12/04/22

You’d think it would have expired. My debilitating need to control others. What good did it do? I couldn’t make you eat, even though your life depended on it. Your body knew it was dying, had no use for food, but I wanted to convince myself otherwise. Went miles out of my way to find a smoothie you might drink. Chastised myself for adding in agave when you took your first sip and complained it was too sweet.

I wanted to make the pieces fit. Wanted to get you strong, wanted the doctors to find a treatment plan, wanted to convince you there was more life waiting on the other side of the ICU.

I’ve always thought if I can just make people do what I want them to, I’ll be at peace. It wasn’t a conscious choice, to lead my life this way.

How fucking useless.

All that energy wasted, that I still waste, trying to manipulate to get my way. What even is my way anymore? Why does it matter what time I go to bed, or when I wake up, or what anyone thinks of me?

Sometimes I hit myself on the head, knuckles clanging against my skull, just to remind myself this is real. Each rap is a tender mercy, a brief moment of pain to wake me up, to bring me back to this planet I reside on. This universe I’m destined to stumble through without you.

I am numb, and I am in excruciating pain. Somehow those things can coexist.

I’m convinced I must be able to breathe fire, such is the ferocity of my rage. Rage that eats away at me, threatening to destroy me.

Will all this turmoil kill me too? How could it not, this intensity of feeling I am forced to swallow. I’ve been told it gets less intense by those who do not know, who have watched loved ones endure loss and think they understand. But until it’s you, until it’s your person who’s been ripped from you, who you will never see again, you do not know. We may seem better, sound better, laugh more often, but inside a fire burns.

I refuse to slice my skin (not again) because it is what remains of my mother, but that doesn’t mean my flesh is not scar tissue. Every day is a thousand paper cuts, with the occasional stab to the heart.

I’m surprised I still have a heart. That it didn’t die with you.

“Why were you born?”

You doomed me with that question, Mom. Doomed me to the unending torture of having to live without you. It should tell you how much I love you that I am still alive. You would want me to be. To realize the future you built for us.

How did you do it? You who were orphaned by living parents. When we realized you were dying, your son brought up the quality of your soul. How pure it was, how all you ever did was love. How did you accomplish that when you were birthed in hate?

I ask because I need your strength. I know it lives inside me, but where?

You were my strength. Your love let me know I could do anything because even when the worst things happened, you were there.

But the worst thing never did happen, not when you were alive, because the worst thing is this.

Me without you. A life I do not want to recognize.