Twenty four years ago my father blamed me for his marriage falling apart. Let me warn you now, this post comes with heavy content warnings of abuse (all types), poverty, war, maybe suicidal ideation and sexual abuse, proceed with caution.
A week ago my brain was so swollen I felt my guts churning into a pit of excruciating pain. I get migraines monthly, the worse I eat the worse they get.
Silence hurts my soul more than anything.
In my mind I deserve it. I deserve to be left behind and forgotten. I don’t even want to be seen in the first place.
Even as my logic knew that my father was the one who caused physical, emotional, sexual and psychological pain to my mom and that was why she closed herself off from him only staying because of social isolation (as an immigrant) and poverty, even knowing these things, the part of my heart he used to snub out my soul believed him. Cognitive dissonance hurts.
She tried to escape, she made many plans, but she would foresee my sibling and I hungry, homeless and scared so she would stay.
The system would accuse her of neglect.
Today, as I have had nothing to offer my readers, my listeners, my friends or family anything more than a lump of despair and worry; I don’t want to do anything. I know I am a burden. The system agrees and lets me slowly bleed out as I am disabled, brown and perpetually sad.
My physical agony last week has left my spirit barely holding on. It takes all of me to not want to disappear. I took one ibuprofen 200 ml that had been expired for over a year. I didn’t know until I already took it. My body is still paying for it now.
I have nothing for you but my existence. I can’t say myself that I think much of it. In one weekend I’ve lost my hopes of keeping a roof over my head and my best friend, only a week after losing someone I thought was a friend. Honestly, I feel stupid thinking anyone would ever stick around me and my life. I see no logical reason anyone should care muchless can I feel I am worth caring for at all.
Eleven years ago I was paying the price of over medicating myself on ibuprofen to push down a 103°F fever to 99°F to keep my ability to go to a part time job as I worked through bronchitis. That year I learned what the pain of an ulcer is like, while Mom was bringing food home from the cafeteria at work because they took the funds from her paycheck and that’s the only way we could eat, she’d say a prayer for me every morning. Praying is something she always did, asking god to keep us fed and safe every day of our lives (my sibling and I). One of those mornings I decided to call in as I was having fever dreams and couldn’t breathe I heard an audible voice “god is always with you, Sabi.” No one had ever called me that in ny life, I adopted that name just after I started therapy in 2020.
It was a voice I never heard before and in those times that I was a Christian girl it felt like the universe was caring for me. I still felt weak, useless and like a burden as the people in my life then made me feel the weight of my depression and I had to fight just to have community.
I was doing everything I could to keep my family housed. Mom was doing everything she could to keep my family housed. It was her and I against the world.
This morning I gave her our usual “breakfast” some cheese crackers and a drink. She doesn’t know who I am aside from someone who cares for her physically, the hand that feeds her. I’m too weak and frail to spend much more than a few hours with her. These days the hours are getting to be less and less. My ulcer pain is back and I can only guess it’s because of the ibuprofen I took last week. Sitting up makes me want to vomit. My heart is breaking because Mom won’t understand why her belongings will be left behind or why she will be overheating in a car or why my bunny will be dropped off at a vet clinic never to be seen again.
Moving here left her in dread every day for about two months. She still can’t grasp that this is our home. Our things are still in boxes and I wasn’t able to bring most of anything, a lot of what I had to leave was hers as packing made her have panic attacks and terror.
Did you know my mom survived a war? Did you know strange men broke into her house and lived there rent free claiming it was government property? She was a newly wed, recently abandoned by her father (who told her she chose her fate when she tried to escape my father who started physically abusing her as soon as he moved her to the capital). My father’s adoptive family had a small farm and to the new communist government that meant they were “too rich” and that’s why they confiscated my father’s home to have soliders and their wives life there. My father’s aunt was also a nurse for the president that they assassinated. Some time later Mom was forced to leave all her belongings to move to a whole other country, not USA yet.
I usually don’t share these stories, they never felt like they were mine to tell.
