Yoga once a week is a start, as is taking a break from Facebook. The alternative is unacceptable. “I’m changing my life!” I call out to my husband as I post X’s and O’s to Facebook and slap the laptop shut.
I’m angry that the main thing about female anger is still “making space,” giving permission. I don’t want or need anyone’s permission to be angry. I want to be heard, understood. More than than, I want things to change, damn it, not a pat on the head and a gold star for “letting it all out.”
Sobriety has been a process of leaching the drug associations from everyday objects, including the veins in my arms. And I was hoping that even a former piece of drug paraphernalia could find a place in our silverware drawer.
Frida- “Mas tequila,” she weeps,
“mas tequila, Alma Luzita,” she laughs.
She pours a bit into
our cafecitos. A tiny
hummingbird pauses
between us, her
gift of green/red
energy, her
whirring wings,
silence.
Statistically, estrangement of a family member isn't unusual. Nor is it sudden. The final straw might be that someone brings the wrong dessert to a family gathering, but before that fateful dessert there have been years of tiny paper cuts.
I cannot be forced to donate blood, organs, or tissue, even when I'm dead, but in my mother's house, I had no say in much of anything to do with my body. Suicide ideation became a way of life.
She loved him more anything, with the possible exception of language, which she had relied on longer and known first. By language she meant words, which were perfect in their reliability, finite, fixed.
Two days later, (today) the facts are this: a young woman was killed. She was hit by a bullet meant for the gunman. In the reports of the incident, it says “the bullet travelled.”
On the day you were born I was the only one who heard the soft gasp of your first dry breath. My own breathing got caught on your beauty and I heard you become. Become what? Mine.
I have heard of women mourning the loss of their female identity, their wombs, their estrogen. But, I hadn’t stopped to consider. I have approached this like I did my cancer with the agenda being only to keep me alive. But this, this is different.
