Part II

Cont ... Please read Part I - right below this post - to keep up.

I turned 30 last month, and my mother wasn’t the first person to call me. I said goodbye to my troubled 20’s, to the 29th year of my life that included the loss of my mother. I will never be able to explain my longing, my wish to be little again so that I could look up at her.

Nor will I ever be able to explain who my mother was.

We became friends at some point, confidants in a way that I really never thought possible. I listened to her talk about her difficulties raising my brother and sister and her fears about the ending of her marriage to our father because of his affairs. Sometimes, at very careful moments she would admit to me the mistakes she made as a parent, as a wife, as a lover. She would talk about her childhood of pennies and beatings, of drunks and hooligans. She was usually drunk at these times. Sometimes she would discuss her short marriage to my biological father, a man I knew very little about. I would ask her questions about the memories I had. I was only four or five when they separated.

In return, she understood my fear of marriage and my reluctance to commit to a man that was perfect for me. She understood my own melancholy. She knew I wasn’t a stranger to men or to vice in multiple sorts. She knew that I was my own worst enemy, that I could personally sabotage everything good in my life in one hot minute.

And sometimes she wouldn’t stop me. She’d let me learn a lesson. Other times, she’d call me out and I’d run off in a rage or cry out of embarrassment and foolishness.

Every day for nearly 29 years, my mother had been my world. And she will probably continue to be until I have children of my own. Until new life helps me let go of loss. Until love helps me to shed grief.

You see, no one I have ever met has ever had such a commanding presence as my mother. She could silence, criticize and maim me with a passing look. If she chose, she could also declare me a goddess. At moments I was a genius, the brightest child to ever exist. I was so hardworking, so articulate, to talented, so pretty that I could model, and style to boot! Gosh, she loved me.

That presence of hers, that force doesn’t allow me to say goodbye. From the grave she tells me to cry for her, to blame for her, to hate for her. I feel as if she will never let me get over her pain.

I am threadbare.

I remember her as parts, which is primarily how I feel, how I’ve always felt before and now after her suicide. That’s how I know that I am hers and she is mine.

Mama was mean and scary at times. I ran from her. I hid from her. As an adult, I told her she was draining me.