Beauty and honesty can go hand in hand. There is beauty in honesty and honesty in beauty. This is something I've been trying to write for years and years but there never seemed a right time until now.
4:09am. I’ve woken up between 3am and 4am for years now. It’s my fears and tears still trickling in. Somehow now I can’t shake it off. In October it will be 9 years. When I was living on the coastline in the sunshine there was this timeline that has forever impacted me. It sometimes prevents me to make contact with the most simplest interactions.
4:09am. My brother woke me up. 4:09am my brother woke me up on October 31st, 2007. It wasn’t to prepare for all those early trick or treaters. But it definitely felt like a trick, like weighted bricks on my back ready to somehow attack me to the point that I wake up now between 3am and 4am every night.
She would make me one of my favorite desserts. Combining egg whites with cake batter to make me angel food cake. Hearing her chatter in the kitchen to some best friend for hours. Outside in the sunshine I would be picking flowers for her to say I was sorry for splattering the batter all over the floor.
She nicknamed me precious and called me the icing on her cake. Once in awhile I would let her dress me in pink and think thats what I wanted…though all that would happen would be a bellyache growing inside me. I was her little girl, her only girl. I wasn’t allowed to like girls.
4:09am I woke up to my brother saying “It’s time.” He couldn’t utter the words, for saying She’s dead, she died, it happened, forms an instant stutter in your mouth like peanut butter incrusted on your lips. You dip into this mood that forms an eternal feeling of feeling like your unveiling your deepest self every time someone asks “Where does your mom live?” “What does she do for a living?"
After dinner, my dad asked me if I was willing to give my mom a shower. A tower of the most uncomfortable feelings surrounded me. The cancer spread from her breast to her hip to her lungs to her brain. I wasn’t trained for this. I didn’t understand this. 16 and showering the vomit from your mother’s body. Her mind was losing control only to show me tell me with smile before I showered her, “It’s like your my mother now.”
When trauma sets in with a warning or not, the impact is an attack for your entire life. Cutting in like a serrated knife and trying to gain friction to get away from the affliction and constriction. Oh, Momma there is always this drama in my life. I’ve been in a coma, this comatose state. I let depression hit me like a freight train that I couldn’t tame for years. I got my diploma like I said. I forgot your aroma and the sound of your voice. I make choices sometimes that hurt the ones around me only to ground me so no one gets too close. I break down and bring down, let down because trauma…doesn’t understand healing.
When I was 16, 4 in the morning was her last breath on Halloween. Trauma. Tragic trauma. It has made me strong and create these bonds with certain humans. It has made me frustrate and deflate others. I’m tragically imperfect and I don’t need your verdict to know. But yes this is me, this is my circuit. I try to rewire and resurface myself because trauma doesn’t understand healing. Healing understands feelings even the most unappealing feelings. So yes I am selfish because one day you will die too and I don’t know if I will be able to handle it.
