A Journal Without Sheets To Tear

I AM STANDING JUST BEFORE A DOOR

November 26, 2024

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I am making space, cleansing of what is no longer needed and awaiting the arrival of something unknown. My arms miss someone they haven't held yet, and I wonder how much longer I can go on, with all this empty space. There is an emptiness in my life right now that I have felt before; the weeks before I meet someone I now love, find something I now cherish and it feels like I am standing just before a door to a new home I've never been to before with a flutter in my chest and I am not thinking about my body, or what mirrors I may have to avoid, or if I am cruel. I am just, ready. 

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IT IS SO EASY FOR ME TO BE MY MOTHER'S MOTHER

November 19, 2024

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One of the last times I saw my mother, she stayed the night in my home. I gave her my bed while I slept in the other room and in the morning, I awoke first. I crept across the floor and went in to wake her, and when I saw her there, covered by the quilt and her body rising and falling slowly with her breath, I remember she seemed so, small. I walked towards her quietly, careful not to startle her because even after everything, I didn't want her scared.

     And as I moved quietly, a serrated kind of jealousy cut against my insides. It is so easy for me to be my mother's mother. It is so easy for me to move quietly like no poison had ever been poured into my blood by her cruelty. I gave her my bed and the quilt and the safety of my home like there had never been terror bouncing off the walls of the home she offered me. 

     And she looked so small, like a child. And all I could do was be gentle. All I could do was move quietly and try to awaken her softly into the morning. I loved her then in a way I wanted my mother to love me and something in that moment changed how it was going to end. I saw myself love another softly, and as I stood above her, I wasn't sure if it was fair to be so gentle with someone who didn't love me the same. 

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BUILD A HOME AT THE BOTTOM

November 13, 2024

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I am trying to build a home here, on the bottom. I am trying to collect enough love like a bee and pollen so that when the lights go out, I can at least find a small flame. I am trying to collect enough driftwood to build a fire. Trying to knit enough blankets to keep me warm. What do you do if even your bloodline doesn't care? When they'd rather take the last of your breath to use it for their own air? To survive this I have had to transcend any amount of love my mother had for me. Any amount of love she had for herself. I have had to force myself to be kind in the moments where I would like to bury myself alive. To hide the shovel. To remember to breathe. And sometimes I can't keep it hidden, and I allow myself those moments because to love myself means to tell myself to witness this suffering, knowing this pain comes from the past and it will pass and when it does I can say I have survived, again. And when I get to go home to my body from the bottom, it is almost as if it is for the first time, again. 

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HUNT

November 11, 2024

 

Do you ever wish you could erase your past? Just wake up one morning light as a feather, with no scars or that abyss in your mind? It's taken me half a decade of attempting to accept what has happened, and still, so white are my knuckles on those memories- like an eagle's talons to the fish, I cling. I wish I didn't have to eat the past, but I must hunt to write. I must gather all of the stories like they are fish in the sea and decide if I eat. I wish I could have lived another life, but sometimes I wonder, if I did, would I write?

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EVERYTHING THAT HAUNTS ME

October 22, 2024

I. Just after the sentence is read, the Judge orders us to leave the courtroom. I walk out into the hall, everyone around me clapping and smiling as the confirmation of a seven year sentence begins to come to life in my mind.
     “Thirty-one,” I think to myself. I will be thirty-one. That age feels so far away, and yet, the sentence feels short. 
     I stand just outside of the glass door to the courtroom, assuming my usual spot. I sat here during the trial, staring at my grandfather through the glass. I want him to feel watched, and I want to watch this.
      My grandfather kneels down in front of my grandmother and takes her hands in his. Her head is bowed and her eyes are glazed over, as her friends put their arms around her and my grandfather looks up at her, speaking about something I cannot hear. It looks like he is promising something. It looks like he is desperate for her to hear him, but she is galaxies away. My grandmother is sitting so still, like her body is filling with concrete as she becomes a statue. I wonder if this feels anything like the fear I felt when he touched my body. Or when I found out what he had done to everyone else. 
      As I watch them, a faint sound catches my attention from down the hall. It sounds like little metal objects being shaken, and as I wait for the sound to disappear, it grows louder. I look to my left down the hallway as the sound grows louder and louder, searching for its origin, and that’s when I see two officers walking towards us, a dozen keys on each of their hips singing throughout the hall. One of the officers looks at me as I look at him and we don’t smile at each other and his eyes soften as he looks down, breaking our eye contact. I wonder why he looks so solemn, and then I realize.
     They are here for him. My grandfather. The one who married my grandmother, fathered my mother, was at my birth, my sister's birth, the one who hurt girls, the one who threatened us, stalked us, pleaded not guilty and sat there everyday of the trial keeping his mouth shut as he listened to his bloodline take the stand recounting the horror he bestowed onto their lives. There were here, for him.
      And just like that, the moment I once thought may never come, was here. 
     The two officers open the glass door in front of me, everyone in the courtroom now hearing the keys. My heart leaps in my chest as the elation and rage and grief and confusion and wonder and victory all start dancing in my body as I watch the officers put his hands behind his back in metal handcuffs and begin to walk him towards us. They motion us to move, and as I step aside, I watch his head hang as he walks across the hall in front of me. His feet make a slight shuffling sound as he takes his first steps in custody, and his eyes never meet mine. 
     My heart feels full, watching this moment, but my body feels light, like I am floating just above the ground. This is the moment I had pleaded with the gods for. The moment I had told every shooting star about. Screamed at the sea about. Lost my fucking mind waiting for. And there it was, justice, in the form of clanging keys and my grandmother sitting there frozen and seven years and him, with his hands behind his back. And at the same time of this justice, it doesn’t feel like resolution. It feels like witnessing someone else reap their consequence and sitting beside this resolution, there is an emptiness. And that emptiness startles me, because I thought this would feel more victorious. I thought everything would feel better, but I am still here, with the exhaustion of the battle, a life of ruins, trauma seeped bones and no apology. And there he is, walking away without looking at me, without a sound of sorrow for what he’s done. 

 

II. For a year I don’t look in the mirror because I can’t trust my mind to be kind to myself.

III. As my friend walks ahead of me up towards the front door, I feel my voice wanting to say, are we sure we want to go? Maybe we should go somewhere else... but I don’t, and I follow her towards the house. I don’t like to go to parties, even if I want to, because they don’t feel like somewhere I belong and I am afraid of what my mother will say if I do. My friend goes straight to the door, turning around to smile at me as she lifts her knuckles to knock. 
     The door opens, and a guy from school stands there, staring at us. He looks at my friend, nods, and then walks back into the house, his eyes faded and happy. I open my mouth to say something about leaving again, but my friend hurries up the last step before I can speak and she goes inside, skipping through the doorway. 
     The pit in my stomach gets heavier as I move inside, the noise of the house floods me. Dozens of my classmates are there, stumbling from the living room to the kitchen, swaying as they lean into each other, falling into the couch with beaming smiles on their faces. Music blares and I can hear people yelling from another room; colorful chaos. 
      I follow my friend deeper into the house, feeling like an outsider to this world that I reside in, and she bolts to the kitchen, yelling after someone I do not see. I stand there, just inside the entryway suddenly alone. I move through the swaying bodies towards the dining room, hoping to find someone I know well enough to talk to, and then I see her; the best friend I’ve ever had and the one I have recently lost a friendship with. She is running in my direction, and for a moment, I smile, relieved she is here and I watch her as she laughs, her eyes on the floor, monitoring the feet of the people in the room, and it all goes quiet. She looks so happy as she bounces through the room, everything falling empty except for her. I feel my chest start to say something as she gets closer, hoping maybe tonight we can talk again, and as I start to reach out for her, she runs by me without looking my way, hand in hand with someone else as they run out the front door. 

IV. He never kisses me on that day in July. 

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YOU BELONG HERE
October 1, 2024

When the thorn pierces your skin and you swallow your scream, please remember, there are others who need your sensitivity. When the words reach into your chest and lift an anchor that has been latched to your heart forever and you wonder if telling them would make them leave, please remember, there are others who need your sensitivity. When the air taps your shoulder with its first autumn chill and you breathe until you find the beginning of this new season, please remember, there are others who need your sensitivity. When the note lingers in your bones longer than the chord and you are washed away somewhere else, please remember, there are others who need your sensitivity, and one day it will be clear and you will see that you belong here. 

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​NOTHINGNESS IS MY SALVATION
September 20, 2024

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When I was young, someone who was supposed to cherish me read through my diary. She ripped out the pages she didn’t agree with, and waited for me to come home and find my room a mess; pages strewn across the room while she sat there, rage and disgust in her eyes. 
       Nothing was mine in my home; not my journal, not my body, not my mind and all I have ever known is how to control my desires to radiate only a few feet around me. I was only ever allowed so little space. Everything I have ever known about how to be someone is rooted in the belief that I must be nothing unless I want to be taken. I must be quiet. I must do no wrong. Don’t tell anyone what should be told. Don’t be a nuisance. Don't be noticed. Seem happy. Hide any sadness. Everything is for someone else and I am nothing but to be used. 
       And now, I have no vows to that system. I have no authority to survive. All I have to do is find out what matters to me, and I have absolutely no idea what I want to do. But maybe knowing nothing, when I’ve spent a lifetime of knowing everything about how to survive, is the freedom I have been waiting for. Maybe this nothingness is my salvation. 

