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Mother and Daughter and Daughter and Mother |
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I froze. A chill ran down my spine. Are they really all gone? Every. Single. One. My husband doesn’t care, my daughter is only months old so she doesn’t even know. But I do and it’s strangely reminiscent of someone I know. She decided it was time for a change. Which meant that she’d had enough of the drug life and wanted to clean up again. It didn’t matter to her that this never works. It didn’t matter to her that I had already attended three different schools and was only in the second grade. None of that matters to her, none of that she even comprehends. Schizophrenia is a selfish disease. Bipolar disorder is a selfish disease and she will years and years later be diagnosed with both. But my suspicion is that the bipolar traits she has are due to years of meth use. Self medication? Sure, maybe. But I think she just likes it. I did. The next step was to move in with my grandparents two states away. We had a car, but we rode the train. Frank, on again off again for a number of years, would follow us later with the car, which was loaded down with our stuff. In the trunk? Every photo album, framed picture that was constantly being moved from wall to wall of our “new” place. Our car, Ethel, would carry our memories from Nevada to Colorado shortly after we arrive. But Frank never came, the car was “stolen” and with it the only evidence that I had a childhood with photographic worthy moments. Months later after Frank never showed and the clean life wore off, we headed straight back to Nevada. Now, I sit at a desk in the spare room/office. My daughter and husband in the other room. My heart beats and my palms sweat and I feel like I cannot overcome the inevitable. I will become her no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try. Of course, this isn’t true and the longer I have zero contact with her the more I heal and become who I am supposed to be as a mother but I can only feel like I’ve done what she’s done. It’s not my fault, of course, that my eight year old laptop failed. That every photo I uploaded to it, gone, every evidence that I tried to give my daughter a different, better mom than I had, whirring and scraping it’s way into nothingness. But it sure felt like it. And now almost four years later. After finding that I had been a lot more meticulous than I knew, finding half of her life on a memory card in my husband’s digital photo frame, and the other half in the camera, memory card not uploaded and saved just yet. I cried. I had proof. I wasn’t like her and was redeemed by my inability to understand computers, programs and my incessant procrastination. Except here I sit, four years, new laptop, 1TB hard drive, multiple thumb drives and memory cards later and I am not as together as I thought. I read and researched and found that the external hard drive was my answer to all my lost data problems. Or so I thought. I cried again but this time only for a moment. The cloud. That’s where it’s at....where I should have been saving it all along. THIS TIME will be different. |
| I had some magic realizations about my 4 year old daughter today. She’s only been on this earth for four years. Literally half her life has been during a global pandemic. And yet she has the most innocent way about her too. If I could only remember the things she says. She absolutely cracks me up and her sweet questions, comments and concerns in this world sometimes shock me! Oh yeah, she’s four. She doesn’t understand sarcasm, don’t be a dick to your own kid. And she wants me with her all the time. I can’t remember a time when it was so simple. Bubbles and dandelions and rocks and sticks. Oh, don’t worry, they’re clean. At least the rocks and sticks that survive the laundry room. Why do I just take things people hand me? Luckily for me, pockets. Unluckily, nonluckily....? Unfortunately for my washer, pockets. The bike ride that we had the other day was so special and we had dandelions for rings and she carried a rock on the back of her tricycle and we raced. The sun was heading down, “the moon was coming up and long ago somebody left with the cup”...does music play in everyone’s heads? It was a fun afternoon. Today, we decorated for Halloween, well she let me, and then she tried on her costume. Well, she tried it on for me. She also stood up for herself tonight. She FELT that s***, again I can’t remember specifically what it was about but I had said something and she believed down in her core that I was wrong. And she was not going to back down and I realized that I am proud that she talked back to me. One moment I was like hell no you didn’t just argue with me then I turned and saw how sure of herself and I realized, my little non-issue (probably something stupid about spilling water out of the tub) didn’t matter. She truly felt like she needed to defend her beliefs. I saw that in her today and I WANTED her to win this fight so that she could see that when she really FEELS right and wrong, choose which one you want and be able to stand by that decision. Choose what you want and it’ll never be wrong. Choices come with consequences thought. Consequences of your actions, my darling, wonderful human, will always exist. But a consequence is not always bad. The word itself has such a negative connotation, but it literally only means the result of the choice. The sum of the equation. It can be good, too. |
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