no shame november

My mother raised me to be a caretaker—her heart would break once, and then twice, and then three times, and then a fourth when she planted her palm against my cheekbone. “Take care of me,” tears would slip from the corners of her eyes and I’d pick up the shattered remnants of the wine bottle from the kitchen floor, stroke the crack in the counter where she had taken the meat mallet in a final display of passion, hang the smashed phone back on its hook. My sister would be crying in the living room and I would be calling my mother’s closest friends, “Please come over, my mother needs you.” And I would tell my sister to go to her bedroom and I would check on my brother to make sure he was still asleep. Then, one day with no warning, my brother left—barricaded his door with his computer desk and slipped out his window with just one bag of necessities. Then, one day, I was being dropped off on my father’s doorstep in tears, begging him to take me to my college orientation. In a week, I was packing all of my things into white trash bags, moving my whole life in two hours; one carload, across town. Everyone told me, “oh, you’re so strong, Alyssa.” They said, “oh, you’re so smart, Alyssa,” and, over coffee, my aunt’s glasses fogged with condensation. “I’m sorry,” she said to me, “I wish I had known.”

But I am chronically forgiving, love courses through my blood veins like sickness. Months passed and I thought I was somehow stronger, regardless. I had escaped, hadn’t I?

Then I met him. He was impervious to my charms, he didn’t find me especially beautiful or interesting, and that intrigued me. Boys, prior, had fallen at my feet like ash and I was foolishly bored. I gave him everything—for two years, I watched him delve into my chest cavity with both hands, dirty, and rip out pieces of my heart, little by little, until I had nothing left to give. He was bored and selfishly careless. I was vulnerable and excited; blindly willing. I grew tired, I grew sick, I grew heavy. Time slowed almost to a stop and I relented to my dreams, to a sleep thick and hazy like death, itself. I was reckless; he shattered my heart and I drank myself sick, he shattered my heart for the second time and I drove ninety miles an hour down icy and winding roads, he shattered my heart for the third time and I gave myself stick and poke tattoos to see if I had anything left to bleed, he shattered my heart for the fourth time and I didn’t eat for days. But I always returned to his bed, let him touch me, and my skin began to shrivel beneath his fingers—I could never be beautiful enough, I could never be intelligent enough, I could never be interesting enough; I could never trust him enough. I couldn’t lie anymore: my love had fallen to my feet, emaciated, and there was nothing left for me to give, nothing left for me to hold onto. In a week, I was packing all of my things into white trash bags, moving my whole life in two hours; one carload, across town. My mother called me on that day and left me a voicemail, “I was just thinking of you today, little girl. I hope you’re doing well.”

I haven’t spoken to either of them in over a month and I still cannot fathom the gravity of what I gave to them nor the gravity of the fact that I may never quite get it all back.

(alyssasayshello)