EMAILS FROM HOME

Email #1 Today:

Hey ____

I just wanted to check in and say hi.....maybe we could meet sometime and have a chat? Anyway have a good weekend...are you helping Jane move into her apartment?? love, mom


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Email #2 Today Excerpt:

Anyway please grab what you want from the Toyota or arrange a time to p.u. Or I could drop them somewhere depending on wether or not you want the books blah blah blah.It's just a little to much to leave with __ .I will leave everything in the Toyota for a week but we should try to keep it clean.Hope all is well at your new place.

Sincerely, x



These emails combined, with what I think might be withdrawal from the anxiety medication I am stopping, have me regressing.

I think it is mostly the one from my mother, which, when I read it, I sob. For no reason. For reason. For no good reason. See, there she is, so casually loving. I haven’t seen her in almost seven years. I have spoken to her (I foolishly called) once in nearly as many. But there it is….she wants to “chat.” She wants me to “have a good weekend.” So easy going. What’s wrong with me that I am not that way back!!

The real problem is the last words: love, mom. See, no. I think the thing here is, biologically she is half the donor of my genetic material. Sure.
Sociologically I did grow up mostly in the company of her society. Where I learned to hate myself, fear hypervigilantly the violence and mental smallness of all men, feel ashamed for being abused by my father, feel guilty for having a father and overall, learn to live in a measured way where, year after year, my feelings and emotions became irrational and wrong side-effects of my cloying reminding-everyone-of-my-alcoholic-abuser-father existence.

In context then, what her email says to me is DIE DIE DIE.
Her intent was not that. Has never been. She is sick. And I should have empathy for it. Unfortunately I am not able to yet. I want to be able to but I know when I read her casual words and my throat constricts and my three hundred pounds slams into my chest - I am not there. And then when I read the casual words of my x and the feeling is echoed on a smaller scale I slide backwards.

I feel certain, in the shadow of these emails, that love is not for me. These two massive failures are my evidence. I have cast an apparent pall on both of these peoples lives. They are so casual and easy and my reaction is an eclipse of there message with a swath of clear wide pain and grief. I shudder at how little I understood about what was happening to me. And then I just don’t want to think about any of it or anything anymore.