Mom told these stories often along with history of my estranged homeland, to anchor me to my roots, to tie me to my people and their strife, to keep my indigenous pride, to remember what the white people’s system has already erased in their telling of history within one generation.
Some years later, maybe ten or less, my brother was born. My father cheated on her, sexually abused her, brought strangers in and out of their home to get drunk and do drugs. Some time after that she learned I was coming into this world. She prayed that I wasn’t a girl. She felt women face too much pain in this world for her little one to have to face. Her father died about a month before I was born.
Mom was in despair, she wanted to go home to say goodbye; my father shamed her for it, using me against her, saying she was putting me in danger for selfish reasons. Later that day he was playing loud party music as if to celebrate my grandfather’s passing. Mom was distraught, grieving, felt dismissed and hurt so asked him to turn it down, she was in emotional pain. My father, again used me against her saying her crying was going to hurt me. When she cried more he beat her abdomen trying to kill me. I often wonder if this was when my system learned that my existence is toxic to everyone I love and if they dare to love me I will bring pain unto them.
I usually don’t share these stories, they never felt like they were mine to tell.
Now Mom has seeming reverted to sometime in her childhood, looking and longing for her mom (my grandmother) asking why she left her here. “Here” being a strange home with me, some odd person or maybe her sister, (the one who used to beat her or the other sister Mom used to help raise, I’m not sure which she sees). I tell Mom that grandma ia taking care of Dalilah (my past emotional support bunny). Any of my family who has passed and Mom asks about I tell her the same just to avoid making her grieve a loss she was never allowed to grieve and that she can’t understand nor carry right now.
Every day I feel toxic. The only person who loved me has no idea I even exist. Now because of my disability she’s about to live her last days in terror and confusion, and I just have to watch and let it tear me apart until I also live my last days. Our only comfort, my emotional support bunny, gone to some unknown future. My sibling will make sure to call me useless and lazy telling me how little I am capable of and will send his wife to reinforce it. I don’t dare reach out, I’m no contact for this reason and many others.
Had I just let myself lose my mind a year ago in some other coporate place while my mom sat in her feces and crying all day until I was done with work maybe we would still have a home where people were killing each other outside and threatening to kill me and we wouldn’t have a place to shit or shower but maybe we would have food. No one really cares about my art or music or anything I create but my extherapist convinced me it was needed.
I have no hope. I don’t know why I am even writing this.
Maybe to say goodbye to anyone in the future who might read this. Even now my only wish is for anyone out there to not feel alone or feel less alone.
My happiest moments this past calendar year were along side a man who has probably already forgotten me. He was a kind friend. I feel stupid as I knew I brought nothing to his life but he made me laugh, he made me feel seen, he made me feel heard and for many weeks he helped me not think about all this pain. Sadly, as TAM always claimed I do, I pushed him away and he probably hates me now. I couldn’t shut up about my fears and pain about this world. I still hope maybe stupidly that he will talk to me still. I even partially wish the other friend I let go last week would care to reach out. I’m probably a fool. Silence hurts so much.
He reminded me of other friends who made me laugh, who made me feel seen and who made me feel heard. Friends whose own struggles and life have made us unable to share time or stories.
They say friends are chosen family. These friends didn’t seem to want me for my music or drawings or writing or videos or photos or anything I created. They did, however, make me feel safe to share them candidly and unashamedly something I always wanted from my sibling, something I didn’t even dream of getting from my father, something I was too scared of sharing with my mother as I felt she would let me down and become like the others in my family.
All my life I have just felt alone. I suppose I deserve it, that’s how it always felt. I don’t believe anyone deserves to be alone. If my life is worth anything I hope it can be to make anyone feel less alone.
I had to pull out of Save and Raid I have a lot of feelings about what happened after I let them know. Honestly, they’re better off without me, but I just needed to let people know since someone might wonder why I won’t be there. I don’t know if I will have a home then but why have some suicidal bitch in your charity event.
I don’t know how long I have on this earth. Poverty feels like cancer.