That urge to just love your baby, no matter what?
I’m not quite sure my mother has it.
I want to believe what she says: that she loves all her children, that she wants to raise Joy and take care of her, that she wanted to stay home with us… but then, when I look at what she does, I don’t know.
Here are some of the things she said (and did) when I visited this past weekend: Continue reading
There’s a little girl sitting on the swings. Her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head, the hair near the nape falling backwards to touch the soft skin of her neck. She’s in a white shirt, a black skirt and shiny black dress shoes, frilly white socks hugging her tiny ankles. She was scuffing her toes in the sand, kicking back and forth, slowly rocking on the swing.
Her mother was nowhere to be found.
Mother’s Day should be hell for me.
I manage to make it through with loving feelings towards my mother; able to, for that day at least, pretend as though she truly cares for me, that she loves me with all her heart, that she wants to be a part of my life because I am her most cherished treasure.
But I know it’s all a lie.
I know that it’s not love I feel, but rather a wish – a longing – for my mother to be like all the other good moms I see out there.
There’s always one in every narcissistic family.
The Scapegoat: the one who always makes the bad decisions, who is continuously shamed and derided for their choices, who is seen as the “black sheep” of the family, who bears the brunt of all disappointments. Continue reading
My mother said this to me last week, when I was adamant about being done with all that shit.
We were sitting on the sofa at her new apartment, and she was complaining as usual about the state of her life and how she always seems to be the center of any family drama.
But you know? I think she likes it.
I want to trust my mother.
I want to believe that she loves me, that deep down she cares about me unconditionally and only wants the best for me.
But I know in my heart that none of that is true. Continue reading
I’ve just had my green card stamped.
There’s a tiny, small hole, right in the bottom left corner of the card, invalidating its status, marking me as a non-resident of this foreign country.
A hole right through my identity.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if the immigration officer hadn’t uttered those last words as I wheeled my lone suitcase past him:
“So long.”
I couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in my eyes. Continue reading
I don’t even know what to say here. My brain is kind of in a fog.
Let’s just say, keeping things as vague as possible, things have been pretty bad lately, and every day they seem to just keep on getting worse.
Stupid little fights over who solved a math problem the quickest.
Someone staring at a video on screen instead of the webcam.
Calling everything off because a mistake was made and someone didn’t want to admit it.
I didn’t know that taking the next step forward was going to be accompanied by such a huge step back.
Things have never been this bad. Not for a while, at least. And it’s frustrating because the things causing these fights are not within our control. This is the by-product of other stress-related incidents that we can’t do much about. And so we take it out on each other. Continue reading
Gather all the years of your life, the bright and the bruised.
– Patricia Lynn Reilly, Imagine a Woman in Love with Herself
Year One. My first birthday. I am in a white dress at a block party celebrating my first year of life. Mother tells me to this day that everyone came to the party. I don’t remember it, but it nevertheless holds a special place in my heart.
Year Three. Continue reading
Today, I woke up to a missed call from my grandmother.
I was too tired to answer at the time, so I clicked the end call button and said I would call back later.
When I did, my little sister answered the phone. It was strange because I was expecting to hear my grandmother’s voice. Then my sister told me that it had actually been her who called me earlier, so I asked her what she wanted.
“So, tell me about this engagement.”
I blinked, confused. Tell her what? My sister had been there; she knew what went down that day.
“Why…?” I asked.
“Cuz I don’t know what’s going on,” she said.
I called her out. “What are you talking about, you were there the whole time.”
“Yeah, but like, you guys said you were going to talk about it and let everyone know what you decide.”
I didn’t expect her to be this interested in it. In any case I went ahead and told her exactly what I’d been telling everyone else who had asked me the same question.
“Well, we’ve decided to just keep doing what we were planning on doing. We’re still aiming for 2018 so that gives us over two years to work on some of the things people were concerned about. I’m still applying to grad school so none of that’s changed…”
I’m supposed to be practicing reticence, not trying to tell people all of my business, and the only reason I kept talking was because its stuff I had already told her or someone else anyway. Still, I figured it would be best for me to shut up now, so I stopped talking long before I would have normally.
“Okay, so are you gonna redo it?”
Then, the alarm bells started ringing. Continue reading
Things of A Sensitive Nature 