Yes, it's me. Do you know who I am? Do you know what I'm capable of? What I've overcome? If you really saw me as I am, just maybe you'd be proud of me.

I remember my childhood, though not in the way that you might. I remember all the yelling and fighting. I remember spending the nights hiding away just to get away from all the commotion. Just hoping that you wouldn't notice me.

I remember back in high school when nothing felt good enough. Every A was shrugged off, every failure left untended. My life became a void and you never even noticed. Trying so hard to please you while never getting the approval I so desperately craved.

I know you've rarely approved of the decisions I've made. Remember back in college, when I took that year off? I did it to try to care for myself. I was making the best decision for my well-being that I could. Yet you chalked it up as another failure. A sign that I could never be all you wanted. I'm not a projection of the life you wish you lived. I'm just me, trying to live my life as best I can.

Remember years later when I told you my diagnosis? I do. I remember your desperate attempt to change the subject. You did not want to believe I was sick so you pretended I wasn't. It got locked away in an overflowing chest of unwanted discussions. All I wanted was for you to finally listen. I thought you were ready. I was sorely disappointed.

Our relationship has never been the same since that day. That was when I finally realized you'll never see me for who I am. You only see me as a projection of yourself. A projection of the life you never lived. I finally began to understand that I will never be able to truly be myself with you.

There's so much I want to tell you. No matter how old, everyone wants to be able to go to their parents when life isn't right. Yes, I still have nights where I want to burst into your room to tell you all about the monsters under my bed. I will never be able to do that again. For I know now that you'll just tell me they that the monstors don't exist. You will never be ready for that kind of honest relationship.

I'm hoping I'm wrong. I hope someday you will finally be ready to see me as I am. Maybe some day I will be able to start telling you of the monsters under the bed again. But I see no signs of that changing. So for now, I'll just keep daydreaming.

I understand. I fully understand what you mean and what you say, and how they change, how they're different, how their projections of dreams and goals that seem to jump further and further from you with every mistake. I understand why I have never had a conversation with my mother without hostility and/or raising voices.

I understand everything you say is charged with something that doesn't involve me. I understand that your love for me is there, at the core, truly there, but every mistake is a chip off the wrong marble slab, and I understand how distressing even the tiniest err to a masterpiece can be. I appreciate being shaped into a lovely human by two talented and worth artists, but you were not sculptors when I arrived a rough block prism two decades ago.

You were not yet skilled marble sculptors when you first began hammering away at your joint project of me. I understand that your learning mistakes are frustrating for you, but imagine how frustrated I could be in return. Imagine the dismay you feel after chipping off a sliver too big from the nose: The vision you were going for, wasted, but think of how the art piece might feel to know after it was completed and glorious, that its nose was not satisfactory for its creator. Be careful how you treat your mistakes, because others might mistake them for theirs. Do not get mad at me if I turn out exactly like you shaped me to be.

I don't care what you were hoping for. I appreciate it, and I appreciate all the support, the help, the opportunity that has come to me because of your work. But be careful how narrow you set your sights. Because of everything you've done for me, to me, because of me, I will be spectacular, and I will impress you. Just don't set criteria for how. Trust yourself, trust your work, and just know that I will.

If you hope for better, I will get worse. You can impress everything you want onto me, but I will only absorb what I will. I can understand you and be considerate without having the same thinking and frame of mind. I can agree to disagree. Can you? Can you listen without interruption and without interjecting argument? Can you listen to what you're told instead of listening to speak? You've awarded me many skills, and I can never repay you for that, but you are always learning as well.

You have had your first draft. The grand performance unfolds as you had encouraged it. Learn. And apply your knowledge to your other projects.

I'm not your only investment. You have two other children who didn't have the luxuries I did. Invest in them as if they were just born. Whether or not they pale in comparison, art evolves as it's made, and again as it's perceived. Just because I fit your expectations at their age, doesn't mean they're behind. Help.Them.Catch.Up

How can you hope to model them like me and talk down at me at the same time? How am I the expectation and below the standard at the same time? What you say and do have to be consistent with how much you care. We can tell when they're different.

