Know My Pain

April 20, 2020: A Letter To Blake

It's been a month since my mom and I have really talked. Thousands of people have died in the States and I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how I would cope if she got sick and I never talked to her again. So I text her and asked her if she wanted to video chat with you and she said yes. Because she will always want to talk to you even if she and I are fighting. And love of my life, precious child of mine, your grandma and I will fight a lot in life. We're just different people. We don't communicate well. We're both sensitive. Don't ever feel like you have to be mad at her in solidarity with me. My battles are not your battles. She's a wonderful person and I know she'll love you forever in the most grand way. This book is about me, and my life, but you should know that your grandma was raised in a church that didn't allow dancing. DANCING. Okay? They were strict. And it takes time to shake off some thoughts when you've been raised with them, even if you want to rebel with all of your strength, sometimes those ideas and thoughts creep back in uninvited.

I also want to make it clear that while I might spend a lot of time talking about childhood trauma or things that held me back or things that I thought my mom should have done differently, I've never thought her to be a bad mom. Being a parent is this incredibly complex job where every day you wonder if you're doing it right or if the smallest act is the thing that is going to send you to therapy for the next 10 years. It's exhausting. It's terrifying. And I think she did the best that she could. But I read somewhere that you spend all of your life trying to not fuck your children up the way that your parents fucked you up and it fucks then up in whole other ways. So this is maybe a thing about her, where I don't blame her, but also a thing about me, where I hope you don't blame me.