ladytauriel | Poem: Dear Mother

We all know that mother and daughter relationships are hard.

I mean, it’s like suffering a period on the first day: heavy flow, back pains, chest pains, “down there” pains. Oh, and while running, too, except for a thousand times worse and with a screaming girl coming out the other end.

A girl, who will get all the men you ever wanted with the waist you’ve been missing since your pregnancy.

And blaming me.

Well, my waistline isn’t something we should be talking about, but my waistline is something we’re talking about, because you can’t seem to tell the difference of my body from yours, open hearts from open doors.

Or maybe you can’t see your own body from where you’re standing, eyeing mine, to see that you have your own shares of chocolate to shake off on some diet?

At the same time, labor is so painful that inevitable attraction, resulted from the suffering involved with making a living being come out of your vagina, is created between a mother and a child that no other primate has experienced with the same fright.

The connection is definitely there. I can feel it with every stare in my direction, every glare that will never scare me.

Every glare that I will never grow to respect.

Your soft hands that you used to hold blue pens elegantly, red pens angrily, pencils disdainfully before you were fired from your job sting less against my shoulder than my conscience does with every word that I utter to you. But it feels worse than your crumpled face when I call you stupid.
Stupid. Stupid. So stupid. You are so stupid. How can you be so stupid? I can’t believe you’re that stupid. You are stupid and will be stupid until the end of time.

You stupidity has overcome your every movement around me, like when you ask me twice about my day with a frown; when you call me down for dinner without there being food on the table when I get there; when you tell me that you aren’t interested in politics or gay rights or feminism or anything that doesn’t pertain to raising two daughters; when you tell me that God will punish me and send me to hell for telling you that I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I will kill you.

How can you be so stupid? God doesn’t punish me. How many times do I have to tell you that God will not punish me?

God is love, forgiving of the sinful and merciful of the suffering, and my heart is a void of emptiness where a black hole could be, except that it has no more energy to attract your light, which deserves to escape and find more worthy celestial bodies and be free of me.

My hands, bloody when I fight you, are too dark for God. I punish myself.
Every word that you say is the truth. Every conversation you’ve had with me since the first time you saw a gay couple making out in San Francisco is an improvement. Every tear you shed is a reminder that I’m holding knives, and you are my shieldless target.

You, you, who stands with open arms, mouth moving, your screams as unheard by me as they would be in space, where there is no gravity to pull me down to reality and make me realize that you cannot sustain being my only punching bag.

We are both too lazy, too tired to get a new one.

Every tear you shed forms a vast ocean. Every reprimand is a gorgeous sunset, setting sun, sun setting, giving way to the sliver of dawn that means forgiveness, no speaking, no apologies, another day without ever talking about the problem.

You rip my shirt off my body with your fingers, twisting it like you want to twist your heart and wring out the blood that pumps, “Kristina, Kristina, love me.”

When you cry, I cry with you. When you’ll die, I’ll die with you. But just like you will never hear this poem, I will never tell you that and you will never know.

The pain that numbs our cackling anger is as real as the one you felt when you gave birth to me.

It is as invading as a pool of darkness, oozing under my skin and overcoming my senses, making me forget about the humanity for which I so passionately fight. I have an addiction. How can I stand up to human rights when I have an addiction to inflicting my pain on my mother?

When I come back from a camp, from a tour, you ask me if I have missed you. I shake my head. But it is not you that I am referring to. It is the tired lines of your face, the creases of your eyebrows and the quietness of your eyes, which time indeed does heal, that I do not miss.