The Shattering.

 I don’t know how else to describe what I’m experiencing other than as a perpetual feeling of shattering. The motion never completed. Just a groundhog day of an almost wreckage. Like someone attempted to pause it but instead it just got stuck in the juddering, blurred midst of impact. 

The sickly hospital perfume returns like a ghost. Wafting over everything. While I make coffee at work it’s all I can smell. I have to admit it’s in these moments that I do curse my sensitivity, to fully be able to experience a fragrance that doesn’t even belong here. A haunting. 

The waves of grief it forms knock me down. Like a punch to the chest. Winded. Imagining stepping back into that building. That ward. That room. 

On the train back to see him I feel half filled with lead. I’m scared he’ll look at me the same way again. Contempt? 

Or am I making it up in my head ?

My mum sends a text. Reminding me of his struggle to be a father. His “lack of personal resources”. People keep telling me to take care of myself first. As though it’s not a lesson I have had to teach myself. 

But I can’t still be a daughter? Since I do somehow have the resources he lacked. 

I can be mother, father, daughter, sister. 

I see it though, my need to convince myself that I am not even now - trying to win love by being someone, something good enough to deserve it. 

Embodying love, both because I want them to have what they didn’t as children themselves. But also what I needed too. To be wrapped up in love that would not disappear based on shortcomings or failures.