Untangling

Photo Credit: Matthias Neufeld from Unsplash

 You're gone now, not that you were ever there to begin with. But with the hole comes the affirmation that the pieces never really fit, like that Daniel Sloss comedy special that breaks people up. But instead of my romantic pieces being the problem, it is the family corner. The pieces never fit, one of my corners has always been kind of fucked. That hole has always been there, because you never fit, it's just when removing the pieces that have been jammed in place, actively hurting the progress, do I realize. Now I finally mourn, because I can see other people's puzzles and how mine will never look close to that. You warped me and hurt me throughout my childhood, in a way that I can never fill and can never forgive. Even if I heal, and I will, the scars of your handiwork remains in my puzzle.

Instead of being a normal child, I became a highly anxious one, trained from years of walking on your eggshells, discarding myself so that you wouldn't notice my existence enough to lash out at me. The emotional toll of being anxious and constantly "on" so as not to do "the wrong thing" (by an invisible set of rules), resulted in me internalizing the symptoms and feeling like the normal parts of me, the child parts; longing to feel safety, or actualize my fear of you, were incorrect and wrong. Society lectured me that my father loves me and that what I told them can't be true, and I just need to stop being anxious, I must be exaggerating. Well, let's just say that those that have never been there can't imagine the place, and those that have the unfortunate luck to find themselves there will never forget it.

So now-now I deal with the tangles that have been left over from the years of emotional abuse. The reminder of your hatred for me, as you mock me to anyone who would listen. The sound of waking up to your screaming in the morning, over some perceived slight that only you could have predicted. I comb yourself from the remainder of my life the only way I know how, practicing grounding myself and bringing myself back to the present, when hit by an emotional landmine. Some I don't even know exist, but they go off all the same, rocking me with forgotten memories and emotions so overwhelming I find myself years in the past. Sometimes I feel like a ghost of myself, but each time I find my way back; you lose. And you will continue to lose, because you're gone, and the shadows you have left just look strong at the beginning of the fight.