will hold the rose tightly enough so that its thorns break my flesh. And then I will look at my hands and feel nothing. Someone will lead me to the car and I will follow. “What are they (meaning my brother, my sister, and myself) going to do?” I hear them speak among one another. We all 3 ignore them. We don’t tell them of anything. Just shut the door and go home. Why do you choose to care now? It’s too late now. My mother needed you years ago, tears ago.

The mind would fall silent, long enough to take the plane ride home, and be safe in my home before it split again. Everything will remind me of you and I will be continuously shocked at the thought of this new life. My mind would no longer hear the outside world for a while. I will spend my time at my home among my dogs and flowers and the canal. It will be a while before I return to school. Even go back outside. My siblings and I will talk crossly with one another, hating each other for what no one had control over, finding fear in a ringing phone. However, I will still think to pick up the phone to call you.

One day you were there. Now you are gone. Why do people go so suddenly?

I will live in fear of my own mind, of my own desires, of my own self-destruction. I will hate me and everyone within me with such a passion that I will turn away from any warmth.

I will not know how to say “thank you” to my T or to the primary care doctor or to friends who call, send cards, say, “I didn’t know.” I will feel a sudden rush of freedom and know that I can do whatever it is I please now….there’s no one left to tell me what to do and that will take the form of self-abuse. But all I will know is that we don’t have to answer to anyone anymore.

But, then, after 8 years and 18 years and the other deaths in between, I will find that my body is older and that I am still fractured. The hope will die a little with each step, thinking long ago that by now, surely by now, I would have healed. I will look in the mirror and hate what I see. Will find garages and stepladders and hooks from the garage ceiling tempting. And I will want to cry from the thought of ever having hurt any of you. I will think of my stepbrother hanging from his weight bar and the crumpling of my stepfather’s voice as he says, “Alex is dead.”

I will remember going to the cemetery in the July heat, sent there by my mother, to make sure that Alex did not leave a suicide note on his mother’s grave. And I will wish it was me.

After it all, I will try to will my heart to stop beating and it won’t. I will have crazy thoughts about getting the bad out of me, something inherent, rip the skin, leave me now. I will find comfort in music. I will try to comfort the child with bright colors and a soothing pillow. I will let her cry herself to sleep, careful to make any noise, lest he hears. I will stand guard until I cannot anymore. Until I must lie down too and surrender to scary dreams and a terrible feeling of being out of control.

And the next day, I will wake up and try again. I will find the absence of M. frustrating and sudden. I will proclaim it is not fair. Others inside will ask for her and I have no answer. I will feel afraid, again and again, of many things and people around me. I will fear falling apart, coming undone, slipping past the point of sanity. And then I will be surprised at my own fear. But I said it many years ago and i say it again -- i was not made for this world.

(((((((((((((((((shelllbe))))))))))))))))))))