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[blahsome]

Dear mom,

It’s been 30 years. What the fuck?

It seems like everyone is making their way to see you. Nothing could have prepared me for how painful existing would be and how it would just get worse.

It’s hard to believe that it's only been 10 years since I first wrote you a letter like this. It feels like it was an eon ago. I was just a drunk little 26-year-old baby then. Now I’m a booze-free 36-year-old baby fraught with even more traumas and grief. When you departed whatever realm this is, I was just a 6-year-old know-nothing-at-all-whole-life-ahead-of-me baby.

I think by now I’ve acquired CPTSD- check that off my bucket list!

This year's ramblings of my untethered mind are exceptionally discombobulated as I was trying miserably to keep everything correctly documented, which really comes out as an absolute tornado of desperate gobbledygook. Every time I’ve sat down to try to organize this into something intelligible I’ve found any reason not to. Feeling these feelings is simply too much. So this year, I’m sorry if you get a stomach ache, I’ve done my best to make it digestible.

Herman has dementia. Sometimes I have to think of it like this monster that’s living inside the body that used to be his. The monster told me that you’d be so fucking disappointed, disgusted.

All of his amazing friends who have graciously boarded the rollercoaster with us say I’m doing a “great job” and “he’s lucky to have such a devoted daughter.” I’ve been deemed a saint by some. The kind words somehow make it cut deeper.

I can’t imagine how I’d be coping with/ handling all this if I was still drinking 8-10 beers in the yard every other night. I’ll be 8 years alcohol-free in May, that’s 3/4 as long as I’d been a drunk. Time flies and it moves like molasses. This timeline has flies swarming it, it’s rotten and we’re forced to eat it anyway.

I’m on a cocktail of medications to make life bearable. Dexedrine to help me be able to get anything done, Lamotrigine to try to keep me somewhere in the middle, Clonazepam so I can go the fuck to sleep at night, and Mirtazapine so I have an appetite. At peak stress last year I was down to 94lbs, It was fucked. It took me too long to realize I’d become a shell. I couldn’t (still can't) tell the difference between my codependence and my responsibility(?)- obligation(?) to take care of him. Herman had gotten back up to normal weight then, when I was a shell, after we all had to get involved to un-slippery the slope he was going down. It seemed every pound he put back on came directly from what I had stowed away somehow. I was (am) so isolated. If I did see anyone, they would say, “Well, you look good!” I felt like everyone was blind to me. I was disintegrating, being obliterated into nothing, completely absorbed and evaporated at the same time. At one point, Uncle B was almost outweighing me. Thanks to meds and the addictive crunch of Honey Bunches of Oats with yogurt, honey, and oat milk, I’m back up to 110.

Gains: reclaimed. Distress levels: still set on high.

I just got a new prescription to add to the mix to ease this anxiety that makes me feel like I’m almost vibrating;

it’s like I’m set on simmer

there’s a hot tension that could boil over at any second

I used to be able to keep all these tears trapped in my skull,

but now they just drolly roll down my cheeks when I’m doing nothing in particular

Organizing a stupid pile of papers, loading the dishwasher, laundry, hammering nails-

not quite stopping me, but making sure I’m aware of my insurmountable damage

Or they are in full force

so much that I don’t know if they’ll ever stop

so much that not even being in the bathtub could wash the salt away fast enough

a million slimy frogs clambering in my chest

A breath miles away

unable to be caught

The boy who cried,

wolfing me

Witnessing your demise

Watching the light dim behind your eyes

I’m sure I’ve never done anything harder

I’m unsure why I’m punishing myself the way I am

Why the way I’m processing this trauma is just burning it deeper

into my flesh, straight through to my bones

We’re all ashes in the end anyway

A year and a half ago Herman could beat me at an arm wrestle, now he can hardly pull a sheet over the corner of a mattress.

Strung out on stress, sadness,

and this perpetual cycle of grief

Speaking in hushed tones

In my childhood home

Of lines overstepped

An intruder

I didn’t sign up for this

Dry cleaning delivered

late on rent

My judgments seething

Ugh, dread - 30 years???

Oh fuck

The healing power of a big spoon laid behind me

I can’t hear my body’s usual dull screams of aching

Just soothing whispers of where his is pressed to mine

A hand caressing my ribs

Warm steady breath on my neck

Safe, secure

Oh fuck

I can literally only imagine it

Fear of failure

How much more bottom does this rock have?

I’m sunk to the deep deep depths

But it seems I’m gonna sink a little deeper

Pockets on empty

Anxious and impoverished

One beget the other, beget again

Not a tomato to blame (I’m allergic?)

I cried these puffy eyes myself

I’m so fortunate to be on this trip

To support my friend and to support her ceramicist aunt

To attend the Smithsonian Craft Show

To be inspired, awestruck.

And cursed

It’s all tainted by this overwhelming sinking feeling that I’m being horribly irresponsible

Pockets on negative

Immense crushing shame of my shortcomings

My invalidating bank account

I can’t figure out my feet’s personality

Too wary to manifest

Do y’all ever think about the way that god-fearing people speak about him and speak for him? They out here trying to gaslight Jesus with all their haterade.

Bitch, I thought only god can judge me.

Eh, I didn’t believe in him any of the years before, and it would surely take a classic trope to make me start now. Because as usual, this mythical creature, “God”, would have to be a thoroughly sick demonic freak of a fucking sadistic monster to allow the scales to be so off balance. To let so many suffer in these absolutely unnecessary and horrific ways. Disgusting, reprehensible.

I’d think I was spiralin’

But there’s no more down to go

So I’m just spinnin’ around

On the bottom

~That’s so crazy

I had a Rolex this whole time

Debating whether or not

To send you a picture

Vengeance or something

My heart clamored

when the idea came to my mind

How sick and sickening

There’s always more down to go

I suppose

It’s so crazy that it feels like all I know how to do is show up for my loved ones and I’m realizing maybe that’s why I’m scared to love any more people. I don’t have any more show-up left to give

Quickly I found

There was much more down to go

More hoops and hurdles to be suffered

Dust to be snorted

Even Klonopin won’t lull me to sleep

I would cry at the drop of a hat

If I had the time

It’s all so heavy

And if you wither, I wither

Painful lights in the midst of the tunnel

Missing what I never knew I knew

Missing what I know I’ll never know

Harrowing stages of the older ages

Rinsing is not washing

Absolutely desperate

Can’t help someone who can’t help themselves

Breaking at the hands of the broken

I wanna scream so loud she manifests

I wanna scream so loud I calm the beating in my chest

“Doing all the things her mother would do”

I’m exploding and imploding at the same time

There is protein powder in the coffee pot

Sludged onto the sides

set to go rancid and grow mold without a manic eye

Cleaning til exhaustion, taking notes, making appointments,

pleading for hygiene to no avail.

Wash, don’t just only

ever

always

“rinse”

Notice, be present, recognize, try.

The efforts to maintain: immediately diminished.

Burnt out exhausted.

You wither, I wither, too.

If she was here she’d be gone and I’d be singing Fast Car.

Breaking at the hands of the broken

She’d probably come to help mend me

Clean hands, laundered laundry, washed dishes, home-cooked meals, a lap to lay my head in

Almost all of the time I think that nobody is feeling the weight of it like I am. I’ve got Herman messaging and calling me about when is what and this and that and me scheduling and rescheduling and trying to keep all that information up to date and easily accessible to everyone. And trying to get [my failed business] sorted out on top of it. So if somebody else isn’t telling me that they are GOING TO do something then I just assume that they aren’t. I don’t think he’s asking anybody else to do xy and z and then xy and z again. And I feel like a fucking emotional disaster and burden to everybody else.

I don’t want to be in this timeline anymore

I don’t want to be my father's mother

I tried to tell him that he’d said some things lately that hurt my feelings.

All my waking hours seem to be scheduling and rescheduling and *circling back* on his behalf, filling his pill containers and making sure his bills are paid.

I recall how in 4th grade I asked for a keyboard for my birthday, I was gifted one, but YouTube didn’t exist yet, and no music lessons accompanied my present. Same thing the next year when I thought maybe drums would be more my vibe. The set sat at the foot of my father's bed for who knows how long, no lessons, no jam.

Furthermore, I recall that every gift I was ever given had to be directed upon. Down to the aisle of the store it was in.

It’ll make you feel unknown, disregarded, over time.

Having the person who’s supposed to have been taking note of all your last details, know not a thing about your likes or interests.

I’m sorry I’m having a hard time coping

I laid down to cry

Mascara-filled tears ran down my cheeks and onto my neck

The collar of my shirt is wet

At least me clenching my teeth so much has my jawline sharp enough to cut somebody

I’m just horrified. I feel like a failure and a burden and I don’t know how to ask anyone for help because he can’t not lean on his mama for every goddamn thing, and a thank you means nothing if it's not met with reciprocity.

July 30 10am:

My nervous system is shot

I think I’m cursed

Every effort I bring to bear leads to a roadblock

a brand new obstacle course for me to navigate

Or, the exact same one I just navigated,

only this time with more oppressive hoops and higher hurdles.

I’m reminded again of my mother's journal entry:

“Worries make my face look funny. Blank. Whenever I’m worried the joy can’t shine through my skin. The expression on my face is not inviting because I don’t want anyone to feel as I do.“

Still, I try to feign a smile to passing strangers. I smear highlighter on for the illusion of a joyful glow. My wrinkles are getting deeper as my distress persists and grows. My wits are quite near their end. I’m having a constant battle with anxiety and the way my heart keeps racing I think I’m minutes away from a panic attack.

I keep putting in so much effort. And in return, not even the short end-

no stick at all. Just splinters.

I wonder if anyone has noticed I’m gaunt, emaciated, 95 lbs.

My clothes are hanging off. My jeans, size 23, are too big.

They are giving the illusion of hips and I wish I had the meat to fill them and hold them up. They pull at my knees walking down the hotel stairs.

I miss posting stories and letting that serve as a delusion that I’m being social. The trauma I’m currently collecting has yet to become a funny distant memory. Though, I’m sure it will be great material for a stand-up set one day. But not now, not when the hits keep coming.

I don’t know how to not be mad when I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to be coping with.

I don’t know how to set a boundary with a demented narcissistic cancer patient who lacked basic hygiene skills before, and now, apparently can’t fathom the regular washing of one's hands.

I’m emotionally raw and my resentments are mounting.

My 78 year old dad doesn’t have a diagnosis yet but I’m pretty sure he’s in the early stages of dementia, maybe getting close to the middle. His neurologist appointment isn’t for two more weeks.

In September of last year, he was visiting his girlfriend of 15+ years who lives 5 hours away, (it’s always that way, him visiting her) he became incoherent and delirious, was stumbling and falling over. She eventually got him into her car and took him to the closest emergency room in the next tiny town over, and this is the singular point I’m willing to award her. They transferred him to a UT health facility in a larger town and there they discovered that he had a UTI that had gone septic, and while there, he began experiencing alcohol withdrawals. Around midnight or so my dad was able to text me that they were still doing testing on him. I talked to his girlfriend the next morning and she said he was still at the hospital and that any of us were welcome to come stay with her.. I called the hospital to get hard facts and then made arrangements for my aunt to come take over the babysitting I was supposed to do (and was excited to do) all weekend. I messaged the girlfriend that I was heading up to go to the hospital. She said, “there’s not much to do there…” When I arrived he was doing imaginary plumbing jobs with his hands in the air and babbling, totally out of it. He was in the hospital for 5 nights, I stayed in a chair next to him for 4. His girlfriend came for 1, maybe two, short visits. She said it was hard to get away, “[My horse] might go stand in the sun…” My dad’s feelings were crushed, I know this even though he wouldn’t say it out loud, especially not to her. He’s never been one for confrontation. He said he was going to write her a text to tell her how he was feeling and asked me to read it and let him know if it was too harsh. “All of the nurses here have been great, and Blossom has been wonderful. Blah blah blah” Things to that effect. Nothing direct about how he felt abandoned and how he always comes second to the animals. I realized that usually, from him, compliments for one mean dismay toward another. When she did come to visit, I took that as my opportunity to go get a shower in at the hotel my brother booked me so I could have just one shower, and I went for a little trauma thrifting. One of the best thrift hauls of my life, honestly. I found a nearly $500 dress for 6 bucks and a custom vintage fur coat for 15 bucks (I didn’t notice the loose gummy bears in the pockets til later). As I was wandering the store, I noticed a TV and VCR were set up to display their functionality- they were playing Lion King. I shook my head and probably said out loud, “are you fffffucking kidding me?” I hate The Lion King. My dad tells- it seems like everyone, that my mom’s last words were “…..Hakuna Matata” I thought how can they be playing this movie, right now, at this moment in my life? What kind of cosmic/karmic/demonic joke is this? Fuck you too, universe.

All the doctors and nurses concluded that he needed to quit drinking and quit smoking, and to make an appointment with his Urologist when he got back home. He’s had bladder cancer (on and off?) for 12+ years.

Upon release, I drove us to the girlfriend's house to pick up his things, as she couldn’t bring them to the hospital, had to plan her yoga class, and the animals of course… He gave her a big sappy all-is-well hug and kiss when we arrived. We left his car there as he was in no condition to be driving.

When we got home I took all of the booze and smokes out of his house and he was pissed. (Is still pissed apparently) A fruitless effort, he just kept walking to the corner store to replenish- but did eventually quit both.

