I have a tendency to down play situations in my life.
I laughed off my dad being dead.
What else is an 11 year old supposed to do;
Through the onslaught of sympathy and I'm sorry for your loses, the 10 pans of ziti, the obligatory funeral.
When it came down to it, it was down right funny.
Of course he would die.
Two weeks after my birthday.
A Friday the 13th no less.
That's when I first learned to minimise my pain.
To this day I struggle to see things I've gone through as bad.
I read the first chapter of "the lovely bones",
Feeling sick to my stomach that she was only 14:
But when I remembered my own encounter at 14, it suddenly didn't feel so young.
And my pain could not compare to that of the girls in those first few pages.
So did I even have any pain to begin with at all?
I convinced myself that nothing was wrong, so much so I believed it myself.
Nothing happened
Nothing is wrong
I'm fine.
Yet when I saw those cold blue eyes in the store
I didn't remember screaming.
Or falling into my mother.
I didn't remember crying or heaving.
I came too with a wet face and a room full of people staring at me.
My own mother didn't even believe that I saw you.
She thought I imagined the whole thing.
Even after that moment, to this day, I still struggle to remind myself of what actions occurred.
How a no still means no without a fight or a scream.
How not having a father still hurts no matter how many jokes I make.
How strained my own relationship with my mother is, no matter how many dinners and family functions I attend.
I have a tendency to downplay situations in my life.
A tendency that's going to be the end of me.
And no one will understand why,
They will just downplay the situations they saw.
Until my death is just a joke.
And how they remember me just doesn't click with what I've done to myself.
C.G.
YOU ARE READING
No one is there
Poetrypoetry book. all the things I've written that I could never say out loud. Some topics may be difficult for some people so check for disclaimers .
