I am still trying to think of ways to hurt you in response to your cruel indifference to my existence, the existence you created. Strange how I sometimes miss the feigned, phoned-in cherishing that brightened my life, not unlike an electric lamp does for a misdirected flying buggie of some kind, before extinguishing it for the pest that it is. Still, that light offered direction and warmth, and there was comfort to steal, even for a fleeting moment or with devilish intent.
And an insect I seem to remain as I still flutter to your flame, but your scathing is like a tickle over these thick scars of mine.
I was out of eye-line, out of earshot, when I felt the lamp come to life. Probably some of that crazy intuition we noxious creatures have. I could hear your voice somewhere in the electricity that is whizzing through the air, and like the sickening siren song that it is, I was tricked into feeling anything.
I felt a tinge of pain, and then it was a desire, for you to somehow be a part of my next fantastic milestone, my adventure of love at its peak, like most mothers are. I suddenly imagined your involvement in a context that I never really had before—that you definitely would not be there, or even be made aware it is going to happen.
My toy house is about to go platinum. My toyboy is about to become a toyman. The first among your little ones will take the plunge. The dress. The hair. The day. You will miss it all. You will miss it in its entirety. It will pass you by while you still breathe far far away, on the blanking, bare edges of my world, a place like the invisible outer bounds of a videogame land that looks like shit and offers nothing yet I still want to traverse because I know it is there. Unfortunately, there is no hand of a captain to pull my already dragging body back within the proper bounds, because this is real life, not Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom. The wind left my body and I felt like crumpling up. I missed you.
“It’s your moment,” says Pandy. “It’s your day.”
“Everyone has their choices,” says Andy. “She made her own.”
Of course, they’re right.
I know they’re right.
I carry this uneasy feeling in my belly as I force myself to imagine other things. Snow. Flowers. Friends. Things that I can interact with in this realm. Things within the boundaries. I bury it and there it stays—for a while.
And then your words finally hit my ears. It was like a message in a bottle picked up as I traverse the far seas, and it said,
“I don’t want to be involved with any of them.”
The words hit my mind like a basketball to the face, or maybe a club to the crown, yet I am filled with a diluted relief. My ambiguous feelings of longing were replaced with a familiar pain and disgust, something I now meet like an old friend. “Top o’ da mornin’ to ya, Sour Ol’ Cunty Feeling!” I say with a tip of my invisible hat.
Something you know, nothing to fear.
“Ya familiar ol’ ache burrowed deep within my ass, where have ya been chappeh?”
Ya know, what most people think when they process feelings of their mother’s.
I guess part of me admires the twisted forthright words you jammed into that messenger bottle before letting it plunge into the ocean, knowing somewhere in your weird little brain that it would reach us (evil witch). I acknowledge the cruelty you subjected that messenger to. Your words come from a terribly selfish place and bite with a coldness I know too well. You are unchanged.
I read the scrawled note and what was once a shock or stab is now the fly I swat away. You mean little thing. When you’re done with your petty chomp, go back up the hole from whence you came.” Like a bad itch, you flare up, and then you go away. Never here for good. Never here for long.
But there was something else that followed, something I had not truly considered, but consider now, just as I do the image of you not participating in our special day at all, when I once thought you would definitely be there, and then probably would, and then maybe would, and that consideration is this—you might never hear from me again.
January 14th, 2024
Written by Randa 