Blah blah blah urologist appointment this, appointment that, me driving him to all the things— at some point the GF begrudgingly met us halfway for me to hand him off so he could go get his car.

Early March, his urologist referred us to MD Anderson, they’d done all they could do for him over the last decade+. I put in the work to get him on their schedule for assessment, which would be in April.

Mid-March he went to visit his girlfriend, I told him to please be home for March 18th, the 29th anniversary of your passing away. He came home on March 22 and crashed his car on the way- rear-ended someone at the only stop sign in the tiny town with hardly any traffic that marks the ½ way point. He said he thought they reversed and backed into him, “big truck, didn’t even notice, just drove away.” It totaled his car and it’s been sitting dead in his driveway since. He has no ambition to do anything about it himself but expects me, my brother, or the neighbor to sell the car. It’s a junky old Honda Element that he let get absolutely filthy and beat up using it for work as a plumber before retiring 2 years ago. It sat full of materials and tools until my brother finally moved them. The neighbor is helping me get it listed and told me today she saw one in similar condition listed for $2500, so maybe we’d list his at $2000, I said I’m good with that. Later he messaged me and said the neighbor told him she thought he could get up to $11,000 for it. I told him i didn’’t think that was correct. He said, “we’ll see..”

April: we went to MDA in Houston for intake and assessment, it went fine. We scheduled a cystoscopy for May 15th so they could take a sample of his cancer-laden bladder wall.

May 10th: Back from my guilt-ridden trip to DC for only two days, I happened to be over at Herman’s house at the exact right time. I was there to look for treasure in the attic. It was my best friend's birthday and I had (have) no money for gift purchases, we had plans to go out with friends for a happy hour. As I was rooting around I heard a stumble and called to him, no response, I hurried over to the ladder and as I was coming down he made it around the corner, clutched the door frame, spun around, and collapsed then started vomiting. I think I moved quick enough to catch his head before it could hit the ground. I’m panicking, he’s not really responsive, with one hand under his head, I pull my phone out of my back pocket and set it on his chest. I dial 911 with vomit splattered on my phone. I really thought I might be watching him die. He comes to a bit and I help him to a sitting position, he asks for a bucket to keep barfing. EMS arrives within 4 minutes. They ask if he’d eaten or drank anything that day, “coffee” and maybe ate the previous day.. They take him to the hospital, I’m in shock. I manage to message my friends that I will not be making it out to celebrate. We stay for 2 days, they do a million tests. I think it’s dehydration/ not eating/ another UTI? They come back with no reason why this may have happened, they put a portable heart monitor on him that he can’t submerge in water and needs to wear for a week. He thinks he’s supposed to talk into it and takes it off immediately when he finally takes a bath.

We got the okay to go to MDA for the procedure despite the ER visit, it went fine other than prepping him for an IV because he destroyed all his veins doing speed until ’93… After the procedure, he had a catheter bag and could not figure it out, he’d told several nurses it was his first one. He’s had a minimum of 7 over the last 12 years. Same kind. He gets up every few hours to try to pee in the toilet. I tell him he has a bag and is peeing and doesn’t need the toilet and he goes to find out if that’s true anyway. I get up to help empty the bag every few hours when I hear him shuffling. We get home, I drop him off and go home to take a bath and be alone. He texts me around 1:30 while I’m still trying to soak the stress off. He can’t figure out the catheter but thinks he fixed it, so not to worry til morning.. I go over there and he’s made a terrible mess of the thing. Took the clamp off completely and put it back on upside down and has the thing sitting in a pot next to his bed. Told me he had spilled some on the floor but had cleaned it up.. There was just a wet towel laid there, I did the cleaning up, I put the clamp back on the right way, I showed him a dozen times how up empty the bag and redo the clamp and the clip to hold it in place. It did not stick. In the morning I called his local urologist and told them MDA said he could have it removed 2 days post-op, but they won’t remove the bag, don’t have the orders or whatever. Luckily a family friend who’s a nurse had the necessary tools for the job and came to our rescue Friday. Meanwhile, we are supposed to be monitoring his blood pressure due to the fainting spell. On Monday I’m taking his BP and feel him radiating heat. Post-op instructions, as well as experts I consulted, said to take him to the ER if he has a fever. The neighbor drove us. UTI, we stayed 4 days. I was awake most of the time telling him to leave all the wires and cords and tubes and tape where they were. The hospital offered to have some home nurse visits for the next several weeks to make sure he was staying on track. I said that would be great. He didn’t find it necessary, my brothers and I insisted. He said fine. I don’t know how many different appointments we had between then and now. Multiple home nurses, who once they were there, he was delighted to chat with. He was annoyed at my brother and me for putting a variety of waters and food in the kitchen. I found him a PCP. The home nurse company referred us to psychiatrists and therapists and I-can’t-remember-what-else who-all referred us to.

MDA sent their recommendation for a treatment plan, which they said we could get done locally. 1 chemo instillation a week for 6 weeks and then a follow-up 8 weeks after the last instillation. I called and called offices and tried to get one place to send records to another just for them to tell me they can’t just send them- the other place has to request them and vice versa.

Finally, we got an appointment at TX Oncology after they received the records and treatment plan. We checked in and the lady at the desk complimented my name.

As expected Herman asked her if she knew anything about old Jazz and told her he named me after Blossom Dearie. She asked if I could sing, too. He chimed in with a pshaw “Never on key..” The doctor asked my dad why he was there to see him. My dad starts talking to him as if he’s the psychiatrist we had an appointment with the previous day. Then shrugs and points to me for me to answer. The doctor tells us that actually he can’t administer the treatment as the plan requires. He referred us to TX Urology, he said they can do it and they’ll send the records, etc. We go to the TX Ugology appointment the following week. That doctor also tells us that actually, he can’t administer that treatment either, they don’t work with that kind of chemo. My dad tells the same life summary I’ve heard at every one of these appointments, that he’s good, fine with dying, “ready to go see [my] mama”, just like his dad said to him (at 92, once he was a grandpa) and that the kids are taking good care of him, “Blossom is my mom haha” I stopped him. I said, “Not to get personal in front of the doctor, but do you want to be the only baby I ever have, or do you wanna try to get well and let me live a life and have real babies of my own and then you could be a grandpa..?” He scoffed - another pshaw, much more cutting than the last, “You’d have to find a guy for that!” As if he isn’t taking up all my time and energy.

To add icing to the cake that was that day, I dropped Herman off and headed to one of the very few jobs I was able to do for the entire year. As I pulled up, I got an audio message from a guy I’d been seeing, very casually… He wanted to let me know that the girlfriend he had had for a year or so that he’d been broken up with for the last few months- they were getting back together. But LOL thanks for the Hacks recommendation, the show is hilarious. I respected his communication, but the timing couldn’t have been more of a comedic gut punch. But the good news for me is that they broke up again, so smash, recommence. It’s not end-game, but it’s a safe place.

July through mid-August: Since apparently nobody local can administer the treatment, we have to go to Houston every week for six weeks. He can never remember why we go the day before the appointment and leave the day after. It’s simple really. We go on Mondays so we can stop and see Uncle B on the way, eat dinner and settle in, and be there on time after having eaten breakfast for his Tuesday appointment. And then because he’s supposed to lay down and hold the medicine in his bladder for 2 hours post instillation, and then start drinking 64-80 oz of water within 8 hours, to flush it out while peeing, sitting down, to not make a mess of the medicine, which could make others ill if they come into contact with it, and he’s supposed to wash his THING and wash his hands, we stay the night and leave on Wednesdays. He cannot follow these rules. He can’t comprehend that it puts my health at risk too if I come into contact with the meds, not to mention that it’s just plain gross. I can’t tell if it’s defiance or that he truly just can’t remember. He’s never been a hygienic person but this is out of hand.

The only silver lining for the Houston trips is that I’ve gotten to get back to visiting Uncle B, who is quite possibly literally trapped in a reprehensible skilled nursing and rehab facility in Katy. It’s truly awful there. The place is run exactly how you don’t want a place that your loved one is at to be run. We have no friends or relatives in that area to check in on him, so I’d been going to see him twice a week for well over a year to give him “spa treatments” and help him with tasks because they apparently don’t wash his face or scalp on shower days. They are understaffed and the staff is underpaid and under-supplied. My uncle is so resilient and has such a positive attitude. He also does things to make sure he’s keeping his mind sharp, like memorizing all of the TX senators and house members etc, doing his daily exercises and remembering his stats so that they get written down when he has visitors.

Herman has been *so proud of me* for going to see my uncle all this time and *loves to watch me with him* *my mom would be so proud*, yet he keeps asking why we go and leave when we do for his treatments. He just sits there, catatonic, while I’m twisting a fancy Q-tip around in Uncle B’s nose to get his boogers for him. Me and Uncle B just yappin' away, spillin' the tea..

Last week Herman ate 9 protein bars and 4 protein shakes in one day.

Yesterday, July 25, he got his first Meals on Wheels delivery and put it in the fridge where it went to rot, didn’t take a bite.

I was there today when he got his second delivery, the guy asked how he’d liked yesterday’s and he said, “It was great.” Liar.

I spent the better part of May and June anticipating a visit from Meals on Wheels to approve him for service, and I got the house in order for it. Organized all the bins of old trash mixed with treasure, got a couch and TV for the living room so he could sit in there around lunchtime to be sure he heard them knocking with his meal.

Today he said he’s resentful of *people* trying to “run his life.” And I’m like??? I don’t see you putting in any effort to run it yourself… unless you’re just trying to run it into the ground.

I’m hurting.

I wanna scream at him

Fine then,

Go ahead

burn it down

run it into the core of the earth

Eat the expired meatloaf

Eat the expired cantaloupe

Let protein powder go rancid in the coffee pot and never wash it out.

No more than a week of meals were delivered before he told them to stop coming.

I never quit shooting myself in the foot.

Tell me my mom’s last words were Hakuna Matata one more time.

I finally figured out why it makes me so mad.

Hakuna Matata for who?

Not for the ones that are left here to clean up the mess, that’s for damn sure.

I know I’m not alone,

but I feel alone.

July 31, 2024: his girlfriend hasn’t come down once to visit since he’s been going to all his appointments and being hospitalized. Like the codependent nut that I am, I did the math, it’s been 131 days since he last saw her. She’s messaged me once asking for clarity about the situation. He do stay spreading misinformation, I gave her allllll the details and she said “you’re working very hard at this so make sure to take care of yourself and please let me know what I can do.” I told her that I don’t have money to take care of myself as I have no time to work and that maybe once we got a couch she could come visit to alleviate his loneliness. She said “I would’ve been there before now, but the animals…..” like she can’t get the people who watch them when she goes to her sisters to watch them when she goes to her boyfriend's house…

My dad sent me a message the other day saying “I told the nurse that came today that you said you’d always be my little sweetheart, and you’re doing pretty good at that!” And then moments later “Just be nice to [girlfriend] when/if she comes here, please.” HAHAHA I’ll be out of town if she comes to visit, broke baby or not, I need a respite.

It’s now been 361 days, but who’s counting..

August 11-

My mom would be 75 today

But there’s no flowers, no cake

Just cherries and icing

I’m emotionally raw and my resentments are mounting

I don’t know how to not be mad

when I don’t know yet what it is I’m supposed to be coping with

If you want to be defiant

You need to be a better liar

You need to be better at covering your tracks

You can’t assume everyone else is as much of a fucked up asshole idiot as you are

The shame I carry around on your behalf is killing me

I wrote: if you wither, I wither

You didn’t get it-

I am withered

94 pounds of fury and feelings of failure

Perpetual grief

I don’t know anymore if it’s for losing you

Or for all the time and effort I’ve put in to keep you here

That you light up in smoke and piss all over

I’m beat down, made small

I don’t know how to relieve this pain

I’m embarrassed by how it consumes me

I’m trying to let apathy emanate

Lest loathing and disdain exude me

Here’s an email I wrote him when he tried to get out of an appointment I worked hard to get him, before we knew, before things were as bad as they are:

First of all, the doctor didn’t say you have dementia. He said you need to take these tests to see if you qualify for a vaccine that would help keep dementia at bay.

You say you’re gonna run your life and we should all be running ours.

Due to your negligence, I’ve been at the mercy of the countless doctor’s schedules. And when I’m not, you’re messaging me asking me a million questions, most of which I’ve already answered and made the answers available to you in writing. It’s your choice if you want to do any further research on what any different kind of doctor does if you don’t remember.

If you’re not willing to go to get these tests done because you think that’s how you want to “run your life,” then you’re letting me down and showing me that you don’t care about me or how your choices affect me. And if that’s what you want to do, then I’m not gonna hang around to watch you run your life into the ground.

You spit the same bullshit lines at every doctor’s appointment we’ve been to “you’re happy, adequate, feel good, blah blah blah” and if any other question is asked of you, you defer to me or anyone else.

Not just health-wise- you expect everyone else to take care of everything, Kakii selling your car or feeding the cats, me tending to the tenants' needs and requests, Hank fixing your TV time after time.

You walk away from the table when I’m doing a task for you, that someone who was running their own life would be doing.

Running my life won’t involve being “under your thumb” as you told a doctor I was, just before saying that I’m your mom now and mocking me when I asked if you wanted to be the only baby I every have, and I’m not gonna be disregarded when you’re mad (but not saying so) because I’m reminding you what a professional doctor on your care team has instructed you to do and then be expected to show up and answer your every beck and call.

