1 À Maman

I don't quite remember my life.

Often enough I felt as a blind artist scrambling on the ground to grasp fallen pieces of a mosaic I created and forgot; cupping my hands around my masterpiece's scattered crumbs like a beggar.

Yet, those lost stumps are as hauntingly tender and vivid as the ghost of you.

I remember the way your eyes glimmered with glee when I, a perpetually dazed, clumsy toddler, scampered up to you with a crumpled drawing. I remember the way your voice lowered to a silky purr when I cried and cuddled close to you when I had a bad day.

You always seemed so big to me. And you were. You are. That much will never change. Your love is a galaxy-wide ocean and I'm a dull pebble around which it revolves.

I guess I'm the one who changed.

It started in a hospital chamber; a polished white cube who could've been Purgatory or Heaven's mirthless waiting room.

Your voice was soft and pleading like a kitten, and when you rose from your bed you had to lean all of your meager weight on my shoulder to stand.

I watched my certitudes sigh away to dust through blurry eyes, smiled and told you how much I loved you.

My hero, my model, my mother could not stand on her own, and I was lost.

From that moment on I began to find pieces of my mind I never imagined. Next to your selfless tenderness crept the silhouette of a familiar stranger.

I saw that woman push me down the stairs in a burst of fury, turning your beautiful eyes livid and wild.

She screamed for hours at the whimpering, heartbroken toddler I used to be, unable to understand what I did wrong .

I remembered her shoving her fingers down my throat clawing at a the remains of a stolen cookie.

She was sharp and brittle and unhinged as a glass shard, and she was you.

You. For the longest time I couldn't wrap my head around that.

The woman who jumped in front of a car to save my life, who fought cancer and depression for decades only to be by my side as I grew up, who taught me courage and kindness and honesty.

Took me years to see past the epic superhero of my childhood; months to grasp the baffling fact that you are, in fact, a flawed human being like everyone else.

I realized you were obsessive, unstable and suffocating, and worst of all I could never blame you for it.

You are the walking paradox of an impenitent redeemed, like a blind doctor who will risk his life for his patients and then slit their arteries during surgery.

You will never read this letter, it would shatter you heart to know how much you hurt me as you struggled to be the best parent you could be.

You never said it out loud, but I know you don't believe I love you.

You've always been so surprised whenever I did something for you, and your smile doesn't quite reach your eyes when I tell you how much you mean to me.

But I do. It breaks my heart to think how much happier you would've been if your daughter had been more feminine, more studious, or at least straight or neurotypical.

I love you, I love you and I'm sorry. Because your love is wonderful and endless and I can never give you but a sad and negligible excuse of affection back. Because I'm going to leave someday and you will never understand why. You'll think I have abandoned you like an old dog and I will never be able to make you understand.

I love you mum, and will always take care of you. But I can't waste my life away trying to achieve the life you wanted for me, because it is not the one I wish for, and I don't think you would understand.

Love,

your daughter,

Grougrou