I think about you a lot. And your brothers too. Do you want to talk about them? Are you waiting for me to ask? How old were you when you knew? I wonder what that was like. You speak about them sometimes, but not about the hurt. I wish you would. I remember when we heard the news; I came downstairs and you were crying. You didn’t say anything as the tears fell down your face. I lost something inside of me that day. When I look at you I only see myself. You carried me inside of you from the day you were born. We share the same pain. You passed it down to me, and one day when I have a daughter of my own I’ll pass it on to her too. I am tied to you forever, bound by some imaginary string, like the umbilical cord that anchored me to you from the day I was conceived. We are so alike. Sometimes I hate you and I resent myself for it.
Have we experienced the same things? Unwanted hands, fingerprints that linger like a bruise. I cried the first time I got my period, bleeding from some internal wound, the severance of my childhood. I was too ashamed to tell you for days, embarrassed of my changing body. Where did I get all this shame? And all the desperation. Do you carry it inside of you like I do? Dragging it around like a dead body.
Sometimes I think about all the things you do for me and it makes me want to cry. I think about leaving home, leaving you, and I’m scared. If only time would stop, just for a while, and I could stay with you a little longer.
You don’t have to be strong for me anymore, I am older now. All of the heartbreak, and all of the violence, where do you hide it? You can tell me. I want to know you as a person, not just as my mum.