You are in a mental and physical health crisis that is affecting all of us. You’ve prided yourself on being a good patient, saying you’re great at following doctor’s orders, and now, you aren’t. You won’t hold yourself accountable, and you are going to end up back in the hospital.

You are putting your health and safety in jeopardy. You have been unwilling to participate or attempt to better your quality of life.

You aren’t grasping that for my physical health, I am scared to hug you or to be touched by you, or to touch anything you have touched because you relentlessly do not wash your hands, I’m scared that your disregard for hygiene is going to continually send you back to the hospital until you’re sent to a home. You are choosing to push me away. I can’t run my life from your hospital room.

Your answers are unreliable, you don’t know what day it is. All of your words mean nothing anymore because there’s no action that follows to support them.

I’m just the codependent mirror reflecting back to you the pain you’re harboring, and I refuse to let it destroy me any further.

Still,

the boy who cried

Wolfing me

Still dreaming of type 1 fun

Me with the ability to sit still and relax

Me by a pool taking it- easy?

Not wishing, hoping, longing- lamenting

Sharing aspirations maybe

A weather-appropriate drink in hand

In a body of water that rushes over, soothes and comforts me

No shame present that I can’t control what I can’t control

No guilt that I’m not trying harder to control the uncontrollable

Not embarrassed by my body, so small and frail in my eyes, aching all over, an invisible needle stabbed into where my shoulder meets my neck, shifting from side to side to alleviate the needle and relent to my tailbone crunching against the surface beneath me, I want to float

Not concerned that others might wish to embody this shell as their own, not knowing the ailments it comes along with, the legs I just shaved yesterday itching with new growth, looking like little baguettes coved in freshly cracked pepper

I want a lover beside me who doesn’t mind a prickly shin and best friends a phone call away

Picking up when I call to tell them anything other than what I’ve been telling them lately, no more same ol’ same, sadness and ruin

I want to say things like “Guess what! I rode a bike to anywhere and ate fresh fruit and my body feels strong, I’m in love and all consumed, but not so consumed that I’ll forget my love of everything else, I made art and I want to hear how you are doing and to make plans for the future because the future being bright seems feasible and I can’t wait to spend time with you there!”

Just as soon as I can find my way out of here

This unwavering chaos

I want to be knocked off my feet,

head over heels but not feel like it’s all upside down

And if it gets that way, I want a hand on my back to help me get upright again

“I see you, I’m here, it’s okay”

Is that codependent of me?

Sometimes, I wonder how liberation and love coexist

or if freedom is loneliness

It’s the seeing part that’s most important, I think.

Being there has never been enough,

and I could never let my legs prickle enough to be seen but not shoo them away

for shame or for fear

I want to throw myself at something, into someone

and for someone to embed themselves into me

I want unending infatuation

Without the usual creeping in of suffocation

I don’t want to suffer an everlasting fantasy

I have a chair in a nook in my room

I call it my blow job chair

I hate when it’s vacant, ready for occupancy

I hate more when it’s overtaken by a pile of laundry

Like the laundry is mocking me

No upcoming appointments for ecstasy

No opportunity for tenderness after

Heads on chests, fingers twirling in hair

wandering mountains and valleys

Illusions of a possible love story

Cultivated on my layers of coverlets

Getting tangled up in the sheets

I'm caught in a sorrowful little loop wondering if it'll ever happen for me

Endorphins high

Emotions low

I danced my heart out but didn’t let myself scream

I don’t want to hear your idiotic ideas

As you are faltering backwards

Undoing, wasting, taking taking taking

November:

A condensed version of a message I wrote to his friends and family:

I know I’m super, very long, overdue for a Herman update, but I’ve just been livin’ it and trying to keep my head above water. As usual, I don’t know where to begin. I got to go to New York for about 2 weeks to watch a friend's dog, two days after my return (Tuesday, November 5) we went to MD Anderson for a cystoscopy to see how the chemotreatment did. *literally just got the results back, and it looks like it worked, but he will have to go 1x/mo for the next 3 months for maintenance instillations and then again for a check-up up* When I picked him up to head out, there was obviously something going on with him. He was very unsteady on his feet and forgot how my rear passenger door opened, he told me he had fallen but didn’t know when. The whole drive he was telling me about his crazy dreams/hallucinations. He got the procedure done and we went to the hotel, he still seemed out of it but not enough for me to not go to my room down the hall. I brought him dinner, he ate, I messaged him later asking if he needed anything. He said “No, just ready to go home.” I messaged him in the morning (Wednesday) that I’d be ready in 20 min - no reply. I finished getting ready, went to his room, knocked- no answer. I let myself in, he wasn’t there but his shoes, wallet, and phone were. I’m pondering what to do, feeling like a parent at a water park who lost their kid, and then the front desk lady was opening the door to let him back in and told me he needed a shirt. We packed up and headed home, he told me about more crazy hallucinations like seeing someone’s knees in the bathroom and that made him think he was in the wrong room (later he said he’d never seen someone else poop and he didn’t want to start now, which I thought was funny) but still he was very unsteady on his feet. We got home, I scurried around to grab his bags and help him open the door because he didn’t have the strength to push it open. He got out and said “I’ve got it,” took one step and buckled, I caught him by the elbow so he didn’t make it all the way down but scraped a knee and maybe the other elbow. My brothers and I decided we better take him to the hospital. He had another UTI and we stayed 2 nights. Got him back home on Friday and picked up his antibiotic pills from the pharmacy and made sure he took them with meals. Saturday Hank went for the breakfast dose and I went for the dinner dose. When I arrived it was obvious he’d fallen again as everything from his bedside table was all over the floor and later he said it was like climbing an ice mountain to get back in bed. I got his dinner ready and he stumbled out to the dining room, ate one bite, got up to pee, came back and ate one more bite then asked for a bucket to puke into. Hank came over and we took his blood pressure (189/79) and his temp (100.1) so we took him back to the hospital. They said all results were coming back normal but that he did still have a UTI and some urine was backing up into his kidneys- They gave him more IV antibiotics and now they say his UTI is cleared up but they are suggesting he go to a memory care facility.

Mid-August he started seeing a Neurologist at the suggestion of a psychiatrist. We’d been going to appointments for various tests to test his cognitive ability and see if he could qualify for a vaccine that slows down/ prevents dementia from worsening. He’d started taking Wellbutrin which we were hoping would improve what the Neurologist thought might be pseudo-dementia, which is when you’re so depressed that you present signs of dementia. We were supposed to have a follow-up with the Neurologist about his Neuropsychology Test on Thursday but we missed that - I made an appointment and saw the neuro while Herman was in the rehabilitation facility

Based on MMSE and Brain scan he’d say he’s in the mild to moderate dementia range.

It will be hard to tell anything while the mental effects of the UTI dissipate, which could take a week to a month. And that it’s all gonna depend on his disposition.

A summary of what a few doctors and nurses told us: we were dealt a shit hand and if he goes home the cycle will likely repeat until he gets placed in memory care by powers greater than us.

Sept 17, 2023

Knees leathered

Spirit weathered

Trying to make it all better

I fall apart

Disappointed in my efforts

Icing on my sad girl cake

This year is just another racket

What are efforts even for?

I spent four nights bedside, in a hospital chair

2am coffee, 3am slapping hands away from needles and monitors, 3:30am coffee, 4am alarms going off, more coffee

My mouth is small when I’m angry

Teeth clenched

lips pinched

Biting my tongue

What’s the point in fighting a saturated wall?

My dead mother: used as a weapon.

I’m not her.

I imagine she picked her battles thoughtfully

Cancer or an addicts addiction?

Better odds at beating cancer maybe, still lost.

Hakuna Matata for who?

For her, for sure

My father has made her his higher power

His disillusion has damaged her good image in my mind.

I have to, I must, imagine that she would have stood up, intervened.

Distorted: my ideals of what love is.

Surely, it’s not getting walked all over, secondhand smoke, and dismissing bad behavior and a slow suicide.

Look up vintage urinal and how to get rid of sheets of glass

And I think he got it (at least for now) except on the way home (and in the office) he said I wanna go see Becca and that it makes him start to cry to say it and I said it makes me want to cry too. In the office when he said it the Dr was like “you can't think straight..” (also said the chemo can make your brain fuzzy) Anyway- I think she convinced him that he has to give it a few months, let the chemo treatments side effects dissipate – I told him "Becca said 'take care of the kids' and that's what we're trying to do for you now and I think she would have wanted that, and Pappock said 'everything I did right, do that, everything I did wrong, don't do that' and that's what we're trying to do now, and it's all out of love"

Witnessing your demise

Watching the light dim behind your eyes

I’m sure I’ve never done anything harder

I’m unsure why I’m punishing myself the way I am

Why the way I’m processing this trauma is just burning it deeper into my flesh

straight through to my bones

We’ll all be ashes one day

This morning I woke up to the sound of my own gasp from the crying that I was doing in my dream where someone was getting bad news on the phone that they were about to have to give me.

I’m worried he’s going to go on a hunger strike like Karleen did, or worse, as he’s threatened. And I’m concerned that [the facility he’s at] is blind to his state and scared to tell them at the same time for fear that he’ll get sent somewhere worse that he’ll hate even more.

I also don’t think “leveling” with him will do anything, but somebody, (I suggested to Herman that he try) needs to figure out some sort of totem to bring him back to reality/remind him why he’s there. Nothing I’ve come up with to keep him on any track so far has worked and I’m out of ideas. I think he needs to have something he feels like he has control over and the only thing he can think of is saying no to all the activities so far.

I think yesterday I woke up at 10:30 in the morning and then I stayed up until 830 this morning. I woke back up at 9:30 this morning. By now it’s long after midnight and I’m just now on my way home. I drove under a street light that was shining through the leaves of a tree, it looked like bunches of amber floating above me. I was thankful that I could see the beauty so readily in the ordinary world that we live in and at the same time, it breaks my heart. A few months ago Herman couldn’t even relate to the songs he used to sing, now he doesn’t even know it was him that was singing them.

I’m beating me up that I didn’t see the signs.

Thinking about how when I was in elementary school and the house needed to be painted. Like an excited child Herman called me into the bathroom while he was in the tub to show me our two shampoos swirled together, anti-dandruff and detangler, dark green and fuchsia pink, he’d picked the colors. Now everything new is dark. I’m wondering how and knowing nothing would be different if I had questioned him, where are you going that’s so cloudy and gray?

Maybe I don’t believe in god because I know pointing fingers is just trying to find somewhere to place the blame and with hands in prayer, they’re all pointing up and there’s nothing there.

All-consuming darkness.

1/27

Last week I gave Herman a shave and told him that we could talk about anything other than the loop he’s stuck in of begging/demanding to go home and that nooooobody comes to visit him and then tells me about the people who came to visit and wouldn’t take his stuff home. Then I helped him change his wetted sheets.

Today I brought him a “small fat pizza” and helped him do his laundry because he thinks the laundry team there doesn’t bring back all his laundry. All the while he griped about how no one would take the things he had packed up in the kitchen and didn’t understand why. I said maybe because he might want it there. Then I helped him change his wetted sheets again, he’s taken to keeping a towel under the sheets, I put it roughly where he’d had it before and he asked where to put it, I told him I don’t know, I don’t keep a towel in my bed. He said, “I keep it there because I pee the bed.” I asked him if he could correlate that to him not being able to take care of himself and told him that incontinence is a symptom of the later stages of dementia. When I said dementia again he told me not to say that word. I told him that the nurse he saw earlier was going to see him again next week and that she’s going to help us navigate “it”

1/28

Even good days are bad days. Last night after I left him and came home this is how our text exchange went:

H: I hate this…I love you!

B: I love you too.

H: I suppose I should hitch up my britches and see what, if anything, I can do about it.

Not worried, just waaay sorta sad, I guess.

B: It’s uncharted territory, and very confusing stuff.

H: Wellllll. maybe I can help people who may get it Fucking avoid it, heal with something they uncover from me.

A long shot of course, but?????

H: What are you doing tomorrow???

B: Yeah, that would be a nice thing to do. Next Monday the woman who came to see you today will come back again and do a short test with you and that will enroll you in a program that will help teach us things

H: Please spend some time with me tomorrow…now I’m getting more worried by the hour

B: I will try to come by

H: I want to last long enough to see you fall in love and get married….then when I join your mom SOMEWHERE I can be happy again. ❤️❤️🙏🙏🤓😢🤛😜

B: 💜 I want that too poppit 💜

Today I arrived within the timeframe I had told him I would. He messaged me 23 times before I got there, but we had a good visit. I gave him another shave and helped him to make sense of the bed again. He’d piled up all the piss-soaked sheets on the other side of the bed. He told me he lied to someone the other day, I asked who and why. He told me it was one of the people who come to ask him if he wants to shower and he told them he had. I used a comb and a brush to scrape the scale from his scalp. He doesn’t understand that not washing his head or his face is what gives him the scales and the “bad spot” on his face. I washed his hair as best as I could with a hand towel and the fancy shampoo he requested after I’d got some for Uncle B. Then I applied some scalp serum before pulling it back into his tiny little ponytails.

Sometimes I’m glad I don’t remember you at all. I’m glad I never had to see you like this, I hardly remember you being there or not. I’ve been thinking about the phrase “never meet your heroes” and I think this is where it came from..

