fitveggielife

I bend down—warm, almost hot water runs down my hands. I close my eyes and before the water can touch my face—I’m in your bed. 

The bed is made, the TV—the huge TV in the huge room, and I’m on the huge bed, alone. Our entire past, present, and future were sitting with me and I never knew it. My stomach begins to feel like it did then—twisting and turning. I might be green. 

I can smell you, I can imagine you, I can hear you, it’s strange. And I feel like I might cry. Still crying despite never ever ever returning to that bed again, despite never seeing you again, it’s like you’re dead and you killed a piece of me. The dead me rises when I close my eyes, relives the mistake, the huge and careless mistake of letting you be somebody. 

I looked past everything, to a fault. One of your favorite lessons, what did I expect? My father’s karma, and his before, and before, playing out, if only they knew, if only they cared. Can it still be his karma even if he isn’t around? 

Another dead man. 

Another dead me. 

When I open my eyes, soap and water are falling down, the millions of tears shed and wishing to be washed away. Scrub scrub scrub, one day one day, one day is today. I see you, I see my dead me’s, I see all of it. I feel all of it. 

I sink and I rise, a bobber in a lake, going fishing like my brother, what’s gonna catch me next? 

At least I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who’s been hurt, and I don’t know if I wish I could take your pain away but I’m happy to go through this to be a part of something bigger. The collective of daughters without fathers, learning to maneuver men and their oddly similar, oddly different tendencies. Or maybe it’s my tendencies. I tend to search for what I know but I’m ready for something else entirely. 

Reel me in, cast me out. 

I think of the invisible people in my head, afraid if they know who I am, afraid if I admit the things that make me me will be used against me. 

A reject. Desperate.

Sometimes cranky and mean. Emotional, don’t forget emotions are bad. I cry during interviews. Poor choices, I’ve been with married men. Having conversations made of lies, this is what being a grownup is right?

Why do I hate myself sometimes? Put myself through things, beat myself up for making mistakes, for choosing wrong, like I’m the only one?

I towel dry my face and wonder what you’re doing. I wonder if you’ve cried over me. I cried all over myself over you. All of you. Every single one. I think it made me feel a little better. 

I’ve been stuck in a loop for years, hoping and begging for someone’s attention that isn’t offered. Waiting and waiting dad, for you to love me. Tell me you love me. I remember you saying it, and I believed it but it’s so confusing when I look for your love elsewhere, is it love?

I see now why there are stats, I see how I became one, I’m not upset, I had to be one of them. I’ve met a lot of people like you, they tell me they love me but not in the way I needed. I wanted to be something to you, to all of you, sometimes it makes me angry. 

I want to drown each and every one of you with my own hands. Line up! I’ve saved all my tears and there is an ocean waiting. Or maybe the volcano that rests in my stomach, churning, grumbling lava, I would find it satisfying to watch each of you burn. 

I don’t like being hurt. I don’t like being lied to. I don’t like being taken from. I allowed this? In kindergarten? Second grade? It took so long to learn my lesson. It took so long and I wish I knew better sooner, I wish I was someone else sooner, but I was pathetic and upset, I’m so upset with you for lying to me. For teaching me how to accept anything that resembles you. I hate you. I want you to burn. I want the memory of all that you’ve done to haunt you, to break your body down, day after day, live with the weight of it, crushing you into powder, joining the billions of those before you who live like cowards, unwilling to face their own pain. 

How much is too much? Where’s the line when you’ve been taught there isn’t one? 

Looking at myself in the mirror, the bed falls away—the memories, the pain. I don’t have to stop here, and my story doesn’t have to be this—whatever this is. The pain that shaped me? I’m so much more, I see it now, because of you.

They say practice being grateful.

So, thank you—for everything.