Mother.

When I was little I was obsessed with babies. I made one out of plasticine in primary school, mixing all the colours together. I can honestly still feel the joy pulsing through my tiny body. 

I (was told that I) ruined the plasticine for everyone else that day. No second chances. 
I got banned from living my six year old sculptural dreams because of one overzealous escapade. 
I struck a line next to feeling joy. I don’t know how many I struck before I began keeping all my joys secret. Private. Hidden. Filed in my little brain under “everything you love is wrong” 
Shame took over. I believed I had done this awful awful thing. I thought that it meant I was awful. I still hear echos of that antiquated self shaming in other people. In my family. We rub ourselves out and call ourselves names. Turning tiny, honest mistakes into opportunities for self flagellation. I don’t want it anymore. Your brain, your body. They will believe anything you tell them consistently enough. What exactly have we been martyring ourselves for? Being human? 

Anyway. I’m only bloody meandering like usual. (Perhaps it’s all one and the same) 

Babies.
Mothers. 
Mothering. 

Shame. And joy.and shame again…

And love. 

I don’t know what it means to be smothered. Not by too much love anyway. Only by just enough. What even is enough? Enough is too much. And yet, I still feel it is probably “less then”. But. More makes me feel embarrassed. Too visible. Sometimes I realise being loved feels like a heavy cloak I want to take off, put down.
Just so I can breathe. So I can be myself. Completely. Invisibly. 
Because what I learnt for certain growing up was that I couldn’t be myself and be loved. I would cast myself into vulnerable territory. 
Wanting to be seen. But feeling immensely ashamed if I was. If I am. Being seen feels indulgent. And there is a duality. To be loved for who I really am, is really fucking risky. 

Yep, perhaps this is all one and the same after all.

The danger of getting shamed, for all the things that I have believed make me terrible. Feeling joy. Feeling anything at all. The rejection. The admonishment, for feeling anything in a big enough way to have it be perceivable by others. For being loved. For being love itself. 
I wonder if that’s how my mum felt, whether every time she closed her bedroom door she felt like she could take off her cloak. 
And disappear from us and into herself where she felt safe. 
I wonder. 

I still feel like I should be able parent my parents. Regardless of how much I know it’s not my responsibility to. Part of me believes- maybe it is because I’ve done the work. I have always wanted to be able to love them in such a way that they will realise they were always loved. That they always deserved it even when they didn’t feel it. 

Because that’s what I wanted. That’s what I have had to do for myself. 

My dad has disappeared and my mum has been disconnected.

I didn’t realise just how much you can inherit from people who have always kept you at a distance. Because they don’t know how to love. Or how to be loved.