“I’ve grown certain that the root of all fear is that we’ve been forced to deny who we are.”

She’s different.

I know this. I know it intimately. I’ve lived it.

We’re reading Ramona the Brave when I stop and ask how school is. She’s evasive, she’s of few words, in short, she’s many non Vivian things. She’s uncomfortable.

I ask her if she’s enjoying anything this year, if school is fun. A quiet, tearful nod no. I ask if she feels like she doesn’t fit.

No she whispers

Do you like the boys? The girls?

I like Devon but feel like a third wheel around him and his friends.

You don’t feel like you fit do you?

More silent nodding. More barely held on tears.

Mine this time. Not hers.

***

We all have the stories of feeling the outsider, whether it was real or perceived. It’s part of growing up, feeling like the kiwi in a pile of apples for at least a little while, until you find your footing.

I remember the feeling well, the itching discomfort of difference. Wolves smell fear, children smell oddness, discrepancy. Little accountants they all are.

What I remember is asking constantly why I had to keep my shirt on in the heat of July. Why I had to wear a dress. Why everything was fucking pink. Why it was ok for boy type people to roll in the dirt but not me.

A slight dissonance. A shift to the left, just a bit unfettered. A ball bearing without the right grease, grinding against the side of the wall. In my own skin I felt it then, and to a lesser degree, I still feel it.

Not quite girl, not boy.

Most of us grow up told gender is a binary. Boy or girl. Period. No variation, no wiggle room. And in the case of my mother, there was especially no room. I would wear pink dresses. I would be quiet and play with dolls. I would be the girl she wanted.

I knew I wasn’t her.

That constant sense of displacement, of not being the person anyone wanted or expected, that sense of failure. It lingers. It sticks with you, underneath your breath. That tiny voice telling you something is off, is wrong. I’ve carried it forever. You grow up with the knowledge that you don’t fit in or up to what others expect, and you start to accept that when you don’t, it means something is wrong with you.

I don’t believe gender is a yes or no anymore than I believe sexuality is. Life is fluid, and dazzling and based on a variety that keeps us fresh. But when you’re 8, and your neighbour likes to touch the girl parts you don’t quite understand and your mother insists that “ladies don’t do X”…..you want to be normal. You want to fit in. All you want is to want the same things the other girls want, the things that make no sense to you.

Not much room for dithering as a child.

I’ve fought myself for years, my internal division, my fence sitting. How can you be a little bit of both in a world that only sees one or the other?

***

She seems much the same. girlboy in a girl body. Vivid in her disgust with “girl” things, comfortable in jeans and sweaters, itchy and pully in dresses or well placed haircuts.

If she is as I was, if she feels herself more boy than girl, if she is displaced within a body, even a little, there is no shame. There is no failure in my eyes, as there was with my mother. She is who or what she will be.

But she feels it, this arch between, the step to the left she walks around other kids. The girls have their silent camaraderie, the boys their whispered belonging. I watch her and see that she stands astride it, unclear.

It hurts her, and it hurts to watch, and I can do nothing but grimace and remember when.

***

You’re different I tell her and it’s ok. You’re different and it’s awesome and in a few years, you’ll embrace this, being you, unabashedly you, and it will be ok.

But I won’t lie. It’s gonna suck sometimes too.

Her eyes grow bigger and she just seems to know, somehow, that it’s just how life goes, like wind in trees. She nods and snuggles into me.

I get it darlin. I’ve been you.

I bend over her head.

But don’t you forget, we’re pretty fucking awesome too.

 

“Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third”

It’s like a flutter from a past life, the words I recognize in that hazy elderly way. Pictures from a childhood, stories, nearly make believe.
As I read her words, I can see the overflowing medicine cabinet, the baskets of gauze and pressure sleeves, the kidney bowls, that blue color, the gowns, the hospital bed in the front room. I see the elderly men in the waiting room who smiled gently at me as I found the corners of their puzzles, perfect english gardens, frozen in time. They were nearly transparent, those men, hovering between life and death as it was.
I was acquainted with the manner of my mother’s demise as a matter of fact, not a story to carry, but a vicious, leaking reality. Staid knowledge. A mother made of false parts-child from another womb, hair created by human hands, breast of fakery, forlorn in a box as she slept. Yet she was never less than who she was, a warrior, an Amazon as I preferred to see her, breast seared off as proof of her bravery, evidence of the terror and horror she faced each morning.
I read those words and I feel a quake in the floor beneath me, a shift of my own and with the eyes of a mother now myself, eyes of a 33 year old woman with two children, eyes of a daughter and a lover I understand with growing aching sadness what my mother gave. I feel myself transposed over her body, her tiny bird like hands and wrists, her lined eyes, soft skin. I lay myself down in that bed, those beds, those chairs all those times, through chemo, through radiation, through the after and suddenly the pain of the child I was recedes and the solemn knowledge of what it means to have cancer as a mother fills me.
I cry. I cry for all my mother never got to see. I weep for what she knew she was leaving. I find a keening in my chest when I think of her, facing her future in the drivers seat of her blue Tempo, hands tight to the wheel as I sat silent beside her. The idea that she might never get better, might never be better. I know she had hope-ballooned with it, she carried on as normal when she could, dragging herself to the dinner table with us, a glass of Ensure before her as we ate the spaghetti she made for us through her nausea and weakness. She would not see. She could not see, not until near then end, when the game changed from “Maybe you’ll get better.” to “these are your days.”
Maybe the end came quickly, and she didn’t have time to ponder.
But I would, ponder, all these days and years later, what she knew she lost.
**
If I squint, and stare at my daughters in a particular light, I am full with her. With her last days, her moments, the seizing dread of knowledge. The sight of a daughter who would grow to adulthood without her. Grow into a woman without a guide. Give her grandchildren without her guiding hand. Did she wonder what they would look like? Did she think that some day one might carry her name, the only piece of her I could bequeath?
Did she see me holding my daughters, singing those songs she whispered to me? Did she see a future without her, but full with her, the strange not empty yet not finished of those left behind?