The other night when I was driving home late again

the moon hung like a paper lantern in the sky

the largest slice of candle-lit cantaloupe

larger than the capital building

no one was outside

it was hung just for me

and I cherished it

The things that are just for me exist only in the darkness it seems

light illuminating

2/8

I think a lot about stupid things people say when they’ve gotten in between rocks and hard places. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy…” I’ve figured it out, I know what I would wish on my worst enemy, and it’s this.

And “you don’t know what I’m capable of” I was just looking at myself in the mirror and the feral hatred I have burning in my chest was having a conversation I can’t have with a nemesis. Then I thought, hell, I don’t know what I’m capable of, but I know what I’m not capable of, and because I’M HERE and I’VE BEEN HERE I also know what my father is not capable of, and for both of us, that’s taking care of him to the extent that he needs caring for. For a year he’s been a roller coaster of “this is just more of me handing the reigns over to you” and “You run your life and I’ll run mine…when is my next appointment?” I haven’t been able to run my life, let alone live it because I’ve been coordinating for the Herman Show, and the guest stars he wants to have on, NEVER SHOW UP, but they are more than willing to be in his ear vilifying me, telling him I’m keeping them away. How wretched a soul.

2/8

Bad thing after bad thing after bad thing.

We lost Uncle B today, I guess I hope you already know that. It was such an incredible and lovely honor to care for and to be cared for by him. He was a generous beacon of light, even in his hardest struggles he always managed to have a good attitude and to let the joy shine through. He was like a cat with 9 lives and each time he came back he never lost any of the drive or fight he had in him. He was inspiration and had so many qualities to aspire to. My little heart is so shattered but some shards of it full because he allowed and trusted me to help him with menial, mundane, but such vulnerable tasks and I’ll cherish our days of spa treatments and gossip and I’ll be filled by how much it’s clear that to know him was to love him. The lesson is reinforced that it is a gift to be welcomed to offer your help to loved ones and to have it be received so graciously. I can only hope I get better at letting people in to do that because that’s how beautiful communities are tethered together, I think. I was so lucky and I hope that whatever happens after here, he’s arriving 6’ 3” with lungs that can have all the air and giving you all the news and they are smiling and eating all the foods and getting ready for the Super Bowl.

3/3

Every year I think this will be the year it’ll all happen for me. I’ll know what I want to do with my life that makes money, I’ll find the guy, I’ll have a baby or at least be pregnant before my next birthday. And then the hardships keep crashing into me and I’m both hard and soft so I crumble and I clag. I intended to write you earlier today but I laid in the tub doom scrolling for an hour before I even washed my face. I crossed a lot off my todo list today, but seeing Herman wasn’t one of them. I get so anxious. I don’t know what motivates me other than fear sometimes. Fear of disappointing and disappointment. Fear of sudden endings, fear of being alone, fear of failure. It’s also what keeps me awake and keeps me from waking up.

3/4

Today, while I was running errands that all involved either spending money, trying to get back money I spent, or trying to avoid spending more money. I was going to see Herman before running errands but then I started a load of laundry and was responding to messages and emails and keeping up with spreadsheets. I asked Herman what he wanted to eat for lunch and told him I’d be over after I switched the laundry, he didn’t respond for over an hour and then requested a bunch of things that can’t just be bought from a store because the financial support for those is only made possible by ordering on the computer for delivery. In regard to lunch, I think, he just said “whatever” maybe he was talking about me being “late” to come see him. But how can I be “on time” when he piles on a shopping list that comes with an out of my control wait time..? One of the errands I ran was going to the T-mobile store to get a new screen protector for my phone and to cancel Uncle B’s phone line. They told me I had to cancel the line by calling into the support center, I called, they asked why I was cancelling I told them because I got the phone for my uncle and he just passed away, they extended their condolences on behalf of alllll of T-Mobile and then they told me that because I’m not the Primary Account Holder that I didn’t have the authority to cancel the line, even though I am an “Authorized User” and that I’d need to have Herman give them verbal confirmation that the line could be cancelled. No way in hell bish. We haven’t even told him about Uncle B yet, for me it’s because I’m scared it will send him on a downward envious spiral, Uncle B gets to go see you, he’s stuck here living in this hell.

On my drive home I was mad about all of it. About the fucking bullshit hoops and hurdles grifter corporations make broke baby consumers have to suffer though. I thought about how fucked it all is, and how I don’t want to decide what Herman wants for lunch because I don’t know what Herman wants for lunch, but neither does he. And then I thought about how for all *practical* purposes, I am Herman. Or he’s me and we broken. I got home and logged onto my T Mobile account, and bitch, I am the fucking Primary Account Holder. Bullshit waste of my fucking time. And it’s shit like that on loop. Play it back.

I don’t think that in two weeks I’ll have become enlightened to optimism and have some inspired ending to my letter this year, all of my hopes and wishes continue to lay by the wayside and I think maybe if I reverse psychology the universe, then maybe the tides will change. So who cares if I wake up and go to sleep alone everyday and night. Let go and let hot-mess-goddess take the reins.

I’m thinking about your journal and if I’ll find any new gems in the scant pages that haven’t yet struck a chord. I’m also thinking fuck all this horse shit. I want to know what you didn’t think was fair, I wish you hadn’t crossed it out and instead wrote “I guess it’s fair enough” because it does not, by any means feel like anything at all, in the whole world, is fair enough, or anywhere close to it.

I feel awkward to include this because the internet is a stupid place and this is vague and contorted, but it seems relevant. And maybe even if just in the vacuum, it felt like I stood up somewhere outside of my immediate oppression bubble. In July I got in a Facebook fight with an old pro-lifer white man named Sandy. Somebody posted a stupid meme that said “My body. My choice. ‘Correct friend’... the problem is that you want full control over another because you lost control of your body. That new life isn’t responsible for your poor decisions…” I commented, “that’s very uninformed and insensitive.” Sandy asked me, “Did your mother have any kids that lived?” I said “yeah..and one that sometimes wishes it didn’t because this world is so nasty with people's hatred and judgment of others.” I didn’t know he was a guy at first, though my question remains valid, I asked, “Have you ever been raped? If so, were you in control?” His response, “ Have you ever heard of RetroAbortion? It may not be too late for you!” and “The hatred you mention is only in your own head!.... Things happen, people die.. Whoever heard that life is fare?...” I said “Sandy, lol, did you just suggest that I kill myself or ask my parents to murder me? My mom died when I was 6, so I don’t think she’ll be much help in that regard, and I’m my 78-year-old dad’s primary caregiver so I don't think that would bode too well for him.” Then I tried to give him an education about the various reasons why abortions are healthcare and that they actually save lives, etc. I went on to say, “I never heard that life was FAIR* but it surely is a high fare to be here.” I told him that he never answered my question about if he had been raped and if he was in control of his body when it happened. I ended with “It seems pretty nasty, hateful, and non-pro-life of you to propose that I give myself a RetroAbortion. I don’t know what you’re guilty of, but I hope you come to terms with it and let the light in.

Honestly, maybe it seems relevant because I’m trying to reconcile my responses to various traumas, I think I’ve been trying to figure out the damage of one in particular- if it was pivotal to how I perceive myself. And because I need to listen to myself and let some god damn light in. Guilty or not.

Weird thing to end on 21 pages deep.

The droll roll continues as I don’t know how to move forward in space. This year Mom, please don’t leave me on read. I can only stand the echo of my scream into the void so much.

I sat

I echoed

I found my sign off

So much,

Blossom 💜

p.s. Sara sent Herman and I this picture today. He didn’t know it was us.

[blahsome]

March 18 2024

Good fucking lord,

Where has the time gone? Now you’ve been gone for 29 years. If you were here today you’d know what I mean when I say the math isn’t mathing.

29 years?? I know documents say I’m 35, but I pretty much just graduated college and I guess it’ll never make sense that you’ve been gone for any amount of time. The farther away I get from 6 years old, the more you stay 45, the closer my niblings get to 6 and then surpass it with their world view intact- I’m always holding my breath at milestones.

The time passes, I exhale.

The calendar pages turn and remind me to get ready for the waves. This last year though, it felt like I never got to come up for air. Just a gasp here and there. I’m fully submerged in a cycle of fighting, flighting and mostly being frozen. It looks like I’m moving but my muscles are shattering ice cubes and I can’t fall asleep and I hate to wake up. I love to be needed but my cup is empty and there seems to be a hole in the bottom.

I could’ve made time, I had plenty of it. It was the only thing I had, but I was like a spinning top: stop, drop. Finally, I’ve fallen and I can’t seem to get back up.

I’ve got little sense of comfort left. The last year was so jarring and I’m left raw. I don’t know how to bandage myself, I can’t afford mental health and I can’t afford to be mentally unwell, either. All I can do is feign a little dance to give the illusion that I’m on my feet, my knees at least.

These are just some of the most pertinent notes I’ve digitally scribbled over the last year or so. Some of these notes I think: what does any of this have to do with my mother? And I tell myself that I am how I am because she’s gone, so it is what it is.

-

Bb freeeee

may the beasts not render you an island

Bonding over poison

It’s crazy how time flies without you

But still I’m dragging around memories of you

-

Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between compliments and manipulation

When I’ve got a new boy stretching my hamstrings

How do you know just when to creep back in?

I don’t know where to find Inspiration.

What beast have I encountered? How can I dissolve its teeth, sunken into my will, draining me of any sense of purpose or direction.

-

I told a forlorn boy that I could have his dick in my mouth and he’d still wonder if I’d like him tomorrow. I need to be held, but not so tight that I lose my autonomy. I don’t want to drag anyone down with my morosity, and I don’t have the ability to cleanse someone of their insecurities. No one really does.

-

I’m longing for peanuts

Lusting for when you used to come to my room

When you used to swing from my chandelier

Feigning human interaction through my screens

Nothing comes

-

A life time requiring too many moments of silence

I can’t quiet my mind

I want comfort

I want the cover of darkness

I want to make bad decisions

if they’ll make me feel good

-

Funny how men boast about survival of the fittest

While women hold the seeds before we’re even born, before our mothers are even born, we’ve existed for centuries before we come to be, in a form that you objectify and make small

-

Always an onslaught of processing to be postponed

A moment

Quiet

I can’t

Stir stir stir

Sleepless

What for?

I’m ready for the now to start

Without the worry of yesterday and tomorrow

What did I forget?

What will be forgotten?

-

A two way street

But one lane is paved with silver spoons and oblivion

The other with rusted shovels and painful clarity

-

Hello mama,

I’m in the midst of a flood of feeling desperate for your presence. All my old people are getting older, and so am I. Everything hurts. I’m suffering from chronic pain but I’m keeping as strong a face as I can. There is too much to do to tend to myself, what with everyone slipping away. You wrote it yourself “worry makes my face look funny”.

-

I’m so mad

I swear the breath heaving in my chest is 101 degrees

My heart’s warmed by the generosity of strangers

Lit on fire by the indifference of familiar faces

Broken by the additional pressure to keep a brave face

What would my mother think?

What was she doing when her mother was dying?

What would guilt feel like if I wasn’t breaking my back?

Guilt and shame are my ultimate punishers.

-

I’m traumatized by your intake and your disregard

Heart broken and lonely. Sometimes I think that everybody doesn’t want to hang out with themselves so much that they can’t hang out with me.

-

Knees leathered

Spirit weathered

Trying to make it all better

I fall apart

Disappointed in my efforts

Icing on my sad girl cake

This year is just another racket

What are efforts even for?

I spent four nights bedside, in a hospital chair

2am coffee, 3am slapping hands away from needles and monitors,

3:30am coffee, 4am alarms going off, more coffee

My mouth is small when I’m angry

Teeth clenched

lips pinched

Biting my tongue

What’s the point in fighting a saturated wall?

My dead mother, used as a weapon.

I’m not her.

I imagine she picked her battles thoughtfully

Cancer or an addicts addiction?

Better odds at beating cancer maybe, still lost.

Hakuna Matata, for who?

For her, for sure

My father has made her his higher power

His disillusion has damaged her good image in my mind.

I have to, I must, imagine that she would have stood up, intervened.

Distorted: my ideals of what love is.

Surely it’s not getting walked all over, second hand smoke, and dismissing bad behavior and bearing witness to a slow suicide.

-

Someone told me to have a cry as a little treat

So I tried

I tried to shed just a few regimented tears

But they all came out

They rushed

They dehydrated me

They turned me red and burned me

They took all my air

I went out to lay in the dirt

To feel the support of the earth

I tried to pull myself under the surface

But only ended up pulling out grass

Can I do nothing gracefully if I’m so distraught?

-

What is the opposite of horizon?

About 35 and ready for a reinvention again

Nothing has changed, I’m still a baby

I still want my mom

What was I born to do?

Ain’t nobody got a fast car round here, and even if they did

Somebody’s gotta take care of this old man

It’s kinda silly wanting my mom, I really didn’t know her.

What if we got along awful?

I went to an event with my #1 friend earlier and afterward she messaged me and told me I’m good at talking to people and she loves that about me. I said I felt embarrassed about what comes out of my mouth sometimes, and the how and the timing of it.

We went in hopes of winning gift cards or spa treatments.

I won a vodka gift basket, classic.

-

Every time I get a book of poems

I’m inspired to write again

I feel powerful

Grabbing balls

Stroking their taint

Sliding a digit in

I feel powerful

Knowing, if just for a moment

I have them wrapped around my finger

I’ve been thinking all day

About how to manifest a casual coincidence

Of standing next to you when the clock strikes midnight

I wish I could go back in time

And commit no sins that I need to be absolved of to feel worthy of you

But then I wouldn’t have ruled so many realms

I wish my worth and my shame weren’t in a constant battle

I wish I didn’t feel like the life I’ve lived apart from you would tear you to bits.

