He trained me to learn that I got what I wanted from him (silence, boundaries) only by giving him what he wanted from me (my body). He used years of conditioning, controlling, harassment and intimidation to wear me down. Until I said “yes.”
Her face looked different to me, but I didn’t really know what exactly was different. It was puffy somehow. Then I realized that she wasn’t actually putting on her makeup, she was holding an ice pack on her face and she was crying.
Since I was a young man I’ve seen myself through the lens of a personal mantra; “lonesome and heartbroken.” That was my self view’s tenant; that I was born to be lonesome and heartbroken, and throughout my life many events, the loss of my mother or of loves I held closest to me, served to confirm this ethic.
The presence of my daughter will never replace the absence of my mother, but the mystery makes me feel a part of something larger than myself, something waiting right in front of me, regardless of what happens next.
While I sometimes found that endearing and even freeing, it didn’t take long for issues to arise because of our differences, inevitably discussed and debated. He was only two years younger, but our lifestyles and values were a generation apart.
Early childhood trauma—family addiction and alcoholism—marked me early and marked me deep. My reaction to insane situations is not the same as someone who was not marked by trauma.
I know you don’t know what you know until you know. And granted, I’m not a “new” mom, so I might be a little more piss and vinegar than I am sugar and spice. But I have to say that lately, so much of what I read regarding parenting is teetering on the edge of being the written version of stock photography
At twenty-six he drowned at his bachelor party fourteen hours before he was to be married, disappearing in the dark, deadcold of the Hudson River. And my newly terrible, foreign life began.
Losing your child takes away so many things. Feelings of comfort, stability, rationale. It’s a struggle to stay present, level-headed, keep moving forward. It feels like we’re winning to have a strong marriage that can survive the nuclear explosion of child loss.
Back in my chair I began to feel tired, and a deep sense of loss and sadness came over me. I felt resigned to the inevitability of the separation from loved ones that death brings.
