field

a short one.

What do you do when you feel like a stranger in your mother’s home?

I missed her, but I don’t know how to talk to her. I don’t know how she sees me. Does she truly know me? Do I know her?

How would she react if I told her she gave birth to a void? She would vehemently deny this, tell me to stop thinking of myself that way, but would she also shed a tear, grasp at her only daughter—a piece of herself she gave to live? Or would she stare in silence and shock, unsure how to comfort something she handled with such care?

How would you react if someone you gave life to can’t recognize themself and lives in the unknown part-time? It is a burden to live as the unrecognizable. It erases all the time when you felt like yourself, felt invincible, because now you stare at your reflection in the mirror and grab at your stomach, your face, your breasts to remind yourself of the body you inhabit. That this is you, and you can’t escape yourself.

My mom’s house is too big and filled with love that is not meant for me. I can’t understand it without asking myself why I can’t be normal and accepting. Half the time, I feel like crying and screaming, and the other half, I just want to read and sleep. The silence isn’t suffocating because it is a silence I chose for myself.

I want to be held, but I don’t think being touched will comfort me in the ways I need most. It feels like a pity, a charitable gesture. How do I feel in someone’s arms? Do I feel whole or broken? If my mom touches me, she won’t recognize the person she made. I fear I don’t feel like a daughter or a sister. Just a smudge on a child’s drawing of a family portrait or a shadow of a being that used to exist, breathe, laugh, and smile.

I’m tired at best and discombobulated at worst. And my family knows this. I’ve written about it and talked and cried to them. It isn’t like I don’t think they care. They do, but I don’t think they know how to comfort me. I don’t want to kill myself, so that isn’t a concern. I do well in school. I post on social media, and I have friends. I have a bed and home I can go back to. I smile, I joke, and I laugh.

And I get sad sometimes, but I get over it.

Maybe it is more digestible to hear someone doesn’t want to exist. Of course, I want to live, but this world isn’t meant for living. We all survive however we can, but I’m tired of surviving. I wish I could pause my existence and return when the concept of life isn’t such an overwhelming thought that weighs on my being.

I don’t know how many times I can write about being exhausted and listen to family members say that at least I am here talking about it, that I am on medication and want help, and that I am not visibly and publicly mentally ill. I don’t know how to tell them that I think my existence was selfish, was created for selfish reasons, and that others are more deserving than me.

I’m going to be back in therapy by the end of January. I am going to increase my antidepressant dosage by the time Winter Quarter starts. Yes, I am here and alive. It is so hard to explain to loved ones that I constantly carry this lack with me, even when a minute part of my day is forgotten by the time I close my eyes and dream of a better tomorrow.

If I could lay down in a grass field and become one with the land—not permanently, but long enough to become part of it and give birth to new life. I can be home to the worms, flowers, ants, and weeds and lay there until I decide it is time to arise.

But what is life if someone is trying to steal it from you, whether it be yourself or other malevolent forces?

I like to think of myself as a fighter, but I would rather my hands be blotched with ink from my favorite pen than blood. I want to rest and be loved and held, but I feel as if the world has taken this from me.

One day, this will mean nothing, and it won’t hurt anymore. It won’t gnaw at my insides. One day, I’ll live in a field and become one with it. Until then, I will face another year with a dream of something more yet a growing certainty that our world will continue to decay as long as people pretend everything is alright.

And right now, I’ll listen to my mother’s snores as I write words that may break her heart.