“Laying here naked,

Woman I previously hated”

We’re forging friends from enemies

Freaks from foes

Drunk darlin’s

Late nights

Early mornin’s

Velvety soft and smooth

Perfect teeth, my weakness

Gifts of lilac

Chains on our tongues

In the shade by a damn river

Be naked and aggressive

Longing for a late night bath

Good freaks

Dream of me

Life blood boosted

Effortlessly cool

Sunsets in the sticks

Crocs and cowboy hats

Day dreaming

Tailgates in wheaty fields

Caught off guard

So comfortable

So quick

Swooning

Nourishing bodies

Good looking

Looking good

“You’re good, baby”, rolling off the tongue

Your hands on me

Sweet lil angel freak

Necessary nap time

Neon lights

Dark nights

Sentimental and poetic

Philosophizing

Chill with it all

Seamless

Slowly and so comfortably

-

I just want to write

My woes

My ohs

My ooh lalas

Woe: I have no discipline

Oh: I have no discipline

Ooh lala: I want to be on that dick again

Sometimes all it takes to manifest is saying what you want in front of the right person

But sometimes even if I’m doing nothing and saying nothing to no one

I’m manifesting

Maybe something better than my weak spine

Likely not

Confrontation makes me want to vomit

The internal conflict of necessary confrontation also makes me want to vomit

-

I can’t afford feng shui or Jesus

-

It’s so crazy I keep opening my phone

and looking in all the same places to find meaning

I wanna be in it for the long haul

Tired of playing hard ball

And you’re not even playing at all

-

Toss

Turn

Toss again

This knee up

That knee up

I swear my shoulders are almost touching

Not on the blade side

My hips are pinching at my spine

It’s past 2am and I refuse to get up and stretch it all out

I do this every night

Pace all day

Twist all night

-

Dear Elmo,

Harrowed by the year behind me

Overwhelmed by crushing anxiety with even the smallest glances toward the year ahead

The week, the day, the minute ahead

The present is just a tornado

No steps forward on solid ground

A slippery mountain

A pit full of treacherous mud

No whatchamacallit in sight

Just pastel rainbows plastered on the walls to drown out the darkness

Hoping they’ll come alive

and as my caring companions

Braid themselves into a rope

And tie me up

And pull me out of this unfaltering fog

-

Laying in bed

Night after night

Pulling my pillows under the covers

Fighting them as I flail

Left side

Right side

Belly flop

One leg bent

The other

Would a big spoon sooth my ailing back?

Would my anxious fractured sense of self shove them off the bed?

Fetal position

One pillow clenched between my legs

Hoping it aligns my spine

One pillow clutched to my chest

Hoping it keeps my shoulders from touching before my collar bones

Turning in

Withering

Bedrotting

It all aches

A pillow tucked behind me to simulate a caring hand

steadfast on my back

-

I don’t know yet how to write about how scared I was when I thought Herman might die last year. He’d gotten a UTI that was so severe that he became septic, he was also going through alcohol withdrawl. When elderly people get UTI’s often times the only symptom is delirium, so it can be hard to tell when they’re usually drunk and delirious already. The good news is that he’s almost completely cut out his vices. The other news is that it’s difficult for me to accept that he is elderly, and he still has bladder cancer. I can actually accept the cancer part, I just get a little heartbroken when I watch him shuffling around not being present. I think about how my mom would be with her grandkids. And selfishly, how she might be the one to take Herman to his appointments if she was here, report back to the rest of us coherently, give us all hugs afterwards, and then be able to encourage him to be more of an active participant. When I got him home from the hospital I wrote a note and stuck it on his bathroom mirror: What would Becca do? He did actually appreciate and elaborate on it. It’s still there, 6 months later.

I’m so tired of scrolling instagram and reading stupid inspirational memes like “you haven’t met all the people you’re going to love yet”. I’m pretty sure if I can’t leave the house unless it’s to tend to my already loved ones, then I have. I don’t know how to make space for both the known and the unknown. All I do every day when I don’t have a task to do for someone I love is wonder what I’m on this earth for and what I’m even good at.

I wish I could see how my mom interacted with people. I wish it didn’t matter. I wish I didn’t spend the better half of the last two years in bed. It’s insane to think how much I actually did accomplish while simultaneously falling completely apart. And now I’m here, having hit an absolute wall, unraveled.

I am still full of wonder and comforted by the fact that all shades of light purple exist and so do I. My wondering can have no conclusion though. I can’t collect enough lilac, lavender, and orchid to conjure clarity. How many countless hours would my mother allow me of her time, to sit with me and hold me until we come up with a plan? Why can’t I do it myself? If we can’t do it, who can help? I’ve expended all my resources and am left with nothing to offer. I’m not even an expert on my own grief.

Sometimes it seems as if everyone forgot that we have to mourn this loss forever, together. So, I’m left alone. My fathers diminishing memory not remembering that I told him I’d like it if he would be home today so he can hang out with me while I plant some flowers. He’s 5 hours away and it won’t be me who reminds me.

Almost nothing seems worth a breath if I don’t mention all of the children in Palestine who will be left to mourn their martyred parents, and the parents, their martyred children. Ceasefire now, and forever. Free Palestine.

Hug your loved ones, ask them questions, use your time wisely if you have the energy, and if you know what I’m good at and should do with my life, please let me know.

Accepting defeat and hoping to rise from the ashes,

Blossom

[blahsome]

March 18 2020, yet another big milestone. 25 years. A quarter of a century. Is it a big deal or are numbers arbitrary and it’s the same amount of a deal as it ever has been? I can’t publish everything I’ve written down for this year without feeling guilty, but I also can’t step on no toes all the time. And now, I will also feel guilty posting this when there's a pandemic occurring, but, I am trapped at home with little to do other than edit and re-edit this writing to be suitable enough for the public. I started writing this on April 9, 2019, too early to start my 25th anniversary writing? I’ll guess not. So here it is, my yearly open letter to my mother with intermittent ramblings and poems about my experience moving though life as the person I am and my perceptions as a flawed but resilient female. It’s like if I put it out there, maybe I’ll somehow reach her and she will somehow let me know. Highs and lows, as usual. Just after 2 years off the sauce I had a bigger ‘aha moment’ than putting down any bottles, though one wouldn’t have happened without the other. I realized drinking wasn’t my real problem to begin with. It was people, and my desperate need for their acceptance and approval. My need to be recognized and valued instead of coddled and unconsciously kept in a box. My need to control the outcome of situations and stepping on toes in the process. After so long being alcohol free I came to see that I had to start living for me. In early June 2019 a dear friend turned me on to a book called CoDependent No More. In maybe a week’s time I absorbed every word, the narcissist in me was almost convinced that I’d written it myself, it resonated so deeply. The following week I started attending CoDA meetings. Now that so many of my grievances and ailments make sense, I only wish I’d known sooner that it was okay to live life with me as my number one priority. I didn’t know before that I didn’t have to feel responsible for other people’s actions or inactions, but my self worth had been dependent on it. I’m 95% sure my mother was CoDependent, and with that consideration, I’m able to understand her life choices better and therefore navigate my own with slightly better foresight. Wikipedia says “Codependency is a behavioral condition in a relationship where one person enables another person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement. Among the core characteristics of codependency is an excessive reliance on other people for approval and a sense of identity.” Now, that’s just one definition. There are many charastics to pick and choose from, and let me tell you, us codependents (I can only speak for myself) can be picky and choosy. Some people define codependency as a disease because if it goes untreated it only gets worse. I’m trying to break a lifetime of habits. Hi, My name is Blossom and I’m CoDependent. Every Monday night I go to a meeting where a group of women gather and we all try to work on ourselves to let go of whatever unmanageable ailments are keeping us shackled. It’s humbling and it fills me with hope. It empowers me to continuously seek change and clarity. Codependency is a tough one to recover from, as you can’t quit people. Once I had a name for this problem, every love song sounded different and every frustration made sense. I became able to recognize crazy making and slow down and see that I didn’t have control and things had become unmanageable. In doing so, I was able to step back and make better decisions for myself and my life and that’s how this whole last year unfolded more in my favor than any year previous. I worked on detaching and I started living for myself. March is a hard month for me. I sometimes feel so undeserving of a skin to be settled in. I writhe around in my persistent and annual grief. I start getting anxious in February wondering how it will appear this year. This March is particularly hard. I moved into a house with strangers and rarely stay there. I’ve got no place of my own to grieve, and with COVID-19 amongst us, I don’t want to take up any more emotional space while the world is feeling its current devestations and fears. My hopes for 2019 were to have more highs than lows, make my amends and reconciliations, and to keep my head mostly above water. And that was mostly the case. My aunt told me shortly after my post last year that my mom had self imposed low self esteem (now I recognize this as codependency). Watching home videos of her I feel like I could see stress in her face and I think about what she wrote in her journal about worry making her face look funny and how she didn’t want anyone to feel as she did. Maybe because it was a different time she felt like she couldn’t talk about her anxieties and had to bottle them up. I’m thinking about all the time I’ve spent transfixed by being a motherless daughter and trying to figure out where I fit into the word. I’m thinking about how long I spent tending to my father's bent and dusty wings, thinking I’d needed to see one of my parents fly so that I could’ve learned how it’s done. I’m in some required college to career success class that’s making me question my path, as if stress wasn’t doing that already. I’m laying in bed wishing that I’d figured out sooner that my wings were fine regardless of anyone else’s. I wish you were here so I could tell you all about everything. And so you could do the same. And so we could share the load. I quit smoking finally. Now my only vice is other people’s problems and trying to fix them to no avail. The eternal heartbreak I mentioned in my last letter makes more sense now. And the boy who told me to turn off the lights on my birthday sent me a podcast that said something about only being able to be loved as much as you’re willing to be vulnerable. And I think we’re all scared to be completely honest about how shitty we are, so we just perpetuate the shittiness and stay closed and unloveable. Early August 2019- I’m off track as usual, probably malnourished, definitely exhausted. This morning I was crying, I thought I wouldn’t be able to pull it together and that my eyes would be red when I got to my first job of the day. I think I was mourning. Things are going to change so much. I won’t have any more free time. I have to restructure everything. Which I think is what I wanted, but what a learning curve. I still have desperate hopes of creating a camp for motherless daughters someday. And it has to be accessible to all. But lord knows how far off in the future it is. At this time my feet are seldom beneath me, I’m sprinting forwards and if I stop I will stumble. I have to figure out my shit first I guess, and I’m putting in the worrrk. Or trying to at least. At a CoDA meeting a woman was talking about learning how to wield her anger, a thought that made me tremble. I liked the sound of it, as I have so much, and if we could turn it into a power, a force for good...it’d be all over. But I’m stifled by it, embarrassed of it. When I cancel plans it's usually because I’m embarrassed about how angry I am over something out of my control, and I can’t come down. Everyone was relatable, everyone seemed to be making progress, even if at this time it looked like a breakdown. They told their stories and I cringed inwardly, thinking of what I would have done in their situation. The time for change is now, I’m shaking in my boots. Some poetry and prose: My broken heart painted my world red slandering your name ensuring I’m to be seen as a fool who sobs wolf My depressed history understands every bit of where you come from like we have the same veins My logical self tells me that’s your burden to bear but I do everything I can to fabricate your crutches and excuse your bad behavior - Codependent Cowgirl Uncharmable. You only want your ex cause you think that’s where you can be yourself, but really that’s where was born the version of yourself you hate the most. Here I am standing strong, aching for my newest weakness. You’re having none of it. If I unclench my jaw and take a deep breath Tears roll down my cheeks THIS is relaxing So I tense back up And jump back into my cortisol spiral There is too much to get done to spend even one second thinking about you Six Sundays have passed since I’ve seen you last Codependency writes all my prose and all my sonnets All my pros and wilted bluebonnets - Go hard or go home Or go hard and stay at home, for forever because you thought you and your home would be each other’s salvation because home was the only thing that ever willingly invited you to change it and was better for it. But home got too heavy and home wouldn’t change on its own. And all the changes you did accomplish didn’t prove your worth. Plagued by nostalgia and sentiment Chronic grief Frozen in grief, and just when I begin to thaw, the temperature drops again Perpetually stressed What if to lose a parent as a child, is to lose the present. Because then you are trapped dreading the uncertainty of the future and wondering about a past you never knew and will never know, theirs. - Fuckless nights I unwittingly dusted off my fiddle strings and played as best as I could but you were never pleased. I was always out of tune or just off beat. -- And so let us not demonize others for our perceived shadows they cast and have casted We can’t all be deciphering your eccentric and elaborate needs when you’re shouting CUNT at the tips of your fingers and claiming to empower women while you dig in your claws to another. Chicken soup wasn’t enough to cleanse your soul. -- I think about you every day Literally nothing happens And I’m reminded of you I wake up I think of you I want to punch a wall I till the dirt I think of you I go on a date I don’t like him I think of you I let myself get so fucked up over you My rose colored glasses are shattered but I’m still wearing them I can’t bring myself to say nothing but nothing I say gets through to you I was operating out of a place Of fear I felt threatened by any number of women I’d never met and will never meet. I saw a message on your phone It confirmed my suspicions You drunkenly tried to explain it away I wanted to believe you but I had already poured the concrete and I cart it with me everywhere Slowly I’m leaving little bits here and there Becoming lighter - This week I wrestled with my codependency, Manic and exhausted from my nervous system vibrating I spent countless hours elbows deep in the dirt trying to find the root of it all An unsolvable problem parallel with reality Hard work makes me stronger Even if I can’t kill all the weeds Progress over perfection What even is progress? fuck my life. I’m no fun at this time. The doors will rot in the yard, my gut tells me just like the others. It’s not even a metaphor, just a strong probability, and a waste. Oh my god the realizations just keep rolling in. For hoarders the drama triangle isn’t just for people, but objects too. The doors must’ve been playing victim, and he’s gone to rescue them. The only corner left for me is The Persecutor. - Back in the thick Texas air Drawn to tough love From best friends to boyfriends Can’t get enough of the push and pull I’m nothing like the others I’m so much more with so much less You make me nervous But I don’t have much to lose I want to roll over and kiss you on the mouth I want reciprocation I want you to push my face away Just to kiss me on the neck You always get me with a twist We are scared of each other Collective hurt Collectively hurt We are missing something and are unable to accept ourselves and each other as we are I don’t know how you can lie to me Or how I can stick around for it For all those times you smash it right I guess Second best to you kissing my neck Is when I’m out of sight but on your mind I don’t fit in to some plan you thought you had I break the mold I’m quiet and bold We are anxious, we are stepping on each other’s toes Bite your tongue For better or for worse Things stay the same But with time, and your tongue between your teeth Eggshells are everywhere, splintered into our feet Make it up as you go along Keep the gas on I’m filling the space between my eyes and my rose colored glasses with wool - Same as ever Tongue between my teeth Lighting up another 100 out of 10 You wonder if you know me But you don’t give yourself the opportunity I’m right behind you writing my words that my teeth won’t allow my tongue to speak Desperation is such a drain Self inflicted low self esteem A familial affliction Looking like a 10 Feeling like a dud That low self esteem has me trembling And today was a good day - With a bottle of booze as his gate keeper He’ll never let me in I’m flushed, way too in my head Thinking up scenarios to catch you with your hands red bloodied from tearing my heart out and probably hers, too. - When I first quit drinking I felt this temporary empowerment, like I always had my wits about me. I could do anything. And then my codependency cloud settled back in, my intuition slipped back out the window. Now it’s like I’m in the desert, with a paddle, which makes even less sense than being upstream without one. It takes so much energy for me to state my needs. I’ve lived much of my life being brushed off and I predict rejection of my needs and so I try to suppress them and be ok with things as they are, but I need more. When I’m cancelled on, or am not prioritized, I need to be provided with alternatives or I feel insignificant. Reminders of my stated needs feel like nagging. I need reassurance. It’s exhausting and disheartening. -It’s the little things like when I ask if you want to do something and you tell me what you’re doing instead, without offering any alternative. Or when you tell me nothing. And I have visceral feelings that to inquire is to overstep and overstepping leads to termination. When I’m doing better I don’t write as much. Pain is romanticized, joy is foreign to me and perceived as fleeting. I’m trying to flip that script. Going to CoDA helps me in this effort. It reminds me that there is space for me and it's ok for me to have needs and taking care of myself should be step one in all of my endeavors. It's ok to say no. I don’t owe anyone anything, and also no one owes me anything. I’m closer than ever before to becoming the butterfly out of the cocoon, though I'm still very far, and that's okay. Progress over perfection. Now wash your hands and stay safe. If not for you, then for your loved ones, or your friends friends loved ones. <3

