Dead Ends

The truth is, sometimes I start in one place with a strong idea, but then a tidal wave of emotions takes over and I lose all logical patterns and just write. In college, this would be critiqued. Write your work in a logical manner, make sure it ties together. But tell me, what is logical about this life I'm living? What is logical about everything I have experienced...not just within these last few years, but my whole life. If you find the logic within my last 25 years, if you find the purpose, the why - then I will write it. Until then, this is what you get. My thoughts. My ramblings. My search for order in the hoarder life my brain and emotions are living. This is me, trying to find an exit to the maze I live, only to find dead ends.

It’s funny. In preparation for graduation I bought a gown. Black, synthetic material, a little too long because I’m oddly proportioned like that, and yet the only gown a remember is the one I lent you.

Do you remember that? Showing up to my apartment door in only a slip, with confused shirt slightly covering you, and yet somehow you were bare? Perhaps that’s when I should have questioned. But that day was meant to be mine. Instead of reflecting, I laughed and praised fate that I procrastinated packing…I didn’t even question that you could no longer dress yourself.

And now I see pictures. Girls with their mothers, smiling with their tassels high. They will hold onto those memories for so long, but mine. Mine is a memory of pulling my family together one more time. Making sure everything ran smoothly. Keeping the world from falling apart so I could have one day.

One day. That’s too much to ask for now isn’t it. I can’t have one day where our life is normal. I can’t have one day when you remember my stories, you don’t interrupt my explanation only to ask the question again. One day where I can focus on who I am and show her to you, because I am too busy trying to help you find the pieces of who you were, and understanding them in the mess we are.

We are.  We are not one person. And yet it is our life. Our life that fell apart that day in March. Our life that continues to spiral. Too long has my life not been my own. I was 16 when I learned to be my own parent. Twelve when I learned to care for myself. Seven when I took care of myself after nightmares and sickness. There I am taking care of me. That’s when you and I became we. You needed me to take care of you. You needed him, he wouldn’t give, so there I was to provide you both with comfort.

Comfort that she would be alright on her own. Comfort that she was strong enough, mature, a force all on her own. At six, I was deciding my life for myself. At nine, I found comfort in a friend. At eighteen, I was older than many people are at forty. And at twenty-five I find myself exhausted. Every memory is reflected in a mirror smudged and broken. I see the cracks as they were, not the perfect collage of glass I always believed them to be. But ragged edges, meant to cut and hurt me. There is comfort in the reflection, but there is truth in the image that I never wanted to touch. There is pain I never wanted to be real.

Reality is, I can’t clean the mess until I acknowledge the existence. I can’t change, can’t build, until I realize it was broken. I try. I try to remember and pretend it was perfect. But the mirror isn’t what’s cracked. It’s me. It’s my life that is broken. And it’s not my job to fill in the blanks. But to pull my pieces together. Separate, I can still see you. Separate I can question and not fall apart. Separate I can give myself one day.