Did she know that she was never alone with all of it?

***

It’s strange to stand in the shoes of my mother, to hear the whispered terror of another and fit the lost child into the woman.  I get the urgent fear, the sudden running in the chest, the caught breath, the nagging sense that tomorrow might be too late.

I get my own fears now too, and how utterly wasted they are, as hers were.

But it’s never gonna be alright, for her, for me, for any of us.

Detrius

I’m clumping around in my head, a dense thicket of the 4,153 things I forgot to do, the zombie dream with the giant gorilla hand from last night and the taste of orange kool-aid. Occasionally I hear a small whimper, something along the lines of

damn it’s crowded in here.

And as Homer once said, I hear myself mutter “Shut up brain or I’ll stab you with a Q-Tip.”

So busy, and yet so not. So weighted from my own expectation, and yet so afraid to be free of them.

A week to myself. And yet I only have 3 pages of writing to show for it, a few more paced out in my head. Returning to my old habit of speaking IN the character helped, but I just cannot focus. I feel like I’ve broken a mercury thermometer and I’m racing around the room trying to pick that shit up.

I say I write, but it’s a lie. I dither, I dream, I think, I see my characters dressed in long ratty scarves, carrying rucksacks like the one in my closet that smells oddly of salami. I see their world, cold and barren and yet, I cannot scratch it out.

Life is not a scratch ticket I tell myself. It’s not a matter of rubbing at it until finally some day, you’re rewarded.

***

I’m riding the bus with Vivian to the mall to spend my last 20.00 on laundry soap and school lunch things when she looks up and sees the newest anti drug campaign.

“So Mom, the pills you take for your back, those are drugs, right?“

“yeah huh.”

“Are they bad?‘

{pause to have a totally freaking out OMFGit’s one of THOSE parenting moments second. breathe. Breathe. What do I make up? What do I say?}

brain interjects-she’s SEVEN. Please, keep relevant.

“Well Viv, they could be.”

Quizzical, I call BULLSHEET look from 7 year old.

I sigh. “Look, you can abuse anything-food, people, drugs, beer. We do drugs every day-I have coffee, your grandfather smokes. It’s all about moderation. And some drugs are really bad for you, like meth like on the poster, or cocaine.”

More of that look.

“Before you ever try anything, talk to me, or your father. Between us we have….experience. Not everything is bad-but a lot of it is NOT good, and can hurt you.”

blink.blinkblinkOKblink.

Fuck. I’m not cut out for this shit. Cause in my head I’m thinking of the time we all sat in Char’s bedroom and smoked a MASSIVE amount of weed and laughed and laughed the entire night-we didn’t hurt anything or anyone, just had fun together, stupid kids. But how do you contextualize something that is still illegal? How do I convey that I don’t agree that weed is a nasty evil plant while also conveying my utter abhorrent view of hard drugs? How do I ever explain all the acid?

“Just…just don’t ok?”

Shrug. “Ok….Can I get a new Bakugan at Wal-Mart? Please?”

Why do these moments always come between rushing somewhere to buy something I’ve forgotten and trying to just enjoy some quality time with my offspring? Why do I never, ever know the answer? Why can’t I bridge that place between holy SHIT drugs fucking RULE and YOU WILL END UP A CRACK WHORE ON YONGE STREET DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!!

Why can’t I find the middle ground?

***

I was also this week reminded of how much of a GIRL Rosalyn is. In her pretty pink dress which she picked out, coloring in her numberless Hello Kitty books, she’s drawn to the pictures of weddings, princesses, all those “ladylike” things I, and her older sister snicker at. She refuses to play outside unless bribed. She wants her hair blown out and put up in clips and pig tails. She wants more pink, more fluff.

She’s absolutely fucking beautiful, and while I don’t understand her, I do love her, every pink frilly piece of her. The triumph of nature over nuture amuses me every single day.

And yet I dream of zombies…

“What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt – it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.”

