investment
For the next however long it takes, I'm to remember myself between the ages of nine and seventeen, and to think of the relationships I have now, with the girl I was then.
*****
Seventeen.
I can only picture her from the neck down. I know what she looks like, but I can't see her head. The outline is there, and it's small and birdlike, featureless and grey. That kind of freaks me out.
My initial thoughts are that I wish she'd go away. You don't do anything, you aren't anything. Jesus, you are SO LAZY it's disgusting. You are SUCH a disappointment, but as I think these things, the image of her turns away from me. She's walking away. If she's not there, I won't be angry, and if I'm not angry, my life will be better.
My anger fades rapidly now, because she's me and I know how sad she is. She has no idea she's sad, because she has nothing to contrast that feeling with. She has NO idea who she is. She's paralysed because she knows what she's been told, and she doesn't want to be THAT, but how can she not be that if she IS that? If she doesn't move, maybe no one will notice her.
If I could, I'd tell her to walk away. NOt from me, from THAT.
But she can't be left alone, because being alone is why she's here in front of me, so I take her hand. I'll look after her until she can look after herself, and then I'll look after her forever anyway, for the rest of her life, because it's going to take that long because this girl is so destroyed she can't even brush her own teeth without someone else lifting her arm.
And I feel sad for her, not impatient with her, because she's not even in there. All she is is a shell. I don't even where she is.
*****
Seventeen.
I can only picture her from the neck down. I know what she looks like, but I can't see her head. The outline is there, and it's small and birdlike, featureless and grey. That kind of freaks me out.
My initial thoughts are that I wish she'd go away. You don't do anything, you aren't anything. Jesus, you are SO LAZY it's disgusting. You are SUCH a disappointment, but as I think these things, the image of her turns away from me. She's walking away. If she's not there, I won't be angry, and if I'm not angry, my life will be better.
My anger fades rapidly now, because she's me and I know how sad she is. She has no idea she's sad, because she has nothing to contrast that feeling with. She has NO idea who she is. She's paralysed because she knows what she's been told, and she doesn't want to be THAT, but how can she not be that if she IS that? If she doesn't move, maybe no one will notice her.
If I could, I'd tell her to walk away. NOt from me, from THAT.
But she can't be left alone, because being alone is why she's here in front of me, so I take her hand. I'll look after her until she can look after herself, and then I'll look after her forever anyway, for the rest of her life, because it's going to take that long because this girl is so destroyed she can't even brush her own teeth without someone else lifting her arm.
And I feel sad for her, not impatient with her, because she's not even in there. All she is is a shell. I don't even where she is.
posted by aibee at 08:38
2 Comments:
I've been thinking about much the same thing lately because my older daughter is such a clone of me that I see a world of hurt ahead for her, and I'm wondering how I guide her without hurting her or changing her too much. I get to see my 5 year old self on a daily basis!
Beatifully written btw.
By
AliBlahBlah, at
4:43 AM
I've been really conscious of not letting Daniel see how effing terrified I am of spiders, because I AM effing terrified of spiders-and why? They're relatively small and looking at them isn't going to make your head kaboom into a thousand pieces. Bt I can't look a them and suddenly my hand is GIANT and THREATENING and OMG when I see a spider roughly that size although really probably really a quarter of that size or even maybe nto even that big.
So, Big Efforts made to not decompensate when on of those creepy motherfuckers enters my field of vision.
Even *I* can't recognise the calm spider REMOVER I've become. I mean, I sometimes don't even neutralise the target, fgs. I TAKE THEM OUTSIDE so they can make MORE spiders.
Still though, Daniel is terrified of spiders, even more so than I am.
Spiders taught me that our children learn from us lessons about themselves. There is NOTHING we can do about it, unless we DO something about it.
And this is why I'm doing this stuff.
:)
By
aibee, at
11:16 AM
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