Janet died two weeks ago, whereas my mother died twenty years ago when I was abandoned to become a homeless teenager.
It’s strange to mourn so long after the fact. The nature of my abandonment meant I couldn’t explain it even to myself. Since then I have grown to an adult, lived a spell, and secured my own family.
It’s strange to even think about Janet/mom.
Dissonance.
So many versions of this person, now definitively only in my head.
Some of those versions I hate. When I talk to them I become filled with accusations and rationale, and they don’t care, because they aren’t real.
Some of them I fear. I don’t talk to them, I hide. From them, from their toxic miasma, and ultimately from myself. I want to say they aren’t real, but fear is a reality. I’m working on a plan to deal with fear, but honestly I struggle…
Many of them are larger than life, and I adore them. We banter and boast, my memory versus my experience. Not competitively, more… hmmm, what is it called when one feels free and light, without burden… Relaxed? I feel sad, too. It is them I wanted to meet Clover.
And then there is that shy creep I occasionally catch a glimpse of. I wish I could speak to them. But they aren’t a “them”, just a single memory of an all-encompassing hug, so full and warm that I can’t hear the noise and fear and uncertainty outside the hug.
I’ve been searching for that hug, perhaps only that hug. I’ve looked in all the right and wrong places, because I’ve looked everywhere.
Janet lived a hard life, helped a lot of people, cared and felt so much it hurt and constantly ran away, and passed in peace two weeks ago.
The memory of my mom makes me angry and afraid and lost. But I have love. I may never have their love, but I have my own. And that’s probably the best we were gonna get.