I never saw you this way before.

I never saw you... happy.

But I don’t think the old photographs lie. These were taken long before the Photoshop Age. The contentment was real, the smiles sincere.

At first, it scared me shitless. It hit me hard, turned me black and blue inside. You used to be just like me. I saw you cradling your children, purpose in your tired eyes and a smile no one can fake on your unadorned mouth. No makeup necessary - you were glowing.

How did all that slip so far away? How could it get so bad? So deeply and mercilessly fucked up? Your babies never left you. You never tried to leave them. Instead, you just... drifted slowly, violently, achingly away. We lost you long before you died.

Are we doomed as well? Are death, despair, and darkness all that lie ahead? Am I damned to lose it all?

Slowly, over weeks and months, my perspective shifted. Instead of seeing me in you, I saw pages full of “could haves”. You could have been there on Saturday: drinking in the summer, dancing to the music, celebrating your oldest boy making one more revolution around the sun. He would have liked that. He deserved it. In a way, this hurt him the most. He’s worn mourning under his skin for years now.

You could have come to the pool today. You could have watched three blonde grandsons soak and suntan and squeal in the mayhem. You could have had sticky-sweet popsicles in the backyard with us, then washed it all off with the hose.

You missed a little girl’s seventh birthday. You could have been there for that, too. It was all fairies and mermaids and unicorns. Real girly stuff. You would have LOVED it. Owned it. You were great at that, creating magic out of nothing. I saw it in the pictures.

IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. I don’t know how many times we have to scream it from our souls for you to hear it. Can you hear anything now? I hope now that you can see from your children’s tears that they never stopped loving you.

We don’t blame you, either. Not really. We always hoped you would chart a new course, make a great escape, even take just one wobbling step toward a better life. I’ll never know now if that ever would have happened. Your life didn’t end on your terms. That’s not your fault either, and it’s monstrous. All I know is that you never made that change while you still had the chance, and that’s what is gut-wrenching us all.

We will miss you. As wild and uncertain as your presence could be, your absence is sharp and painful and impossible to hide.

We will honor you. We will not pretend you never happened. We will speak your name and observe your traditions and tell your stories. And we will honor the five beautiful souls you raised up.

We will remember you. I will remember you as you WERE, the way I never knew you. I’m sorry it took your death for me to see you, to really see you. When you were free, when you had love without resentment and freedom without regret. I will remember the way you were meant to be, before time and abuse and fear left you twisted and jaded. I will remember the girl and the woman and the mother. The one who loved magic and tried to make everything special. The one who saw wonder everywhere. The one who still had compassion, even at the end.

I will learn from you. I will choose my road carefully and own my choices plainly. I will accept my children wherever and whenever, with unshakeable loyalty. I will know vividly that cruel words are seldom forgotten. I will try my damndest never to underestimate the influence of a mother.

All I really want you to know is that you are loved, no matter what else. For your kids to hurt this hard, they must have loved you just as deeply. Never doubt it. Please be at peace.

I knew I had been gone from Prose and from writing in general for far too long, but I had no idea that it has been a year since my last post. My absence has been eventful and worthwhile, but I realize now that writing will not fall into my lap. Like everything else of merit, whether it is education, fitness, or a good relationship, writing requires time and work; as we all know too well, success must be earned.

So I'm back! It's not yet New Year's, but consider this an early commitment to be more active in the writing world this year. I cannot promise daily or weekly activity, but there will be activity. I've acquired a copy of The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood, and my goal is to post my response to each prompt on Prose. Please read if you have time, and give me some honest feedback. I will try to do the same for others. Whether it ever becomes a source of income for me or not, writing is a talent and an important pastime for me. So I'm shouting this out on the Internet in the hopes that you will hold me accountable and help me grow as a writer instead of ignoring my own craft for another year.

Here's to 2019!

Gratitude is the purest form of happiness. Letting the rays of someone else's love warm your face, or simply enjoying a twist of good fortune as it elevates your spirit. Gratitude requires nothing, costs nothing, and imbues the soul with joy. Gratitude is the feeling that poured over me when I saw my son's face for the first time, and I knew that we would both be all right. Nothing to repay - just the sense that I had been given an immeasurable gift.

Indebtedness is when the ink of guilt seeps into your gratitude, stains it darkly and drains it of joy. The pang of seeing one's own good fortune in stark contrast against the scarcity of others. Perhaps the receipt of a gift that came at too high a price. Or an unspoken loan with too steep of interest to ever truly be repaid. Often we are afflicted with it unintentionally - not through the will of others, but by our own demons. I was given a gift from my earliest youth, one that I can never repay. It has only been in recent days that I realized that I was never asked to. A gift is given freely, and cannot come with debt. Indebtedness is the torture of the mind that has not learned to accept freely, and simply love in return.

I am squeezing every arduous word onto the page.

I have been cocooned for a very long time now,

And I forgot what it felt like

To imagine.

I am a soul of creativity

Locked in a concrete tomb of repetition repetition repetition

Habit-forming repetition

My choices now are to resign

To repetition

Or to try to climb

Clumsily, awkwardly, painfully

To risk waxing melodramatic

To try foolishly...

Better a fool than another piece of concrete.

I live among monsters.

But it's not the monsters I'm afraid of

Not the shadows

Not even the scars

It's the thought of slowly forgetting

That anything better ever existed

That chills me to the core.

Of surrendering hope for practicality

Trading irreplaceable time for sensibility

Of waking up old, and creaking,

"But wait! I was going to..."

I am jumping

Because staying on the ledge

Is more frightening than the fall

I am in motion

Because staying still is cowardice

And hesitation is death.

I've hesitated long enough.

And now, as I dribble each word

I am alive.

Slow, clumsy, emerging

But alive.

You have to make a choice

between the needle and the strings. 

I wish I could stand beside you,

tell you everything will be all right.

But the choice is yours. 

I hope you live.