To My Mother
Will you ever wake up, I wonder? What will you do when you go to look for us and we've gone? It's hard not to feel the mixture of emotions for you: disgust, pity, amusement, fear, anger. I keep trying to understand, to care, to rationalize, but how do you care for and understand something so irrational and inexplicable? It's so easy to hate, but I won't take the easy way out.
It's so easy to pity you, too. But my pity never begets passivity of your outbursts. It's easy to be angry, and my anger certainly never leads towards acceptance or understanding... merely disgust. And my disgust only gets me disillusionment, with how hopeless it seems.
I wish I could make you see, somehow. I wish I could help you to understand, to redo, to rebalance. I keep telling you the truth, but you keep twisting it and reshaping it into what it isn't, into words that work more for you. Does your world make any room for us, the ones that love you but don't accept your fantasies? What about us? Will you only push us away further? We can only allow ourselves so much torment before we back away slowly and return to our own holes. What then?
I ask these questions, but I know already. It won't change. It can't change. You are incapable of such actions, you will never be different than you are today: a small frightened child kicking her feet and dragging her heels at the thought of moving up and on. You taught us to be strong, but you stayed behind nursing memories.
I can do nothing but offer you my pity and support, which I do. From a safe distance.
-Anonymous-
© 1999 by Anonymous
