christmas card 2024 (Patreon)

I write to you from my childhood home where the dynamics are electric as ever. the unifying thread running through my relationship with my parents is this long-held belief, or fantasy, that they would understand me if only I could explain myself clearly enough; given the perfect words, and the delivery of these words with a sweet and measured temperament, I would be seen by my parents with understanding, patience and gentleness; I would be seen the way I feel I am, instead of as the role they need me to play in the play they think we're performing.

well, too bad. to the stage, my volatile and childlike mother, my unfeeling and judgmental father, and their miserable eldest daughter.

I'd only been in the state for an hour. my coat was still on. we were talking, unavoidably, about the video, and it was going poorly. mom wasn't so amiable in person, with dad around. the talking grew thorns. between justifying his bouts of cruelty on the grounds that I had treated him poorly as a child, dad said he didn’t like how I used the video as an opportunity to victimize myself, or that I endorsed psychedelics. he said, you've misremembered what happened and understated your own deviance. fine, fine. I outlined the specifics of my hurt as a defensive measure. mom, sobbing, tore away and went to bed. dad moved to the couch and flicked through television stations. I stood crumpled by the tree, jagged punctuation, glaring at the television just to have a line of sight. I couldn't register what I was looking at. pixels. shapes in a shape. my body fizzed. in this moment my new world felt not just inaccessible; it was as though I'd never found it. I was not an orb. I was a histrionic child puddled on the living room floor.

from the couch, without looking at me, dad said the thing about fluorescence, the world being fluorescent, whatever — it doesn’t sound like you. the implication, I think, was that I was lying about my happiness, or making it up. dad likes to tell me I’m a sad and difficult person, that I was born dark, and uncommunicative. it hurts me badly. for a long time I believed him but now I know it isn't true. so I disappear for a moment in the silence he leaves and return with so many of my thoughts these days are about coming back to myself as a child, that brightness, remembering myself; so if I was born uncommunicative, why is it that I want to speak to you so badly now? why is this what I am now? 

dad glitched. I don't know, he said, and smiled oddly.

fine, fine.

the light rinsed. he said it again. I don't know. what power there is in an I don't know, which sometimes communicates ignorance, and sometimes communicates an unwillingness to think. I had hit the hard slate of his mind. this was as far as dad would go. and so I understood: dad must believe that my misery is somehow attached to my personality, because he is unable to look at the reality of the dynamic that perpetuated my misery. he can't see me without first seeing himself.

still, I apologized so he'd hold me.

the next day I waited for my parents to go to work and then screamed freely, which I could do because we are in the suburbs, this land of separation. the scream cleared a path: I came with the perfect words, good faith, understanding, beauty, a small army of you who saw themselves in the story I told, and still I couldn't reach them.

...and the freedom of this!

all this work I've done, and they still don't see me! it's not communication that binds me, not an inability to express myself, not a failure of explanation, it's a limit of comprehension; color cannot be languaged into color blindness. in this way the work is finished. the work resolves itself.

the people who made me don’t know what I am. so I heal myself. I name myself.

for now: around my parents I will play their miserable eldest daughter, this difficult thing they believe they own. I'll 'roll my eyes'. I'll say things like, ugh, and, I'm going to my room. my acceptance of my role as a role gives me a sense of control and duty in our relationship, the ability to participate in the dynamic while remaining outside of it. I'll do it to keep reality from fraying. I'll do this for the next few days, until I go home. then, I don't know.

I wanted to say something here directed at those of you also in the thick of the season...that soon it’ll be over and we’ll all return to our lives...but I can see now...there is a participatory element to all of this...these moments aren't interruptions....there is texture here, learning, information....this part is also life.

sav