[blahsome]

March 18, 2019: Another Letter to My Mom and Other Notes Damn it. This is all over the place again. 24 years. You’ve been gone for 24 years. I’ve lived 5 times as long as I had when you passed. I think about time all the time, how much has gone by and how much is left. I turned 30 in November. All I wanted for my birthday was a mom. Or rather to be seen, heard, and cared for as only a mother can care for her child, I imagine. Every day is a learning curve. Every day I struggle. For at least part of every day I feel invisible and unknowable. How have I lived for 30 years without anyone getting to know me? (I’M MAKING EXTREME GENERALIZATIONS AND GREATLY APPRECIATE THE VERY FEW WHO DO KNOW ME AND MAKE THOUGHTFUL EFFORTS ON MY BEHALF. Also, I know I make it hard to get to know me, I’m scared and I’m jaded.) I’m fucking heart broken eternally. I feel like a spoiled brat. I feel resigned to suffering. Sure, sure, other people have it harder and worse than me. I know this and it makes me feel worse. I wonder if I will ever have any successful relationships of any sort (generalizing again). I feel like I have to shoulder so fucking much. If I don’t, who will? I’m fucking pissed, still congealed in anger. There is no god. I’m just a poor girl from a poor family (read that like Bohemian Rhapsody). Always reeling. My shoulders are caving in to protect my fragile little heart. I’m fucking cold and brittle. I do too much, a jill of all trades and master of none. I don’t have time to figure out what I want to do. My post birthday depression was shattering. I felt completely isolated and incapable, so close to the edge. I trudged through it, always with enough mascara on to keep my eyes dry. Last spring I went to the doctor to see about these stomach pains I was having, mostly they would happen if I was on a date that I think my body was telling me to leave “this guy ain’t it, Bloss”. The doctor came up with no answers. Blah blah blah, webmd- I decided I maybe I was low in estrogen so I got a prescription for birth control. I took it for three months and it greatly increased my mood swings, insomnia, fury, rage, anxiety, and had me nearly suicidal. I’d quit smoking for 12 days, physically I was feeling great, but the mess in the yard had me so enraged I was about ready to throw a pipe through my father's windshield, I went and bought a pack of cigarettes, in lieu of outward destruction. I quit taking the birth control when I put two and two together. My stomach pains had subsided, but I was exhausted. I went on a date with a guy during that time and it was wonderful. When I arrived he was playing Marvin Gaye with his shirt halfway unbuttoned and didn’t look at his phone once. We went to dinner and made out on the roof. But I was so anxious I slept at his house with my jeans on and then didn’t see him for 2 months. Everytime we would make plans I would break them because something would come up that would have me distressed, fists clenched or in a ball with my head underwater. Once I came back around and saw him again he asked me why I blew him off for so long. What are you supposed to say to that? “Oh uh, I was constantly on the verge of a mental break and I am actually still recovering. Please bear with me.” I have attachment issues, trust issues, too. My ex-stepmom, and also former individual literature teacher sent me a card in the mail recently, she was hoping to make amends. No, but thank you for the issues. When I was 17 I wrote down word for word a voicemail she left me, after she’d betrayed my trust. She called me rotten and horrible and said that I ruined her life. Maybe this is the point when I feel like I learned how to survive on sticks and stones. Herman and I had been going through a probably relatively normal teen vs. parent battle and this lady disrupting everything really brought us back together. So, thanks for that, I guess.. (Quick recap for any new readers, this woman said she could help me with my grief of my mother dying, and then married my father. lol) For my 30th birthday I laid down with the boy who wondered why I’d been illusive, (we’d spent the month together and I was falling, hard) he was drunk and fell asleep telling me to turn off the lights because he didn’t want to look at my fake eyelashes *birthday flexing* and that I need to quit thinking that anybody owes me anything- I was crying because 3 people who had once been close to me didn’t tell me happy birthday, and I’m weird about my birthday, try as I might to have no expectations.. I get me everytime. I just want a mom. I spend a lot of time trying to mother myself “listen baby girl, you got this” but I don’t have answers to questions I’d ask you if you were here. Like what the fuck should I do? How’d you know? Why him? How were you so patient? I know you didn’t choose cancer, but why’d you have to leave me here to deal with all this? And the plot thickens. Lord, I hate the month of March. This whole year really. I thought things might be going somewhere with that guy, I decided to get a different kind of birth control, went to a new gynecologist, she suggested getting a breast MRI to get a “baseline” blah blah blah. They found “an 8mm dense mass at 12 o’clock in [my] right breast” Well fuck my life. It. Is. Probably. Fine. Mammogram, Sonogram. Because everything was inconclusive, next on the list is an MRI guided biopsy, tomorrow. I opted not to get it today, the 18th, because.. who knows?? I was In the waiting room, biting off the skin of my lips. If I beat you to this milestone, I’ll think: finally. Fuck. This, this is different than getting my first bra. This one I really wish you were here for. I’ve said before that I wanted to do something you had done, but this ain’t it, Ma. I probably meant I wanted to go after something I wanted and get it, or to be sure about who I love; to have patience and accept people as they are, faults and all. Not this. The other day I was listening to Herman tell a story and my jaw just about dropped. I nearly kicked myself listening to the similarities in our storytelling patterns. I wondered about other ways I’d be different if you were around. I watched home videos to see if I could find you, or to see if I can see you in me. There must be some bits here and there. I’m ⅔ the age you were when you passed. I wonder what annoyed you and what you did that ticked other people off. I wonder how you handled things and lived with Herman’s mess. I’m mad at you because I feel like you left me with so much to do. Herman’s always saying how you just “accepted” him just as he was. When I’m with someone I want to leave my mark, I want to affect them. Mama, I been wastin’ time again. Sick over a another undeserving fella, wishing you’d been here to teach me a thing or two about self respect and boundaries. I’ve walked myself through this a hundred times, wrong path each time but I’m staying in shape. Not really, I’ve grown weary. I can’t hope to hit your milestones with no hand to hold. I’m jaded as hell and my biological clock is ticking. I’m not a goddamned place holder and I sure as hell don’t wanna be playin’ second fiddle for some asshole who can’t think 5 minutes into the future and doesn’t know why he’s even hanging around me. Oh mama, I wanted to be bad, but I just don’t think I have it in me, not if I’m gonna be my own collateral damage. Lie to me baby. Lay with me, say you don’t want to hurt me, baby. You’re such a fuckin’ ho, I hate it. Men stay boys and we all stay angsty, fragile, and insecure. Dramatic, I might as well be an orphan. It’s Christmas for everyone else. I think I’m allergic to the holidays. I’ve got a cold, no direction, feeling sorry for myself. Want a mother. Want to be a mother. I want to see a woman going through something and overcoming it. Related to me, not sweeping it under the rug, saving the dust for later. To savor it, as we do, our pain and resentments. How shall we overcome? I’m undereducated and overqualified. I’m here, I’m there, this man can’t look me in the eye. He’s a starfish and I should be worshiped. God damn it. I try to make moves and I run into walls. I like to give myself big cushions of time just incase I need to schedule around my trauma. It feels like I’m fucking crazy. Trying to make plans to hang out with people in March “oof, sorry that day won’t work, its uhhh..somewhat of a family holiday.. Might lay in a pile of flowers or cry on my floor all day IDK, OKAY?!” I guess the point of me writing these open letters to you is to talk about my experience navigating the world as a woman, with little to no guidance. Last year around this time I started hanging out with a right-to-lifer who said he was anti-abortion because of property rights.. Wow. Fuck my rights to my property though, right? What really got me about him was, obviously, that he wasn’t prochoice, first red flag for me right there. Then he got mad when I told a stranger that he wasn’t my boyfriend, which hadn’t been discussed at all, and then finally, that he had been talking to his parents about his relationships and was concerned that he was primarily attracted to “girls with issues” and when I was a bit offended by that he said he only meant he wanted to help me… WHAT? Also on a few of our dates he would say “if you want to break your sobriety tonight…” UUUUMMMMMM no. Not for you or anyone. At this point not drinking is easy for me. I don’t even think about it. It just makes other people uncomfortable. But even the alcoholic I fell for never said anything like that to me. Maybe he’s just more clever. Deeply under my skin and trying to take over this whole letter. I’m a projector, I let myself get so affected. I think that’s a good and bad thing, depending on the intentions of the person effecting you. I just don’t want to waste any more time on anyone trying to make me feel small or obsolete. Looking like a Swedish God, a gentleman fraud Gaslit, you had me Fooled, I thought you were something else and I wanted you, badly. You lit all kinds of fires in me. Some gave me drive, some just made my blood boil. I can’t help where I come from, but I can make the best of it. I wanted to affect you, too. And I think I did. But you are stoic, and cynical, minimizing our time together. That’s on you. You were lucky to have me while you did, and I’m still a fool. If you made even the slightest effort I’d probably be swept up again, looking for my self respect.. I just can’t understand why you wanted me, if you didn’t really want me. My uncle on my dad’s side passed during that time (birth control rage fury time). That had me real low. He was one of my idols, one of the most gentle and giving people, but he still seemed to have boundaries, something I can’t seem figure out. He was an artist, an author, a nurse, a masseuse; he would make beautiful quilts and donate them to charity. For two weeks I hadn’t been able to take a deep breath without feeling like I was going to burst into tears, like I don’t deserve the air. Listen, I am blessed to have the greats that I do. My fucking goats. Despair despair despair. Fuck Even though I got off the birth control and haven’t had a drink in nearly two years, I’m still at rock bottom way too frequently. The other month I was googling though heavy tears “wellness retreat for poor people” no results. I wish I came with a reset button, or at least that I could communicate effectively. A friend told me she thinks it’s important that I mention that I am capable of laughing at myself and the constant hurdles life throws down for me to trip over. And it’s true, I laugh all the time. Highs and lows, baby. March is a cruel joke but I decided maybe I don’t need to change everything. And maybe my dads right: I am an artist. And maybe I can get it together enough to make it work for me. I don’t have to find a new path, I just need to make the best of this one. Also, maybe I need to be medicated and maybe there’s no shame in that. I’m horrified. I’m pissed. I need her now more than ever. I imagine there is nothing like crying with your head on your mother’s lap while she runs her fingers through your hair. I have such bad anxiety, it’s debilitating. And I have imposter syndrome, fake it til you make it, baby. I feel like I missed out on half of getting to build my sense of self. In the book Motherless Daughters they talk about how at least if you have a mother you can compare yourself to her and I’m still here comparing myself to a saintly ghost who could do anything and never got mad or annoyed anyone and never made anyone mad or annoyed. I watched all our home videos recently and I think I could see a sadness or darkness in her, or maybe she was just thinking too hard, worrying, as we do. She wrote in the only journal I have of hers “May 24 - Reminded not to slack off. Keep up the fight. Worries make my face look funny. Blank. Whenever I’m worried the joy can’t shine thru my skin. The expression on my face is not inviting because I don’t want anyone to feel as I do. But then, even rotten sheep are cared for.” Have I honestly spent my whole life scared and hoping for my mental ailments to manifest in a physical way so people can see that I need to be cared for because I’m incapable of asking for help? I’m the doer, I do what needs doing. I’m the opposite of a fair weather friend, come to me in your time of need, I will do what I can. This is all copied and pasted and butchered together from notes I’ve been taking on my phone when I’m too in my head. So my apologies for the roller coaster and how disjointed it may be, but, is that not life? I will leave you with this, another excerpt from my mother’s journal: “ Maybe if I work at this, be very patient, develop my stamina and endurance, maybe I’ll get to experience the butterfly out of the cocoon.”

