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One of my parenting feels is shame that I failed so badly last time. Shame that Mother was right, and that I could never do it well enough to avoid hurting people. I never figured out how to get them out of it, or even how to give them each other. Of course I didn’t, because I was 11 and poor and subject to my own abuse and unable to remove them from theirs and because I hadn’t even figured out how to parent myself let alone anyone else. Of course it was doomed. But it still happened. I still failed badly enough that Ben is trying to die alone on the woods and Alex still can’t leave and neither of them can talk to each other or me. It shouldn’t have been my life or theirs, but it was. And whatever should have been, what was hurts.

I realized that I have known a lot of people who died young, and that I never got to grieve most of them. It’s hard to look at my past and see that the people who were best to me in the past are also the most likely to be in the dead group. Not because I caused it I know, but certainly because my existense was dangerous enough that being able to empathize with me meant their lives had to be pretty bad too. Even in death I’m ashamed to group myself with them, or to imagine they thought of me as anything other than a burden or maybe a logistical resource they tolerated.

It’s time to get back to these. Let’s start small and make a bunch.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.