Day: October 11, 2020

Unconscienable Grief

Mom, I need some distance for a while. Unfortunately,
when you call, I am filled with anxiety, and I have
a meltdown over it. I’m calling friends and strategizing
how I am going to talk to you. I am having a hard
time forgiving what happened last year. I’m not
sure that I can forgive it, as much as I try. In part
because of the failure to recognize everything I
already did for my Dad’s memorial and then
marginalized and maligned against advocating
for him while everyone to see him open his eye again.

You chose to listen to the least informed person
in the room, who was distracted with her own
marital discord, making perfunctory displays
and lecturing me about something she
knew nothing about.

Defending myself at my Dad’s deathbed
was an excruciating betrayal as are the
alternative reasons that are offered for why I fled.
I didn’t leave bc it was so hard for me to see him pass;
I left because of what you said and what she did.
I was being attacked, and it wasn’t safe for me to grieve with you,
and later, not safe for me to drive back.

When I did return, I was being punished,
and the last gift I made for my Dad has an alternative
version by someone who didn’t know him. I haven’t
had a chance to really grieve losing him, bc
I’ve replayed this useless drama surrounding it.
I’m going to block your number for a while for my
own peace of mind. When I am able to contact you
again, I will. I hope you understand.

Introspective

During my late teens/ early twenties when I was dabbling in pharma culture with my metal singer/ former navy badboy boyfriend I had a lot of night terrors where I would wake up screaming. The dreams would very often be about rape or being chased, sometimes I’d wake up in a lucid state and see spiders on the wall.

In my desire to shift my focus to different spaces I latched on to mythology and folklore as an outside anchor. While I was working at Shiki’s the japanese restaurant in Cody Wyoming, I put my previous cultural knowledge to work by getting into my own artistic representation of the Jurogumo ( a spider woman that would feast on handsome young men).

Recently I revisited this theme, playing with a sketch to see how my skillset took to the task so many years later. I haven’t touched it in a few weeks but my husband was telling me how he woke up the other night swearing he was seeing spiders pouring out of the ceiling.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about….