I’ve been writing a post for a week in my head, scattered across my brain like elastics on a nightstand. Visualize the crumpled paper surrounding me as furiously I write. Or rather, envision the multiple “draft” posts hanging around behind this one.

I’ve spent this week, blissful quiet at my boyfriend’s house, tucked away in the middle of nowhere, home to more potatoes and tractors than people. I’ve stuffed the cloistered maws of the wood stoves, played with his new kitten, cooked and cleaned and played entirely too much Civ IV. I’ve taken baths before he comes home from work, drank too much rye, stared into the gorgeously setting sun out his front window as the kitten purred itself to sleep.

I’ve spent the better part of a week inside my head, testing. Could I live alone? Could I wake mornings with only my voice calling, with perhaps a cat entwining itself in my ankles? Could I conceive of someday making a home again, alone? Could I walk away from the live I have now, and start fresh as I’ve been pondering.

I think now that I can.

Granted, this has not been “alone” by any means. My love came home to me each night, was with me in the morning as he blinked through the alarm and I snuggled farther down in the Brunswick sheets. But this has been close to the blank page of a life I missed out on, and desperately crave.

Maybe I’m a bad mother to imagine myself away from my children, in the capable hands of their father. Maybe I’m a fool for wanting to just pass the house keys over to him, take my books and my bed and flee. Maybe I’m a rotten person since none of this bothers me. Maybe I’ve been listening to The Suburbs too much, and I’m missing something that never was.

Maybe I just want to be happy.

I have felt more content this week than I have in years. Not because I’m with the man I love-but despite that. Because I feel like this week, I have heard my voice, and my mind more than I’ve been able to in nearly forever. I’ve had a chance to breathe, let my heart open, face head on the decision I need to make, and soon. I’ve been settled, warm in myself.

I have missed this feeling, if I ever knew it before.

I keep asking myself, “Do you want them? Are they best with you?” and the answer I keep coming up with is a pensive, lonely

No.

I’m not happy with them. I’m snarky, I’m tired and pissy, I’m resentful and sometimes I think I’m just plain mean. I am tired of sacrificing for them, for the idea of them. I am tired of being someone’s mother. But then, the sheer weight of culture sits upon my shoulder and yells “omfgIcannotBELIEVEyou’reeventhinkingthis! BAD MOMMY! BAD!”

and suddenly, you know, I’m back to when Ros was a baby and all I wanted to do was die or at least give her away so I could go back to how things were, before and now I can’t help but wonder if I had the right idea then? I can feel my feet firm in that skin, circa April 2005, and it’s scary because it’s almost like I knew, on some level I knew-

I just can’t do it.

***

I open my facebook and see the updates of an old friend, more of an acquaintance now really. She’s recently had her first child, a boy, and while I’m over the moon happy for her, I’m almost sullenly jealous. Her pictures, her updates, her eyes-it’s the life I wanted, and just…couldn’t grasp or create or let happen. She’s happy with him, her husband is happy with him and I can’t help but feel rage over the fact that I never had that weightless joy with my children or family. I remember anger,and hurt, yelling, confusion, But not much joy, none that I didn’t force feed and squeeze every inch out of.

I wanted that so badly, I see that now. But I just couldn’t. And now, with no more children ever, it will never happen and fuck me if I’m not mourning that loss now too. Or again.

I did it all wrong. And somehow I feel like since I can’t do it right, my version of right, then I shouldn’t be doing it at all. I miss the mother, the woman, the person I should have been.

They deserved better after all. Or at least, less yelling.

***

It’s fucking scary, you know? The thought of moving, leaving the city for another, taking the few things I give a shit about and just going. The nearly revelatory idea of a mother being the parent who sees them for a few weeks in the summer, the odd weekend here and there, sending money every two weeks, and a little extra for birthdays and holidays.

I wonder (frequently, and out loud, to the chagrin of my lover I’m sure) if this urge to leave isn’t intricately linked to the fact that I would have been about Vivian’s age when my mother got sick, and I’m rapidly approaching the point where I have no idea how to parent, and all I know from that age is fear and loneliness and attempts to be brave. I’m scared that I’m letting my past define these changes, that my fear, my aching terror is something I’m going to do to them myself, that I’m going to leave them, and this time it’s going to be on purpose and fuck me it’s going to hurt them no matter what and there isn’t enough poetry in the world to soothe this one…

or maybe, their father will be all the things I cannot be, and can take the slack for awhile, hold the reins, and someday, things will be better and easier and I’ll know the answers by rote.

***

A year ago he left me, or us. I had been planning on leaving him, and he beat me too it, or had bigger cajones, I’m not sure. But this week, a year ago, is when he physically left me, and I closed my front down and crumpled and sobbed my dreams out of me. A broken record, a poor plan, the fucked up shards of a life I had to put back together. And here I am a year later, planning my own leave taking, him back in the house he never wanted with the kids we never planned for. My eyes on a future blind again, no right path, no safety.

No net. But no shackles either.