motherless mother i miss
Sunday, May. 12, 2002
I�m a tortured soul today. There is nothing worse than to not have a mother on Mother�s Day. I always think it�ll get easier. It never does. I always think I�ll get stronger, and even when I do this part of who I am never changes. I try to hate to ease the pain. I try to blank it all out hoping that in the method of forgetting I just might. I hate her and I love her. I despise her and I want her. I miss her and I don�t ever want to see her again. It�s the worst juxtaposition of dysfunctional love I have ever known. There are days when I want to blame her for everything wrong in my life. After all she�s the perfect target for the label, scapegoat. There are days when I want to blame myself for everything, for not being perfect enough for her love, her acceptance. Mostly there are hours of blankness staring at walls wondering. It all comes in waves, and then it goes. And on this day, I go numb. Sometimes I paint on a fake mangled smile and remind myself that I am a mother and that I will get a construction paper drawing, that I am so blessed to have arms wrap around my neck, wet sloppy kisses on my face. I remind myself, but somehow on this day, it is never enough. And then having the same moniker that she owned at one time makes me want to shrug off my lot towards my own child like a sweat soaked t-shirt on the 4th of July at midnight. I want to run as far away from everything as similar to my thoughts of her as I can get. Everyone says, call her go to her do this do that and I have carved those paths of pain in my soul a thousand times and then I framed the bloody picture of rejection that is the only thing I have ever gained. I have been up and down and all over this issue for 11 years. To celebrate this day I have slumped in corners, stared at my own child in cribs for hours, I have doused myself in the flames of alcohol, the pills of doubt� I have sobbed, I have gone silent, I have screamed in pain and tried everything imaginable to just get it all out. And it never gets better, it never weakens, it never changes, it never loses and even though I�d like to think it never wins. I know that when my face is in my hands and the tears pour through my fingers and there�s nothing anyone can do or say�it is then that I am tired of fighting all the battles just to again remember that no one can ever win this war. Three days ago I met someone, the first someone to ever tell me things that made me believe that he truly understands what this is. 15 and on the streets, a father that beat him with a 2x4 and I wrapped my arms around his words and tried in the worst kind of way to find a way to say those deeply moving emotion filled words that just might move him to heal over the wounds. And in the end I know every word I tongued was motionless when we both sat still begging the silence to hold us. I always thought that if I just found that one soul that understood this part of me, I could heal. Again I am beaten by my own false hopes. This is a house full of razorblades this denial of unconditional acceptance and love from the woman that carried me into this world. I can�t help but constantly think of all those hallmarked kodaked moments that will press their influences on my heart today. All of the mother endeared smiles for all the someone�s that I am not. All the hand in hand women that will walk the streets, all the mommy pink lipsticked smeared kisses on children�s cheeks. I�ve ached for these things, denied that they mattered. I�ve watched baby girls smile at their mommies in stores and pretended strength and hidden while I shattered. Always searching for a way to tell myself that this makes me a stronger person�a better person�.when in reality it makes me nothing more than the less. The less than what I see in others, the less than the me that I used to be. I�ve written a thousand poems, a million tagged together lines. I�ve spoken a thousands truths and voiced a pretend �I�m fine.� I�ve sought out redemption in the dark alleys of my mind. I�ve tried to just let go and move on and it is then that I find, I am nothing but sad without love, the love of my mother who only allows me to see her turned shoulder blades. I hate her and I love her. I despise her and I want her. I miss her and I don�t ever want to see her again.
Egg donor
Bent crown
The honor
Thrown down
Life giving
Pain gifted
No forgiving
Hand lifted
Slapped face
Tears fall
I erase
It all
No other
Ever understood
My mother
Isn�t good
Her without
I�m out
I gain
My doubt
I ache
For this
Opposite fake
Maternal bliss
I walked
I cried
But mostly��
I fear
I died.
May 10, 2000
Dysfuntion Unction
I always said I wouldn�t become you
The cycle would stop with me
I swore up and down I didn�t understand
The wheres and whys of what you were
Or how you became dysfunctional
And now here I am sitting in therapy
Rating my mental state from
One to ten like it�s a blind date
Discussing the fears and downfalls
Of marital discord and it�s effects
On the innocent child I love
Mother you come back to me
Just like a repeated bad memory
I remembered it all
The hiding under covers
Shielding out the hate
That was yelling down the hallway
Spilling into my pink lace room
The trembling all alone
The despair of the gloom
And the tears come
Not from the bad memory
But the knowledge that I
Just might be the cause
Of someone else�s
Future nightmares
Almost unknowingly
I try to shake the chill
Off my shoulders
And walk down my own hallway
To read the face
of my someone else
To wonder if he is innocence
And I am the cause of its loss
-PoeticaL
-a special thank you to my husband, for letting me walk away and get my head straight every time I couldn�t cope with this pain.