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Here’s an entry from my mother’s journal that I found recently.

And here's something more to read, possibly out of order and random as usual:

Dear mom, Becca,

I'm 28 now. It's been 22 years that you've been gone. I'm still fucking mad. I graduated high school 10 years ago and I've still got all this pent up angst.

If I were you, I would've written a manifesto for my kids.  It's understandable that that wasn't the first thing on your mind.

Sometimes I feel whole and like you being gone makes me the person that I am, other times I feel like I'll never be the person I could've been if you were still here.

Like, what is a bra that fits well?! (I'll get to dropping off my return package to Amazon on Monday...)

You made great friends in your time, a lot of them have taken me in and told me stories about your times together. Nothing will be like being able to hear your side of the story though.

I fear I'll never be sure about "the one" as I've heard you were about Herman. It was a different time then, sure. But you had a mother’s intuition, that I am, pretty sure (no guarantees), doesn't exist today.

Apparently this means breaking hearts, my own included. Fuck. I didn't ask to be this way.

I'm 28 and I've got the world telling me that my clock is ticking. You were 39 when you had me. And older when you were pushed down and miscarried my sibling.

In 11 years I'll be the age you were when you had me. That's so long from now, but also I only just graduated high school 10 years ago. Tonight I talked to the cashier at Fresh Plus and she told me that I went to highschool with her ex-stepbrother and I remembered making out with him in his front lawn like it was yesterday. I felt free and like a confident woman in control, laying in the grass at the time.

Now, while I still feel confident, I'm so unsure, I think and am pretty sure I know, I am a beautiful woman. This makes me uncomfortable. I see pictures of other beautiful women (models and girls I know irl) and question myself. I don't want to compare myself to them, and I don't want others to compare themselves to me. I am proud of myself and my body. I judge others. I try not to. I feel shame that I do. Other times I hate myself and my body. I judge others. I try not to. I feel shame that I do.

Do I have an identity or am I just this junk that surrounds me?

I've heard that someone in my family once said it's as bad to be offended as it is to offend. Maybe it was vice versa. Either way, I think it's made me hold my tongue, and probably to the detriment of some relationships, and to my mental health. If I know someone who is passive aggressive, it's me. I just don't understand why people can't be more observant, thoughtful, and have common fucking sense.

I was talking to my neighbor recently, one of my idols, a woman who has known me for the last 22 years, or longer, whom I look up to greatly and gratefully. She was helping me build my garage apartment and we were discussing what I should do with my life, as I am always seeking advice from women I respect, among other things she told me that when her daughters and I were in elementary school together she got one of them a tutor because the school wasn't acknowledging their learning disability and she told my dad that she thought I might benefit from one as well; maybe it's because we were poor and my mother worked at the school, my father brushed it off and the school never said anything about me needing extra assistance. I never did well in school, and my mother partied out of South West Texas (now Texas State in San Marcos). For a short time, I had a dream of attending the same college and flunking out as well. I wanted to do something my mother had done.

Each time I start writing these things I get more lost than when I started... On Monday I'm going to see a psychotherapist who also does body work.

Maybe I'm writing these annual updates to reassure others (myself) that it's ok to be fucked up and need help and seek help and that those around you (me) who give it are great, but they aren't the end all be all, and this might not be their line of work.

I got porch drunk by myself the other night and woke Herman (my dad) up to make him listen to me cry about how I don't have that certain something that makes people sure and happy, regardless, like him and, seemingly my brothers, do.

(Note to self?) Hey girl, you aren't doing that bad. You do cool stuff and are badass. You are thoughtful and considerate (to a fault (self praise)) and are good for the planet, you recycle and try to reduce and reuse (look at your sex life). You are funny. You are confident. You are beautiful. You deserve to be happy. You are doing great. I'm sorry I didn't write you the manifesto, but you have it in you. You can. Anything anyone can do, you can do bleeding.

I've lived/made it through so many dark times. My mind is a whirlwind. Sometimes I give all the fucks and other times I dgaf. Sometimes I look up symptoms for bipolar and other mental issues and the next week I'm like "cool this smoothie will cure all that ails me!!!"

I form attachments to objects. I remember how long I've had certain things for. Maybe because I always think about how long I had time with you and how long I've been without you. There's a small number of people I keep close to me and let my walls down with. Others I get close to and then withdrawal from. (What value is this adding to the letter?) Both of my parents were/are hoarders of sorts, and it runs in the family a lil bit.

So~ this turned from a letter to my mom, to a letter to the people, to a letter from my mom to me?? Idk. It's not finished. Who knows how many years of the letter are left?

[blahsome]

Made a lil stamp for @deandrablayne 🌵

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My mom would've been 67 today so I drew this blind contour drawing of an old ID photo of hers.

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Jk... 💩

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W/e 4e

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✌️🇰🇷 I will miss you, and be back to visit sometime❤️! 👋🇺🇸I'll be seeing you quite a bit!

[blahsome]

This is probably not going to be in any sort of order, organized or very eloquent. It's just some words I've written down to get some things out because its the anniversary of my mother passing away.

I've been laying in bed writing this in my head and taking notes on my phone before going to sleep for maybe three years now, waiting for it to be this huge mile stone. Really a year for the books. The emptiness and feeling of being lost is just the same as ever though.

My mother succumbed to breast cancer 20 years ago on March 18, 1995 at 3:18pm and I've been having growing pains, literally and emotionally and existentially, ever since. I remember getting my first bra and having my dad take me to Limited Too to sit outside the dressing room while I fumbled around trying to figure out how the things worked. And I remember getting my period being confused and in pain and embarrassed asking him to go get me  "something called tampons."

So many times in my life my dad has had to share these "not a girl not yet a woman" moments with me that most girls get to share with their mothers. Sometimes I get so sad and angry watching mothers and daughters just having a simple lunch date together. Don't even get me started on Mother's Day…

I still don't know what I wanna do with my life. I don't know if she ever knew either, but she was good at talking to people and I often feel like I can't even talk to those closest to me.

I feel like so much of my identity is built around this hole and I don't know who I'd be if my mother had been here to give me a mother’s guidance and share those moments with me. I don't know if we'd get along or not. But I ache because I cannot know.

This poem by my favorite poet comes to mind often when thinking about my mother:

Boo, Forever by Richard Brautigan

Spinning like a ghost

on the bottom of a

  top,

I'm haunted by all

the space that I

will live without

  you.

I only have a few memories of her and sometimes I can't tell if they're just stories I heard from other people or things that happened with other people.

I hate crying. It might be my absolute least favorite thing. Sometimes I cry so hard and uncontrollably that I can’t bring myself to leave the house the next day because my eyes will be so puffy and stinging, I always think people are staring at me and judging me and wondering why I look crazy. I feel embarrassed and uncomposed. I never remember seeing my mother cry and surely I never saw her sobbing. I’ve seen pictures of her having unfortunate hairstyles, but she never looked disheveled or out of order. She always seemed confident and put together.

Most stories about her shed such a golden light on her you may think she was some kind of saint. Sometimes I think she'd be proud of me and other times I feel like my accomplishments and moral compass pale in comparison to her feats and warm heart.

The most comforting thing anyone ever told me about her was that she could get mad. I've only heard an example or two of this and even still I don't believe she could have ever had the fiery rage that somehow got in my belly. * get mad stay mad*

I get ridiculously upset if people don't consider me how I think I should be considered and then I hold on to that anger. And then I get even more mad that I'm mad. Sometimes if people do consider me how I imagine I’m hoping to be considered I get freaked out and immediately start to push them away. I’m scared to get too close to too people because people don’t last and I am usually terrified of conflict. My mother was a meditator and very good at the practice. I’ve attempted it but I’m too easily distracted and if feel like I’m making no progress with it I stop and go make no progress doing something else, like watching TV shows..

Several Christmas's ago a friends mother (one of my "other mothers" as I call them) gave me a book called Momento that you're supposed to fill out about yourself and it asks you things like what is your favorite holiday memory and what did you go to college for and why did that subject interest you? Since then I've been wanting to make some personalized books like this with questions about my mother for other people to fill out and give back to me. But I just don't know what questions to ask and I end up drunk and crying about it. There are too many different people to ask specific questions to. I don’t even know yet what the specific questions are until I’ve already met and overcome the obstacle that their stories could’ve helped me with. Also it’s no one else’s responsibility to help me figure it out. I wish Becca would have left me a guidebook with the answers.

Sometimes I think she must’ve been crazy. She was so confident about some things, like her love for my father, before they even got together. She knew he was the one and so she put my two older half brothers into the car and drove them to the prison where my father was incarcerated so she could holla. When he got paroled, they got together. She really cleaned him up, and without any pushing or nagging or ultimatums. When she was sick with cancer for the second time, he realized that there were more important things than doing speed and staying up do work on projects he’d only ever get half way finished. I always wonder what her friends and family must’ve thought about that. “Really, Becca? You’re taking the boys to visit a (very kind hearted and sweet) drug dealer at the prison? Do you really think that’s the best place to take the boys on a Saturday? Do you really think he’d make a good stepfather for them?” And ya know what, she did think it was a good idea and that he would be a good step-dad and she was fucking right. But what I wanna know is how she was so fucking sure. Sure enough to risk scrutiny and some sideways looks (I can’t confirm that she was scrutinized or got any sideways looks but I imagine so, because I would look sideways if any of my friends did that and I’ll blame it on not having my mother around to teach me to do otherwise.)

I get mad every spring when everything is blooming and reminding us that there is beauty and life. How can all that be happening during the same time that most important life, to me, the one that made mine possible, was taken away? Hello my favorite beautiful trees with purple flowers, I hate you for being such a harsh reminder.

When my mother moved in with my dad, into the house he’d bought in 1974 they agreed to divide the yard so that she could have half to garden in and he could have half for hoarding his unfinished projects. To this day, lilies that she planted bloom every spring, with no watering other than what the crazy Texas weather provides.

I hate the days and even the weeks leading up to my mothers birthday and departure anniversary. I never know how I’m supposed to feel or how I am supposed to act. Should I celebrate her and eat her favorite food while watching her favorite movie? If so, that’s too bad because I don’t know what her favorite food or movie was. So should I dwell on all the things I don’t know about her and the relationship we never really got to have? I usually just try to sit still and let those days pass by. Sometimes I will go out to the little stream where we spread her ashes and bring flowers and crawl around in the tunnels if the water is low enough and think all these thoughts to myself.

Feeling like she left without considering how growing up without a mother would affect me has made me scared to have children of my own. I keep anything that I think would give them (my possible future children) an idea of who I was as a person, just in case I’m not around to tell them myself. From birthday cards to receipts (not all of them because that would really be crazy) to shitty art that I’ve made to terrible fashion choices no one should have ever worn, or even created in the first place. I have horribly embarrassing journals and notes dating all the way back to elementary school packed away and stored in my father’s attic. The ones from high school are the worst, that’s when kids are really stupid and could probably really use a mom. We might have fought and hated each other but at least I’d have her to compare myself to instead of feeling like I was out in this stream with no paddle or whatever. I remember one day at Austin High School, the day my dad and I decided I should change schools, I got sent to the office for yet another dress code “violation.” I called my dad to come pick me up or bring me a change of clothes and while I was on the phone with him, the lady behind the desk said “Does your mother know what you wear when you leave the house?” Nope, Lady. She does not. (or maybe she does, who knows what happens after you die?) But that made Herman mad enough to ask to talk to the lady and then let me switch to a school with more dress code freedom and sensitivity. Well, it was a sensitive school until my dad married my individual literature teacher… That was really a riot. Hell at the time, but looking back it’s a pretty funny story. This woman told me she could help me get over my grief about my mother, introduced me to Hope Edelman, the author of Motherless Daughters, and then started dating my father, moved into the house while he was away for work and she was “helping me clean up”, married him and then… enough of that story… It didn’t end pleasantly but it might have brought my family a little bit closer together, for a while at least. Last word on it, really: At some point during that time my ex-stepmother left me a message calling me a rotten horrible bitch. And you know what, I probably was. But I think girls might be that way in high school sometimes (and apparently when they’re 43 also). I guess what I’m getting at here is that I’m sad that I didn’t get to have fights with my mom and come out from them having learned lessons from her about how to deal with confrontation and conflict. It’s not always easy dealing with the real world after being a “daddy’s girl” for so long and usually getting your way. Not that I had crazy demands or ever really tried to pull one over on my dad, I was reasonable with my requests, I think (and thats why I got my way), but it’s like I didn’t get to build up a tough skin. Too often if someone is mean to me or tries to bulldoze me I either freeze or flail and then cry to my dad and it’s like I have to have him help walk me through it every time. Thank goodness he’s always been available to do so.

