Saturday, December 22, 2007

What Was Once A Home

I am home.

Or what was once my home but now just a museum that holds my old memories. The memories of pain, of heartache, betrayal and guilt. But these moments born from agony, blessed by religion are not all bad. They are not all memories of broken devastation and morbid curiosity. Just most of them.

I sift through pictures of myself as a child, the pictures of me with a sheet on my head, of me playing Mary in the Christmas pageant and of me with a smile that says I know things will get better eventually. But pictures fade. The past whispers lies to our future. Lies of a child pretending that things will be all right in the morning, that god really is alive and this is just his way of testing us all.

Unconditional self-sacrifice. This is what I give and give and give. And continue to give.

I'm tired of being prayed for, of being told I'm not good enough. I'm tired of searching for some semblance of a life well lived, of the unending support of parents who don't understand what it means to give. I'm tired of trying to make them love me, of searching for their support and trust. That I'm living my life the best way I know how and it's not personal. I didn't become a disappointment on purpose.

In my heart, I know they love me. I know they want what's best for me. At least this is what I tell myself to stop the tears, to stop the dry heaving and self-hatred. This is what I tell myself when they come in beaming about a young married couple, a wedding of purity that was just performed at their church. Each word spoken is like a punch in the stomach, the wind is knocked out of me and I sit. I am unable to do anything else but sit.

When was I ever pure? When did I ever hold this fictional innocence they once believed I had? When was I ever the child they envisioned me to be?

This is what I am. This is who I am, no more and no less. My anger grows and I desperately want to end this search of peace and gratification. I know it is an endless quest to find the parents I had always hoped they would be. They disappointed me, they were never enough for me. And yet somehow twenty-five years later here I stand with all the hopelessness I felt at five. I will never be understood by these people, I will never be forgiven and most of all I will never be loved for this person I have become.

As I lay down to sleep in my old bed tonight, a little part of me that had held on to this place, this home, so tightly is drifting away. Soon this endless quest will end and another will begin. A new journey with attainable hope and realized dreams. A new journey to a life lived for myself.

No comments: