Happy Birthday my little Boy.
Today you are 22. I can’t touch you, hug you, or draw you a card. I can’t hear your voice or subject you to listening to my off key loud version of Happy Birthday. I haven’t seen you in just short of a year again. Last time I saw you, you were thinner, smaller, and still very angry with the 21 years of pain where I couldn’t make it better.
We all love you and miss you so much. Your little brother cries for you sometimes, I hug him and try to make a joke, we talk about how you could be surfing or skateboarding in California. Once he smiles, and moves on, I store away the pain he felt in missing you, in my heart right next to where I keep mine. My daily life now, is really nothing more than existence. for 25 years I was a MOM. That’s such a big word isn’t it darling. MOM. I made sure to do ALL mom things, and most definitely ALL of them the right way. I didn’t draw a breath that wasn’t used to power the MOM. My mistakes, my temper, my impatience, my ridiculous level of how things had to be. Nothing… They were all NOTHING.
This world and this you and me thing. It’s just so impossible. Why ? Honey, Why the hell can we not get along. Me to bend and you to calm and just love. Even if from a distance. Only when it’s safe for you. Only on topics that are safe for us. Your rules. Just like your sister. I don’t push in on her life. I stay back, and am here when she needs, and I still make her mad and hurt her feelings even though I try to very hard to monitor my every interaction. I would be so grateful if I could at least have that with you too. I don’t agree with everything you do. I’m not supposed to. I’m your mom. But I promise to curb my constant and chornic advice if you can promise to curb your temper. Can we meet somewhere it doesn’t even have to be the middle.
I drag myself through day to day, at this time of year I could probably go out in public and people would appreciate my zombie like movements and blank emotions. I have to tuck it all away. Smile, nod, be funny, listen, care. Damn it baby, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU ???? Can’t you get to a library and email me? Steal a damn phone and text me? Get arrested and have them call me? something… it’s your BIRTHDAY. I just want to tell you Happy Birthday… I want to hear you. Even if you scream at me.
What am I doing? This is your birthday. I will use one of the adorable old pictures of pictures from one of the other posts of you. Your adorable beautiful, gorgeous pictures that are to this day in every room of this run down, horribly empty, run down shell of a version of my dream home. Your silly birthdays with my always silly Halloween cakes I made for you each year. Remember the year I forgot the candles? ME? OMG. yeah and I had to use those big fat emergency candles hahaha, that year you had a Dracula cake, and I stuck a huge fat ugly white candle on his face as a nose. You loved it. But you know what. I had tried to place the emergency candle on the bottom of the cake instead of in the middle of his face but it looks like huge white vampire penis, so I put it in his face. Makes sense right? I mean. Obviously I was the perfect Mom. Not.
I’m not sure if I ever told you, but you, your PawPaw and Your Great Great Grandmother Kate were all born within 6 days of each other.. I am going to write down my memories of her, because well, everyone that knew her has passed away. So if anyone is going to know a damn thing about her I better get it written down. She played piano in the silent movie theaters, and had incredibly long silver hair she wore in a bun every day. She had a picture of the stereotypical white blonde haired blue eyed Jesus at a door in a garden with flowers and “light” that hung behind her couch. She was Walt Whitmans cousin and I have some letters and school books of theirs in the curio cabinet. Do you know who Walt is? Have you read anything by him? Are you ok? Are you safe? Are you eating? Are you warm? I could really give 2 shits less about Walt Whitman or a blue eyed Jesus. Honey. I’m so sorry you didn’t get the mom you needed, please be ok, please be happy. If hating me fuels you to do better and be happy than please for the love of god hate with me all your strength.
I have no clue what I am doing here. Like everything else I write to you facebook, texts, or posts here. You wont ever see it. The fact that I have left this place so empty and unused for nearly 2 years pretty much assures me no one will see it and honestly I think that makes all this much easier to write. SHIT. If you did see this. How shitty is it that I turned your birthday into an “all about me” type thing? right? I’m telling you dude, you and your sister really drew the short stick when it came to sound parenting. She’s been using that degree in psychology for a couple years now, I wish you and her could get together and laugh and talk about your screwed up childhoods were with a whacked out mom. See. I would rather have you two be close, or at least amicable, because when it comes down to brass tacks, family is all you have. I hope that one day she can move past, and you can move forward and you 2 can at least like each other. Also, I know you are very literal, so disregard the “brass tacks” comment, I do NOT want ANY tacks involved with any communications between you and your sister if there ever is any.
Shit. See. here I sit in the dark, purposely removed from everything that is the world today. Crying, ugly cry. My nose weighs 10 tons. My head is pounding, obviously there’s some pressure issues going on.
Snot dripping down my face, too lazy to even get kleenex because I have to get this out of my head out of my heart. Snot on my shirt. snot on my arm. I grabbed a roll of toilet paper and my bed is now covered with little white fluffy balls containing snot.
I will have to shower now, and put on clean clothes, maybe when my eyes stop stinging. The toilet paper balls of snot are disgusting. Remember how you always got spontaneous nose bleeds? GROSS. The Dr’s were like, ” Oh that’s nothing”… dude, would it not be awesome if we would have been cool enough to say something like, ” yes every time he uses his psychic abilities his nose bleeds” ahahah… Lord knows son, you were messing with the minds of the highly educated Doctors as a hobby for a very long time before I caught on. Looking back. Kudos my boy. I appreciate your stellar sense of humor in an act of protest.
Everyone says, Alex is just like your dad, and Sam is just like me… Sam’s pretty awesome, with all those degrees and steady job and good credit, and not falling in and out of love every time the wind blows. When you look at it like that, she’s not at all like me is she? I mean. You. you pick up and take off where the wind blows you, you see what you want to see and when you want to see, you do things that make you happy on a primal level, good, bag or illegal. You self medicate, and are the focus of every party, people instantly love your charm and enjoy your company and you either sore with the eagles or your crash to earth with endless internal pain… Hell honey, it sure sounds a lot like you are just like me. Not the me that everyone knows now, or the me that everyone thinks I am. that was the me was before I got all serious and became a MOM. yeah. So maybe when I was trying so hard all these years to fix all your mistakes and all the things wrong or broken with you, I was really just trying to go back and fix all the broken shit about me. Either way, we both ended up broken.. but it’s only YOUR birthday, so please find a way to let me know you are ok..
It’s good that I am alone. the audible guttural sobbing noises are making the dogs bark at the doors, I should let them in and clean myself up and go back to pretending I’m ok. You’re ok. It’s ok.
Happy Birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Dustin… Happy Birthday to you.. I will never stop loving you.
xoxo
Mom Out.
Previous Post in regards to “The Dude”
March 2012 – Is this living it only feels like waiting. or May 2011- Covering the scars of a failed Mom. and
May 2010- The 3 part extremely person and brutally honest series about a beautiful little boy.