When I was about 8 or so, I had a this great hamster named Hammy. He was super chill. I’d taped a small coffee can to the handle bar post of my pink razor scooter and I’d put him in there and we’d scoot all around the house. We didn’t have a proper cage for him. He lived in a dark green 30 gallon Rubbermaid tub with a gourd to hide in and PVC pipes to run though. He would escape all the time and we’d lay out paper bags all over the house and capture him when we heard a bag rustling. He got sick and we had to have him put to sleep. I remember at the vet crying so hard against my dad’s back as he was at the counter talking to the veterinarians. I made him a little bed in a small box to be buried in, but by the time I’d finished it my dad had already buried him next to Oreo I in the back yard. We (my dad and I) didn’t realize it at the time but it was really the first time I’d cried about any death I’d experienced. I hadn’t cried at the hospital when my dad told me at a nurses station that my mom wouldn’t be coming home with us, or at her memorial service when so many people she knew were there and mourning. For her service I got to get a new dress and have my hair done. The weirdest part about it is that I was there in the hospital when my mother passed and apparently no one had thought to close her eyes or her mouth except for me. I told my dad I thought she’d be comfortable if we did so and he helped me climb onto the bed and I closed her eyes and her mouth and set her hands on top of one another on her stomach and I said “now she looks ready to go.” Some time later my two half brothers arrived from Iowa with their father.  

I always hated walking on a sidewalk when someone would say “Don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother’s back” sometimes I would step on all the cracks I could see because I didn’t have a mother’s back to break. And yo mama jokes...most of the time they don’t bother me, but on occasion…

“We’re from Matthews Elementary; we’re the best you’re sure to agree”…. as the school song went... and really, it may be true. I remember many many many years after my mother had passed, rummaging around in this old shed in my backyard and finding a basket full of pink pieces of paper, all of them were dedicating sick leave from one staff member or another, all to my mother who worked at the school. I don’t even know if she lived long enough to use all these generous people’s time or not, but I know that she was so very loved at the school. She was the office lady, the lunch card lady, the nurse, and apparently beloved by all. When she passed the whole school felt the devastation. We had a ceremony and planted a tree in her name dedicating an area of the school grounds to be “Becca’s Garden”. (Years later it had to be appropriated into an area for an elevator. I don’t think she would be mad seeing as her brother is an advocate for disabled peoples rights, but still it hurt a little.) Months before she died Garry Mauro (the Texas Land Commissioner at the time) had told my father it was his turn to work. My father, being an ex-con, thought “what can I do for the state of Texas..?” But Garry found him a job. I’d been good friends with his daughter Alex. She was even there in my mother’s final hours. We spent time drawing pictures in the waiting room and taking them in to my mothers to hold up and show her that we’d been working on in the other room to make her feel better.

I think thats the year I really began to hate school. Since before pre-K, I’d had a favorite teacher, Ms. Ellison, a first grade teacher, and I’d ask her for homework because I wanted to be grown up and do homework like my big brothers were doing. I think usually she would just “assign” me a drawing to do. Anyway, she stayed my favorite teacher for a long time. If I would ever get too sad when I was still in kindergarten, I would get to go to Ms. Ellison’s classroom to hang out. It’s all pretty blurry now, I don’t know what I’d do in there, probably sit and draw, if this memory is even true…

Once in 5th grade, after a lot of the teachers and staff who’d been at Matthews Elementary when my mother had been working were gone, a girl brought her two, very cute, rabbits to school for, I guess, show and tell. We took them out into the courtyard-ish area and they began hopping all through what had been named my mother’s garden. I quietly became quite distressed and once we were back in the classroom the teacher made me say why I was upset. After stating the reason the girl with the cute rabbits said “what does it matter? She’s dead anyway..” and I sobbed as quietly as possible behind my spiral notebook.

I say The Lion King is my least favorite movie, but thats just because it makes me feel so awkward. I was five when it came out in theaters. We must have watched it and listened to the soundtrack a thousand times at my house. Now, I just sit uncomfortably not knowing how to act, waiting for them to say “Hakuna Matata,” which were my mother's last words. “It means no worries for the rest of your days...” I’ve never felt that that was true. I worry like the Jewish grandmother that I never got to meet.

“I’ll Be Missing You”  by Puff Daddy was really popular around the time I was 8 or so. My dad was working at the Land Office and had to go out of town a lot to help install plumbing near the Texas/Mexico border. The lyrics of the song hit me so hard. I had to stay at my best friend's house down the street while my dad was on these trips and it seemed like every time he was driving out of town this song would be playing and I would lay this little black chiffon scarf of my mothers on the floor under my friends desk and sit on it and cry. After a while, since my dad was having to go out of town so frequently, the school allowed me to go with him as long as I kept up with my school work. Apparently, to be covered by the rules the school said I was on field trips. I think the whole school took it easy on me and kind of screwed me for the rest of my schooling, or maybe I was just too comfortable there. Maybe it’s because they don’t seem to allow uncomfortable emotions in school. Emotions can happen at anytime, like during health or Spanish class and it’s kinda crazy to think a child could compartmentalize a range of emotions that they don’t even understand yet.

I recently had this idea to start a camp for Motherless Daughters run by Motherless Daughters where girls are taught things that their mothers would’ve taught them, a place where they journal, craft and smash things, and learn how to grow and figure out who they are and what they want to do. I thought it was maybe my life calling since I’ve felt all consumed by this aspect of my life for as long as I can remember. But I’ve been living on the other side of the world (in South Korea) from where I’d want this camp to take place, having to sit on it, and while I still think it’s a good idea, it doesn’t have the same luster as the month after I thought of it. I also wanted to start a blog where all motherless daughters could submit artwork they’ve made pertaining to their loss. I haven’t started it yet because I don’t know if I’m ready yet to expose myself that much, even though I am doing just that right now.

Maybe it’s just a pipe dream, but I think a place like that could be pretty cool. Girls of all ages making shitty art (or good art) and having tile smashing hour… and later we could turn the broken tiles into mosaic art pieces or stepping stones, showing the girls how to turn trash into treasure and maybe pain into art, as well as having a crying and sharing hour; shopping trips to the mall to buy bras for the first time, learning about periods; having people working there that are skilled/knowledgeable in these different areas; having a person to help with different kinds of homework and decision making, like what colleges to apply to and helping review their college essays; teaching them about good food and maybe even how to do laundry properly.

I’d want the camp to be funded by grants so that anyone and everyone could come for little to no cost. I’d also want to figure out a way to make all kinds of heath checks and cancer screenings available to the girls in the camp who would be interested in having those things done. But also I’d want to teach them about holistic and homeopathic medicine and how to take the steps to prevent illnesses from affecting their own bodies.

I’ve decided to hold off on the camp for the next 15-20 years. I’m still young and able-bodied. I want to work with my hands, but doing what? Still not sure. I am sure though, that it is not sheetrock.

During times of stress I often think of what they tell you on airplanes about how you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help anyone else. It’s hard sometimes to take care of others when you need caring for as well.

I read an article recently that made it feel like its okay if I’m still grieving after all this time, but it didn’t make it any less frustrating that my grief still seems so uncontrollable. Sometimes, I don’t even know why I’m sad and just assume this hole is the cause. Sometimes, I don’t even know what I’m feeling.

I don't really remember my mom with or without hair. On her head or otherwise. My dad has always had super long hair. My brothers are pretty hairy. Sometimes I feel comfortable with the amount of body hair that I have and other times I feel like I look like a boy scout. In high school, I had my hair every color of the rainbow and cut super short. Somehow in the last few years I’ve grown my hair out pretty long and it’s become sort of a security blanket for me.

I remember I was in Port O’Connor Texas with my neighbors, (who are an extension of my family, and, until about 3 years ago, they’d lived down the street for my whole entire life) we were probably eating Kudos bars and talking about seagulls when we got the call from my dad that it was time to come home. I don’t remember if he came to get me or if the Wilsons drove us back, but I remember we’d gone to the gift shop and I’d gotten my mom a heart shaped box covered in shells. I’m not sure if I’d put anything inside the box but I do still have it, in a box of boxes that I don’t know what to do with but can’t get rid of.

After thinking for so long that my mother was this saint who’d never done any wrong I was so glad to find her “Smoke Enders” journal and jar. The journal explained why she wanted to quit and when she intended to do so. One of her reasons was so that she when she kissed Witt (my oldest brother) she would have sweet breath. And she intended to quit on April 12, 1981-2-or-3.

My brothers had been with their dad for a visit when Becca went to the hospital for the last time. They got to the hospital a few hours after my mother had passed away. For a few years I only got to see them during summer break.

I remember my brothers being back at home one summer when I was very against using “swear words” and they were going to go play frisbee but they wouldn’t let me play unless I went and said the word “shit” to my dad. I wanted to play with them so bad so I slunk up to my dad who was at the computer in the living room and in tears said to him “shi-i-i-i-t” and I was so upset having said the word that I didn’t want to play any more. I think the reason I remember this was just because I wanted to spend time with my brothers but for whatever the reason was, I couldn’t. Because I was younger, because I didn’t swear, because I was a girl, I didn’t always fit in with them.

I remembered earlier today how my mother was very insistent that you help out your friends, even if they are generally worthless and steal from your loved ones, because they need help too. She was a good judge of character, I’ve heard, but not always.

Another thing that I imagine must be a real memory is my mother teaching me how to put on lipstick. She was getting ready for work in our tiny bathroom and I was looking up at her. She told me “you lick your lips, pat them dry and then put just put it on like this” and coated her lips with a nice red color. Other than that day, I don’t remember her ever wearing lipstick.

I got a tarot card reading recently and after telling the card reader how I felt that I was let down by people in my life who one might think would have “stepped up to the plate” more in the face of my mothers passing, The reader told me that no one ever meets our expectations. It’s so true, and even when I try my fucking hardest to not have expectations I’m still let down or offended.

If I know a person well enough and think they know me as well, either my heart or my ego (I’m still trying to figure out which is which) breaks a little or gets somewhat crushed. I have all these issues with communication. If someone says something that seems so obviously out of place to me, I often react in what I remember as being too quick and harshly and then have to retreat back into a sort of cave and figure out why I had the reaction that I did. I sometimes feel congealed with anger and I don’t know what or who is the cause. It’s confusing and maybe embarrassing.

After my mom died and my brothers had to move back to Iowa with their father, I was on a pretty strict candy and microwave dinner diet, unless I was eating a homemade meal down at my best friend's house. (My dad is not exactly a chef, to say the least.) After coming over to check on us and seeing our dietary habits, our former next door neighbor (another one of my “other mothers”) started to make us real food that we could heat up, instead of a constant diet of Nighthawks and Kid Cuisines. It wasn't until my 2nd oldest brother moved back home from Iowa and discovered healthy cooking and natural products that I learned that there was more to eat than bean and cheese burritos from Taco Bell and dirty kitchen counters to eat off of. (This is minorly exaggerated)

All these women from the neighborhood came over to help clean up the house and they misplaced my favorite doll, “Mimi”. I think I hated cleaning for a while because it meant more change and loss for a while. Fortunately, we ended up finding Mimi behind some other dolls on a shelf in my room. Now I’m kind of OCD since I know now that it’s pretty easy to keep things clean if you just try a little.

I’m really sad that I never got to talk to my mom about her break ups or conflicts she ever had with her friends. Of course I can talk to my friends and other people in my life about these things, but sometimes I just want to sit on the steps and cry over whatever the issue is with someone who I feel like has unlimited time just for me and my problems. My dad will let me cry out my woes, but in so many ways he’s still a teenage boy (laundry piles all over his room) and his advice is usually “just be your sweet self and things will work out one way or another...” But too often I have this doomed feeling that nothing will work out and if it will, how?

This essay/story/tribute? has no conclusion because I’m only 26 and have a lot more to figure out. I’m hoping that writing this and publishing it on my various social medias will be like some kind of release for me, a weight off my shoulders, but I’ve been angry for so long that I almost don’t know what it’s like to be any other way.  Maybe when I am 45 I will write what I’ve learned in the the amount of time that my mother had time to learn. Maybe I won’t.  We will see what’s to come, and I will hope for a happy change and the ability to forgive and move forward.

If you know the questions, ask ‘em while you can, and try to appreciate everyone you’ve got while ya got ‘em.

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I got to play life size Barbie for a day. Here's a mashup of me in some #machambrebyjuyeon 2015 spring/summer collection!

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get mad🔼🔽🔼stay mad

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Now or whenever.

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What's a cats favorite color?