Grief is a paradox.
I’ve chased myself in a circle for 8 years trying to find a way out of it, but in 8 years it got me nothing but pain. I feel the ouroboros.
Lately, I’ve grappled with this pain of wishing my mother could know me and who I’ve become, while knowing that in truth and in earnest, I do not become this person without having lost her. With that comes this impossibility to have known her more, as I am. I don’t even know if she would much like the person I am now. I know she would love me, she always did, but would she like me?
I’m bitey and curse a lot more. I know she would question some of the things I’ve done to the house (but I think she’d like some of them). I have bouts of anger inside me that I externalize as cold silence, usually when I feel my temper boiling over inside, I didn’t have that before. I have tattoos now. I want more. I still don’t shave my legs very often, something we got into fights about… frequently. And despite her warnings that I would grow out of a lot of my childhood interests, I still line up for midnight releases of Pokemon games. I’m still the weird kid with an active neopets dot com account. What would she think of me? Of my choices? I don't know.
However, what I do know is that the things I loved about her are in the things people tell me about myself. The things I like most about myself, despite myself.
When I sing in the car, I think of her. She loved car musicals and just… jamming out.
When I smile at a stranger and say hello, I think of her. I gave her hell for this a lot, now I do it as if its second nature. Its free. Its kind.
When I’m teaching and see that… spark… in a kid, I think of her. She loved her students. They loved her.
When I CRUSH a parallel parking job, I think of her. She used to get out and measure the space of the tires to the curb- a little competition between herself and nobody.
When a kid gets chatty talking about their favorite thing, I listen, and I think of her. She always knew how to listen best when a person was passionate. And that her smile and warmth might be the only kindness that kid would get that day.
When I have the confidence to be weird and curious and the biggest and loudest version of myself, I think of her. Very few people were as charismatic and charming as she was. Fewer did it without apology.
But this version of myself, the version that stands up for herself and laughs loud and swears in public, the version that loves to teach, the version that drives confidently into the city every day, the version that cooks for herself- often and well-… she doesn’t exist without the loss first.
How do you reconcile that? How do you be proud of that?
That I am now in my 30’s, the age when my parents had me, and as I remember and reflect on the time we spent together… the more I yearn to know her as an adult, longing to have a connection with her as… equals. And the more I think, the more I circle around these ideas. Who am I without the grief and loss? Can I only be the best version of myself in the shadow of her absence? I don’t know. Its impossible to know.
What I do know is this: There is a piece of her I carry with me forever. 8 years is so long, impossibly, and I still have to carry it forever.