GIRLHOOD, GODHOOD / lee fletcher

girlhood, godhood

godhood is just like girlhood; a begging to be believed

IRINA LEBEDEVA WAS BORN INTO A FAMILY WHERE THEY ONLY LOVED IF THEY HAD TO ----- A FAMILY WHERE LOVE WAS AN OPTION. Lauren Eden once said, "when you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off knives." irina felt like that most of her life, all of her life. she had to lick the love off the knives. she had to beg for the scraps of affection, like a dog, like a mutt. some claim the lack of love made her stronger but she didn't need to be stronger. she needed love, that wouldve made her stronger. there's no stronger force than the love of a mother, of a father. but that love was absent for her childhood and she ended up leaving her childhood home with a hollowed out heart thumping hidden behind her ribcage and sitting between her lungs.

at the age of twenty one, she disowns herself. she leaves her family and buys a small apartment in manhattan. and she meets a man ----- a man who smells of saltwater and reminds her of waves gently lapping against a shore, or the alien octopuses deep below the water or the sharks fighting for survival ----- like she fought her siblings for scraps of love. her hollowed out heart fills up. . . just a tiny bit but it's not as hollow anymore. but the hollowness returns when the man leaves shortly after she falls in love with him. he leaves her when she's two months pregnant and she never sees him again.

ANASTASIA LEBEDEVA WAS BORN SEVEN MONTHS LATER. her heart first beats outside her mother's womb at 04:13AM on the twenty second of December, 1993. she has a half brother in New York who's four months older than her, but she doesn't know that yet. all she knows is that she's been born into a world of agony. she's born from the pain of a women, the pain of her mother ----- from the blood and screaming of her mother. she is born into a cruel world, she would've preferred to stay in the womb forever ----- to stay somewhere away from all the harm in the world, to be protected forever. but that's not possible.

anastasia has been born into a cruel world, whether she likes it or not. she is a girl. girls are born with pain, it's embedded into their DNA. they are born with pain and that pain only stops at death. so anastasia waits for death. she had a burning, aching pain in her bones ----- she wants it to go away. so, she waits for death.

someone once said "trauma is generational." and anastasia fully believes that person. her mother suffered through the trauma of parents who were incapable of any form of love except for the greedy type of love ( but is that really love? ). and her mothers mother and father had the same things with their parents. her family has a long history of not loving their children or anyone else. "trauma is generational." her mother, a woman who sacrificed everything for her, is now a living corpse.

a daughters worst fear is becoming her mother and anastasia knows she is becoming her mother ----- she sees it when she looks in the mirror and sees the eyebags and the skin painfully stretched over cheekbones. she sees it in the pill bottles stuffed in the medicine cabinet and the way the glimmer of joy slowly fades out of her eyes. she sees it in the way she smiles less and laughs less. she sees it in the way she sees who her mother is now.