Darkness
December 6, 2006
The darkness comes at night. She will arrive, in denim and lipstick. She seems innocent enough, once my mother, now a stranger. She apologizes without malice, for all the things she has said, for all the nights of wine and vomit, for all the slaps to the side of my heart. A twinge in my gut won’t allow me to forgive her and she grows angry with my defiance of her. She won’t leave until I say “It’s okay.”
“But it’s not okay,” I boom. I’m angry. I’m not usually sad about her. I want her to go away and never come back. I want her to die from my mind. She left my heart a long time ago when she repeated history by abusing her boyfriend’s daughter. Regret doesn’t even register at thoughts of saving the little girl that was me 20 years later.
I wake up and thoughts of her will haunt me for days after dreaming of her. It’s always the same plot. Her begging forgiveness and then growing angry when I don’t give it to her. The darkness is in her wild hair, her eyeliner, the bags under her eyes, and a cancer in her heart. As a girl, I used to believe that there was good in all people. Maybe I need to look at her differently to see past the darkness. But when I think of her, I wander with my arms outstretched, feeling for something. There is nothing there. I brace myself for a fall, like you would do in actual darkness, but it never comes.
Her mother used to say, “There’s no telling what she’ll do. I have always feared opening the door to her, and looking down the barrel of a gun. There’s just no telling.”
Now as I feel in the darkness, I wait for that barrel, that fall. She is like the tide. She will return.
This is an entry into Blogging for Books at The Zero Boss and is cross-posted at Motherless.
December 6th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Beautiful. Moving. Dark.
The tide. A perfect way to describe those in our lives that we wish we could escape.
Mother: the only reason I’d ever want to leave this town.
Forgivness: something that must be earned.
You are right, it’s not okay. It never will be, But we’re all in this together. Pain shared is pain halved. *comfort*
December 6th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
I’d hate to hear what Freud would say, but then he was an idiot.
Be well.
December 6th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Karen, this is powerful. I commend you for writing so openly and honestly about your mother and the memories you have of her. It’s not easy, I know.
December 7th, 2006 at 7:57 am
I’ve always said you should write about it more. This is some really deep, insightful, scary stuff. It might give you closure.
December 8th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
I don’t even know what to say about this Karen. It’s so well written and touching that I can’t find the right word.
December 11th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Wow.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
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