Or just SJ.
Broken brain. Fractured heart. Killer smile. Wicked sense of humor.
In the face of the beautiful-awful-tragic-absurd-mundane-heartbreaking-impossible-wonderful,
all I can think to say is:
and even this...
“I record my life, sifting and trying to separate what is real from what I’ve dreamed. I have decided not to tell you what is fact versus what is unfact primarily because (a) I am giving you a portrait of the essence of me, and (b) because, living where I do, living in the chasm that cuts through thought, it is lonely… come with me, reader. I am toying with you, yes, but for a real reason. I am asking you to enter the confusion with me, to give up the ground with me, because sometimes that frightening floaty place is really the truest of all. Kierkegaard says, 'The greatest lie of all is the feeling of firmness beneath our feet. We are most honest when we are lost.' Enter that lostness with me. Live in the place I am, where the view is murky, where the connecting bridges and orienting maps have been surgically stripped away.”
— Lauren Slater
“I want to be remembered as the girl who always smiles even when her heart is broken, and the one that could always brighten up your day even if she couldn’t brighten her own.”
AIM: andeventhis
Email: andeventhis[at]aim[dot]com
Posts tagged: family issues
My mother has treated me, the majority of my life, as though I were a burden. My existence an inconvenience to be endured.
I can’t prove it, but I’m relatively sure that if she hadn’t already aborted her first pregnancy that she wouldn’t have had me. I think she thought my dad was the one who was supposed to want me, but then he left.
My grandmother is upset with my mother and when I asked her why, she insulted me. “You would have done so much more with your life if she wasn’t so nosy.”
Oh.
My dad is was a recovering alcoholic who has recently decided to start drinking again.
He has a new family that he wants me to get to know. He called me today and yesterday to say that they ask about me.
I don’t want to be a part of this. I don’t want to feel like shit for not wanting to be a part of this.
I have no idea how to fix this.
My dad got remarried a few years ago, a couple weeks after he told my mother that he was going to end things with his now wife so that they could attempt a reconciliation. This led to me having to take my mother to the ER because she, upon finding out, went from room to room in her house saying that she couldn’t take it anymore and was going to kill herself.
But I am getting away from the point.
My father’s new wife. I met her once—when I was a teenager. I didn’t like her. (But teenagers are awful so I’m not saying that means much of anything.)
He called to invite me to her family reunion this summer.
(I haven’t been to any of my own families’ reunions in years.)
I don’t want to go and I feel like a piece of shit for not wanting to go, but why would I ever want to spend time with the family of a person I don’t even know?
Maybe if I were more selfless. A better son/daughter.
I have no idea how I am supposed to say, “I am sorry. I’m sure it must be painful to be in the middle, but I have no intentions of ever getting to know your wife.”
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My mother:
You're going to leave and it's going to be terrible. It's going to be terrible [for me] when you leave.
-
Me:
Oh.
Sarah Jessica Parker is in her 40s and calls her mom “mommy.”
I’m in my 20s and call my mother by her first name.
I want to put together the right combination of words that would make someone who’s never experienced this understand. I want to be able to explain how it changes the size of things. How it makes it you feel hollow. How the very concept of time and decisions and love and effort and other people becomes stale. Ill-fitting. Out of season.
How it makes everything feel so fleeting. Sanity feels so fleeting. The worst part is the confusion. Depression is a barrier between self and self-definition.
Am I happy?
Am I sad?
Am I happy?
Am I sad?
Am I happy?
Am I sad?
If I’m so smart why can’t I think myself out of this?
What if the side effects are just as bad as the disease?
Why can’t I just have a mother?
I am tired. I am so very tired.
-
Me:
Do you like me?
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My mother:
I've just--I've failed you so many times in the past that I'm so embarrassed--
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Me:
But do you like me? As a person?
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My mother:
Yes. You're the best.
You think standing in front of me and disappearing is somehow better than just walking away.
I know it’s not about me being enough… but I still wish I was.
