A breakthrough last night? Maybe?
I went to dinner with a friend.
To get out
Get some air
I am only gone for a much needed two hours of hot Thai food and an cool old friend who is more a brother to me than my blood.
She is under her covers when I get home.
My stomach sinks
Are you okay?
She shakes her head no
Did you cut?
I ask, already knowing the answer…
Yes. I’m sorry.
Don’t apologize, I say again…
It hurts really bad she says, so I get some Lanacaine spray from the bathroom.
She changes into shorts and both her thighs are red and angry, slashes everywhere.
Worse than Sid Vicious on stage, except maybe they’re not that deep. Maybe.
I spray them generously.
I myself am numb.
I can’t even go have food with a friend. I think to myself…
This is insane.
We climb in bed and she is texting someone… one of her older brothers, she says.
Then she is sobbing.
I ask, what’s wrong?
She says, I asked him how he got clean (he had a brutal run at 16-18)
She lets me read his reply and it says verbatim~
I went to jail. I thought about you and Benjamin (the youngest of them) not anybody else really, just you and him. I didn’t feel like I was worth anything to myself but I knew I was worth something to you guys. So I tried to be good for you two and in doing so I started to love myself again. I buried myself in work. It was something I was good at. I was making money, helping Mom with bills, able to get you guy’s presents, get my own phone. It’s not just one thing. There is no magic answer. But the start of it all was you and Benjamin. I couldn’t do to you what Dad did to you, what he did to us. I didn’t do it for myself, at first. Honestly. But I knew that you and Benjamin and even Mom and Charles (the eldest) needed me more than I needed myself. Just like I need you. And Benjamin needs you. I fucking NEED you. Just remember that.
She is sobbing, looking at me says, I never knew anyone needed me.
A glass dagger in my heart. Pierces and shatters…
How can my treasured daughter not know that she is needed? That she is an essential, irreplaceable part of this family?
How could I have allowed her to go through sixteen years of life not knowing, not making it abundantly clear to her that she is vital and NEEDED.
All the diligent ghosts of my botched motherhood rise up and gather around me… they whisper and poke, nodding their heads in agreement. She is a failure, a horrible person. She may have begun with the best of intentions for these children but she has miscarried the mission. And we… we shall never let her forget.
They validate my worst fears.
Momentarily.
Then he calls her and I leave her room to give them privacy and when she emerges moments later with a new gaze upon her face, a seemingly immaculate visage, and a bit of a smirk she tells me… when we got off the phone he said, repeat after me– I am a crazy fucked up warrior and I’m gonna be just fine.~
God damn.
If that just doesn’t sum it all up.