I know what life is because I have lost it many times
the prayers my mother will never hear from me
**Content Warning: This piece contains violence, abuse and emotional trauma.**
prologue:
I have lived a life of danger ever since I was a child, it’s left me with what feels like a permanent sense of anxiousness for safety. Tonight, I was sitting with it, my eyes were welling up and I couldn’t understand why. I wanted to make a video about it for my other platforms.
After the third attempt to make the video, my composure just wasn’t staying, and the more time I spent with it the more I realized how much I’ve had to remain silent about and how much I’ve had to survive. How much I’ve had to fight death in the face of all things.
I breathe shallow, I breathe tense. My voice chokes. My eyes never rest, they chase everything. My ears never feel quiet. The ring. Loud screams. Loud bangs. Loud kicks to the dome. My ears still ring from it all and somehow I maintain an exhausting groundness. It is the best I can do.I sat with it all for so long and my tears kept pooling like lakes without waves, bodies of water with dead stillness overfilling for no apparent reason, no ripples to mark their fall, just stillness. The stillness of life and death.if I told you everything ma, it would pain you too much and I cannot bear to witness that
I can remember as far back when I was a little kid. Very little. He tried to kill me mama, and I did not understand why. His brothers killed the kittens I loved, and I figured he wanted to do the same to me. I can’t even describe the kittens to you mama, but it stayed with me, etched. Carved. Singed.
Mama, did you know about the time when I almost drowned? They saw them, holding me down, and they didn’t care. I said nothing. I stayed quiet like a mouse, quiet, so defenseless and easy to destroy.
Ma, you’ve told me this story many times, about when I was a child and I almost died in your arms; I never told you how I felt though, it would have pained you much more than what you saw. I didn’t tell you about the coldness. Did you know ma that the cold will blanket you like a thin blanket made of razors? You can’t tell if you are dying or coming to life, because it hurts, but at that moment, you are afraid of not feeling the pain, because your feet disappear. You see them. Barely, but they’re not there. That touch never left me, it left a mark that never went away.
Ma, I didn’t tell you what I had to do to survive, what the other kids just like me had to teach me so I could survive. I never told you why I had cuts on my hands, my face and elbows. I was a flower, fighting for my life and they trampled it many times, they hated flowers, ma. Especially the purple ones.
Ma, do you remember when I stood between the rage and you? I had gotten taller by then, but I was still insignificant. But I had learned how to bite back and not only bark. I had learned what it meant to survive by then ma. I made no threat to him, I simply gave you a warning to pass on because there would not ever be another warning. Did you see how I changed things? How I stopped something with my own hands? I learned to protect. I was tired of surviving.
Ma, the street taught me things I didn’t want to know, I didn’t know what else to do. My town knew my voice. Whenever I needed, she would hide me. I was hiding in her hills, do you remember looking for me? I’m sorry I worried you, but he was hunting me. My heart was racing, my vision was sharp and precise, you will never know how afraid I was. It would destroy you.
That’s why I learned to walk and talk like them. Men like them.
Ma, do you remember when my voice changed? When it felt like authority? Do you remember when the shift of my walk changed? The grace faded and the aggressive march began. I did not know what I was marching for, but my heels would hit the concrete harder than my toes. My hands became fists, and their delicate touch I had forgotten. You know what I had become, that is when my Voice became silent.
Do you remember almost a decade later when they put me in the white rooms? I never told you why, I told you the story that would keep me safe and not let you feel the pain. “It’s so I can get help, it’s okay ma.” I took their pills. I slept on their time. The man with the voices spoke about the Voices. I don’t know if he hurt me ma. I was a flower and I was put to sleep in the room alone with him. For fourteen days, I was put to sleep every night, at 7:30 PM. He was in a wheelchair, and he could still walk. I would lie facing away, until lights out and my eyes heavy would win.
Ma, for a brief moment, I knew someone I could trust. I made a phone call from there and she answered. She was not my lover she was not a fling, she was my only haven, she picked up the phone and knew it was me as she sighed in relief. Yes ma, I did love her, she made me feel safe. I am not sorry for that to this day.
I know how you raised me ma, but I did not feel safe in my home. It made me into someone else, someone feral and undisciplined with no partner I could trust as home. I was afraid of the knives in my home, ma. I was afraid of small glass items. I was afraid of everyone thinking the worst of me ma. I complied longer than I should have, until I remembered I had a bite. I was a flower, but I was on fire.
Ma the surviving hasn’t changed, the need for courage never waned. I am so tired, my armor is heavy and my blade blunted. My boots are uneven. My breathing is still shallow and stretched. Even now, someone hunts me. But this time, they hunt me because I chose to stay a flower, and now I have thorns, tougher stems and deeper roots. They think we do not belong on our lands, and they think your daughter is an abomination. Don’t worry, I’ll protect us like always. But, I’m just wondering—
when do I get to feel safe?
When do I get to feel held by someone who has my heart in mind? When can I let my heart rest and not feel the edge of betrayal wedging slowly in? I have not put down my tomahawk because I still cannot feel the grass of our lands under my feet. I see my feet, and they still don’t feel there.
