Recognizing Hurt

Some month in 2020 (I think it was?) - spring, probably or June I crashed really hard. I couldn't consume anything without barfing it back up. A sip of water, an ice chip, nada.

Harald got up to go to work one morning and I managed to say enough crazy talk about turtles that he picked me up and he drove to the hospital. I had a broken shoulder at the time...so yes, June 2020.

I remember snippets of that day:

• In the car, while H ran to grab a nurse I kept saying over and over again: "mummy. mummy help me."

• Me asking a nurse if I was going to die, and she said "we're doing everything we can to make sure you don't, hon"and patted my good arm.

• Nurses asking each other if I was homeless (due to my neck to toe psoriasis). I don't have any memory after that, until a few days later when they let me out.

Weird. None of this had anything to do with my liver.. That organ was working away, and we were friends. [At publication, the two are not on speaking terms. - Ed.]

At home a week later, I happened to see the news, and they showed George Floyd's murder. With his last breaths he called for his mom. I lost it. I felt it in my bones, in all of me as a person. A cry to my mother is the last thing I expected to happen, given maman's shenanigans over the years.

i cried and sobbed liked a fucking baby, on the floor, and just rocking back and forth. For how long I have no idea. I don't know how to soothe myself, so I end up still raw and hurting.

One can never predict what they'll do in a scenario. I still yearned for comfort, in some deep, hidden place inside of my heart/head, clearly. It will never happen in real life, that comfort. I wanted to believe for a long time that I was iron-clad, resolutely against any contact with her, that nothing affected me. Well, that's a big lie.

So, in an effort to strip away artifice in this era (like the Age of Innocence, except call it the Age of DGAF) I have to learn how to be peaceful with this needy child, and love her. How? Now's the time.