I wrote some words about what tomorrow means to me but without really doing so. I still don’t know if I would call what I write at the end of these entries poetry, but they look cool and are great relievers of emotions that I feel often can’t be written out with some rationale. Tonight is the first time I wrote the poem before writing the entry, and it’s weird to be doing things backward.

I thought this morning about what it would be like to bring a child into this world right now. I thought about how when Mom was my age, she had three kids already, with five more to eventually follow. I don’t know how she did it. Granted, she didn’t really do it for the younger five of us. The older three got a different version of her than we did, though I’m not sure which one was better. Both women had peaks and pits to her, as we all do.

I had coffee this morning with a friend, and I spoke a bit about Mom’s trauma. Granted, I don’t know the specifics of what she’s endured before she had kids, but being disowned by your family (Mom’s version of what happened) after getting pregnant as a teenager in the ‘70s reads trauma likely to come. When sharing parts of Mom’s life with this girl that sat across from me, I felt the familiar guilt begin to grow. It’s hard to hold boundaries when the person you’ve set them for doesn’t comprehend why you’ve set them.

I used to cry at the thought of Mom dying when I was a kid, post her abandoning me and some of my siblings for an extended period of time growing up. I used to curl up in a ball in bed and silently sob so that my sisters couldn’t hear me.

A few years ago, when I was deeply researching proof of my lived experiences, I came across a brief news snippet about my first abuser when I was four years old. It read something to the effect of, “the girl’s mother says the child is unable to leave her side after the event,” and it made me think, “wow, this was before she dumped us with Gayle, no wonder I felt so dependent upon her. I was forever anxious she was going to leave again.”

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I struggle so much with how to exist with Mom in my life. I don’t know how to honor myself and not feel burdened by Mom’s feelings in reaction to my boundaries because my feelings matter more to me. They have to be a larger priority for once. She should understand; she’s had no issue in making herself a priority all these years.

Happy Mother’s Day.

tomorrow is mother's day

and the gift i'm giving the person

who brought me into this world

is silence

any sentence i tell her would be a lie

sprinkled with artificial sweetener

wrapped in a big bow

and sent via text

i won't call her, because that's too much

i can't deal with the guilt

that jumps around in my stomach

knocking the wind right out of it

when i make up a reason about why

i can't see her

it's like this weird role reversal

that reminds me of the calls and cries

i made to her all those years ago

"i miss you so much"

i hear myself in her cries

and can hear hers in mine

"i'm sorry you did this"

our voices are the same