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TRUST
September 1, 2024

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       “I don’t know how you trust anyone,” my friend says as she lifts the glass of red wine to her lips. I have just finished telling her of my history; of the struggles and betrayals and when she says this, I pause. Do I trust anyone? Is my idea of trust some twisted version of what others know it to be? Do I even want to trust other people? 
       As I ponder, I feel something like a warm breeze fill my chest and I realize I want to trust others. I want to feel like I can lean my head against another’s shoulder, knowing they will support me as I mourn. 
       “I don’t know either,” I say because I don’t. Maybe my act of trusting others has been something different, and yet in this moment, thinking of being able to trust someone feels like a spring blossom, something to cherish. I feel more words wanting to be said so I speak again.

       “I want to trust others and I want others to trust me,” I look at my red wine, “that’s the kind of life I want.”
        When you’ve grown up in an abusive household there is never a moment where you aren’t holding your sword behind your back. You learn to always be ready to fight. Trust was taught to me as, “I must trust you to stay quiet.” I had to prove my trustworthiness through my silence. Through my secrecy. And I carried that with me into the rest of my life, never acknowledging that trust can also come to me and I can give it to others; that it has nothing to do with secrecy, but everything to do with cherishing one another. 
        When I hear myself say out loud that I want to live a life where I trust others, I feel the well of my grief speak, as well as a blossoming of hope sprout. They meet in the middle of my chest and I realize, this is where I make a choice. Do I lean towards a future where I can accept that people love me, or do I continue always ready to draw my sword? 
       I decide, at this moment, that it’s only fair to give the people in my life a chance. Why should they be held to the consequences of my upbringing? Why should I continue to suffer through a life of feeling alone, when there are people, now, who want to love and cherish me? 
       It seems now, that it is up to me; I have to allow my broken heart to love. I have to let hope grow until it becomes something I no longer crave. In those moments when I find myself bracing for battle, I have to stop for a moment, and consider what it would feel like to lean in. To let him hold me, to let her love me. To let myself be seen and trust that I deserve to have someone who loves me enough to let me lean my head against their shoulder, trusting that they will care for me while I weather a storm. 

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I THINK I MIGHT KNOW WHO I AM
August 14, 2024

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For the last year I have lost all sight of who I am. Like a crumbling ball of sand I felt everything I’ve known fall away. Just, slip through my fingers. Have you ever lost sight of yourself like that? Have you ever felt less than empty, a room without even walls to echo the silence? The loss wasn’t even loud enough to cry out; I just, slipped. And I wonder if it’s because I didn’t have much of myself to begin with, that when I entered this dark time of my life I had almost nothing to lose. I had barely a flame to withstand the storm. 
        I fled my past life like the edges of a wildfire; I ran, burned, and hungered for more distance. I only took so little, and left it all behind. Being raised where I was shamed for existing, belittled for nothing and used in every sense of the word, I was spit out into life with a little flame in my chest and no armor. I have started with nothing. And then, suddenly with a breeze, that little flame I held went out. A little strand of smoke rising from the wick. I felt like a sky without stars. A sea without ripples. But life kept moving, and I kept tumbling. 
       I got knocked down, over and over and over until I was broke but working full time, wanting to be in a healthy environment but trapped in toxicity, feeling isolated and without community, grieving losses in my family and processing the trials, getting ill with the pandemic, and the fatigue just took over. I had fled an abusive system and survived the unimaginable, and then, I had to begin a life with nothing to my name. 
        
And so now, today, I sent in my resignation at work, and the weeks leading up to this decision has felt like I am stepping closer and closer to a cliff. I think it’s been reminding me of other moments where I jumped, because I think that’s what life does. I think moments that are similar stack, and as the loop passes that same spot again, you feel close to the past. And so, I’ve been realizing that this time, I am not as scared to jump. I feel slightly excited, to see if this time, maybe I can fly?             And this jump isn’t as terrifying as that first one. Nothing will ever be. Because the flame in my chest isn’t as weak, I think I may have cultivated a warm fire. I think she might be strong and raging, able to withstand a cold winter or storm.  
And I am excited to jump, a statement I once never was able to say. It’s possible now, for good things to come true. If I can begin from nothing, I might be able to do anything, and that belief in myself feels like the greatest victory. 
       Maybe that room without walls I found myself in can now hold everything I become...