Lord, this is all overwhelming. I just keep puttin' one foot in front of the other, but I swear I'll never catch up.
Played phone tag all morning with that blankety blank university hospital, JUST trying to set up an appointment for so-called "financial aid," so I can get: my teeth fixed, my boobies squeezed, my hoohoo poked and MAYBE some damned glasses! Lordy!
That hospital can't find its ass with both hands, and I'm supposed to trust them with my BODY? Every number I was given was WRONG, and would give me ANOTHER wrong number to call! sheesh!
Next, I have to go to court about that warrant for my arrest. I have NO idea what I should do. And the metro courts give me the runaround and just scare the snot out of me, anyway.
But I'll have access to a car soon. Yes, me: a car. A real vehicle that has a roof and a heater. And locks. A thing I can haul home forty lb. sacks of dog food in, without it getting wet, or falling in the street and spilling everywhere. A thing that can go out at night, to poetry readings or late-night recording sessions at the radio station. A thing that won't blow over in wind. A thing I can use to move out of this slum with. A real car. Me.
So, I have to clear the warrant, so I can get a driver's license. I have to clear the warrant, any damn way.
I've tried, several times. But I just got this big runaround that didn't make any sense. And the clerk said, and I quote, "get the f... out of here, before I have you booked!" That's because I couldn't come up with three hundred forty dollars' something or other, just to see a judge! Jees!
I'm trying to get my genitals repaired, so I can sit in chairs for more than a minute at a time.
And here's the big one: I'm throwing my mother out of my psyche. She has beaten, torn, abused me for the last time.
I'm doing this miraulous work, bonding intimately with another human being. It's so nurturing. It's creative. It's healing. I laugh so hard I choke. I weep openly with joy, relief and pleasure.
But I tell myself these hideous stories, about how I don't deserve love. I tell myself I'm kidding myself. I tell myself...well, it's evil. It's not true. it mom, jealously keepimg me her slave, keeping me from loving, growing.
I hate her for what she has done to the MOST beautiful little girl! The torn genitals are just a metaphor, really. I can't be a grown woman, a creative force, a happy human as long as her old abuse causes me so much pain, mental and physical.
So, I'm learning to forgive myself. I took it on. I believed I was nothing. I learned to pretend and fake being human, while always under her control.
It's old, evil stuff. It'll take me time to get the idea I don't have to be ugly, frightening and incomplete.
I'm poor because I believed I was a failure, a loser. I was afraid to trust my own judgment, intuition and intelligence. I really believed I was the crazy one, not she. I really believed it.
Well, I can't do it anymore. I tried to hang on to loving her by remembering her singing, her art, her creativity. But I realized, last night, any clever tutor could have taught me about Van Gogh and Mozart, sterling silver and crystal, party dresses and Easter hats.
I didn't need a terrorist, a psychotic ego maniac, a filthy, perverted, cruel and paranoid fascist to "raise" me.
I needed a mother. I needed real love, nurture, support, encouragement. I needed a parent who would rejoice, just at the fact that I was alive and sharing space with her.
I never had that from my mother.
But it's why I love several women in my life, who came along at times when I was on the cusp of life-or-death.
I have one, now.
They all say the same things, the sane things. All of them hated my mother, whether they knew her or not. All of them helped me learn to protect myself.
And, here I am again: almost fifty years old, realizing more profoundly how the disabling savagery of that monster has kept me smaller, weaker than I really am.
I am grateful to those women, and Richard, who coaxed and prodded, pushed and cheered. They've kept me from drowning in my mother's filth.
I've used the word, "filth" twice in this one post to describe her. I've never done that before.
It's absolutely accurate. I've tried to accomodate her filth my whole life. I get it on me and have to either avoid people or try to cover it up.
But it's not my filth. I have nothing to be ashamed of; I didn't do it.
I need to cleanse and heal. I need to bury that useless, dead weight.
I need to free myself.
Nobody can see how beautiful I am if I have these layers of crusted filth all over me.
It's time to completely rebirth myself. It's time to mother myself.
toni Morisson once said she writes the books she would have liked to have read, if anybody'd been writing about poor, Southern Black girls.
Alice Walker said we write to save lives, including our own.
Well, that's what I'm doing. I'm writing the book I want to read. I'm sick of the old, sick stories I've memorized.
I want to live.
I want to love.
I want to come Home.
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