most times i hate you, which means most times i hate myself and i hate that i do that... because this hate of mine, it really has to fight the overwhelming heart, that's me. i wasn't made to hate, dad
remember you said, i had to toughen up? remember you said, i was the best and then remember when you said i would never amount to much because i wasn't following your orders of structure and family pride? and remember when we laughed together on silly things? and remember all the zillion discussions of philosophy? and remember how you would give the shirt off your back to a stranger in need? and beat up your own child black and blue? and remember when you stayed up all night when we fell sick? and also carry me for my Grade 10 exams? and remember when i stayed up all night - night after night on the hospital floors, leaving my child to men who were trying to get to me by playing the child's father? and i hated that i knew that and had no options in that moment? (HATE! that word again!) because i was desperately, helplessly trying to delay the inevitable? and remember when i implored you to let go and not hold on anymore because the body you were in was beyond repair? and remember when somu and i held your hand and began coming apart in slow motion time lapse film, even as you were struggling to breathe? and remember how i was haunted by all consuming presence of your absence? the smell of death that hung in the rooms and clung to me, on my clothes, in my hair, on my skin? and i don't think i have been able to wash it all out yet, and remember when we went to cremate your body? because that wasn't you - i could hear you whispering inside my head and i knew this was never letting me go? and remember how i never did more than perfunctory rituals and crying, because none of that was for you.... you were not there.... and yet here you are. in all consuming claustrophobia if i let my mind even breathe in the direction...
7 years! practically a toddler, this unboxed grief of mine - am not sure, if this qualifies as grief, even. are the labels and qualifications necessary?
there are days i still feel you. there i am, going about my day - doing the adulting , the mommying, the politics fielding (and failing) at work and i find you in my periphery or inside my head - in all your narcissist and gregarious glory.
in the spectrum of grey - am still looking for the colour that can hold you.
quantum physics says you very much exist; do you think, unwittingly, i found a portal to traverse the dimensions?
don't worry though... am sorted, as much as one can be with the glorious mess of being truly fucked up and yet hopeful.
and don't fret though... it's a detached observation, as much as one can be detached whilst being part of the control system.
the observer creates the reality, remember?