Just when I feel like I found her, the one that got locked away in the closet of grief, the one that was buried beneath the one who should have kept me safe, the one that disappeared trying to make the Decade Him not so sad anymore. It took three decades and then some to find her, to stop hiding her underneath anything that felt neat.
Yet, I find myself most recently disconnected again. I’ve gone out to the field where I always find her, call her by her new name and found she’s ghosted me again.
Now all I have left are these notes that she left me. The letters I’ve tried to listen too but I gave her up to critique and tried to make her fit in.
A friend warned me, Farheezy, he said don’t let them take the rawness of this, its what makes it good.
But I refused and handed every love note she wrote on a platter to be sliced, diced, severed and served to be digestible by the whole table instead of just letting it be for her. Tartar just like she’s always loved it, bleeding at the crease of meat and plate.
I told her she wasn’t welcome, because it wasn’t enough. So she stopped there at the doorstep, turned and looked back and said good luck.
Yet, I wonder if that was it, or just the icing on the cake she already ate and carrier with her.
I feel the door slam really was it the day we told our mom about all we’ve known. Was that too much? Was that pushing? And it really wasn’t her who left but me? But me who closed the door because it hurt too much to feel the numbness of my mother’s response to the most horrific things that the man I once called dad, the man she sleeps with at night allowed and did to me?
Have I betrayed her by trying too soon to make this all ok? I had to go numb to welcome her for a visit, to tell her, to survive the pain of the blank look on her face that wasn’t shattered to a million pieces and torn like a wolf just tried to steal her bear cub. I wanted to see her fierce. I wanted to see her rage. I wanted to see her wild for her love for me. But instead I saw her go blank. And in any mirrored response to their mother I did too. I went blank. Flashed the zero signs across the screen. Empty.
I know it’s how she’s coped, it’s how I did too. Turn off whole parts so you can still roll. Neutral is better than trying to go into second gear when your transmission is shot. But I think I wish she really would have chosen reverse.
I think that’s what she needs, the part of me that went numb. She needs a reverse. She needs fresh air and a door opened a new road to go on.