I understand how hard it is to be a good parent and be a kid's friend at the same time. I understand how hard it is to work and provide and be present at the same time. I understand, I understand, I understand. Just because I don't go through something myself doesns't mean I can't feel what you feel. You may no longer be empathetic, and maybe you can't be sympathetic, but I can. Children can. And later when you have more time to, you'll see how they've been numbed like you were. Wake up now, do it now, care and cherish and parent now. Plan ahead, of course, yes, but live now. Be our parents now.

I was raised by school teachers and classmates, and only by my grandparents when they retired. When you are with us, be with us. Your work is not your life. We don't measure love by how much time we spend with you. We measure it by what happens, how it feels when there is time. And honestly, all I know from you is heartbreak, reprimand, complain. If I never wrote letters to my wife the way I did, I would've completely forgotten about our little letters in the nightstand drawer when I was learning how to write. I have one of those letters still. Nowadays I wonder if you bothered to keep mine.

If I didn't save up money to go to Disneyland for Gradnite, I would've completely forgotten how we used to go to legoland, disneyland, the zoo, every year when I was little.

All the good times I can remember were before I learned how to lie to you to avoid punishment. Read that again.

I understand what it takes to sustain our lifestyle in our day and age. I understand the slavery to industry and I understand that it sucks. What I don't understand is how I could possibly want to be like you when I've nearly forgotten all the parts to love. I don't know who my own parents are, and I've lived with them all my life, seen them just about every day, and yet a crispy old birth certificate knows just about as much as I do.

How can I tell you I love you if I don't even know you?

i

know

that

i

remind

you

of

your

sister

but

i

am

not

her

we

have

twin

personality

traits

even

i

can

see

the

whispers

of

her

in

the

way

i

act

speak

think

but

that

doesn't

mean

i

will

end

up

like

her

it

pulls

at

you

subconciously

there's

a

flicker

of

twisted

recognition

in

your

eyes

before

you

pick

me

apart

she

and

i

we

both

have

poisoned

minds

but

there

is

more

than

one

type

of

poison

i

can't

change

not

for

you

not

for

myself

so

hate

me

for

who

i

am

not

for

who

she

is

I wish you wouldn't yell,

When you know it's not my fault.

I'm not sure you know,

but every single time,

it makes me want to cry.

Sometimes I know that I'm the reason.

So I will try to fix it,

but you just yell over me.

Most of the time we get along,

but these days there seems to be something wrong.

I understand disipline,

But I wonder if all this noise is needed.

I just wish that you wouldn't yell.

Calm down, and then tell.

I know that we could get along fine,

if you just stopped acting like it was a crime.

Now I know there are some things that I need to fix,

And that's on me,

But I wish you wouldn't yell.

To my father:

You are the reason I tried to kill myself so many years ago, and are the reason I sometimes wish I succeeded. Had you never asked me that one question, the scars on my arm, my heart, and my mind, wouldn't exist now.

To my mom:

I'm sorry. He, your husband, killed the joy and innocence inside me... That's why I'm so different now... Because I finally realized exactly what he did.... I hope you can forgive me. Had I known then... I would've come to you sooner... And when I learned... I was too scared he'd hurt me...

“What I really wanted to ask was if you did it on purpose? Did you plan it for a long time? I mean, I could never understand why you insisted on maintaining unhealthy habits, knowing they were killing you. I couldn’t understand how you couldn’t stop drinking when you had everything you needed. Everyone loved you, at home, at work, strangers. I didn’t understand why you still weren’t happy. Why you still needed to drink and drink and drink.

“So, I really wanted to ask, did you do it on purpose? At some point, did you decide you wanted to die but you couldn’t pull the trigger in that gun in your closet? Or maybe you were thinking about us or your soul? You didn’t want your wife to have to find you? Or God not to forgive you? Did you figure drinking yourself, killing yourself slowly would be more forgivable? Maybe get us used to the idea so it wouldn’t be such a shock? We got to watch you degenerate so that you looked like death long before it came. Was that your plan?

“I really wanted to ask you if it was that miserable, that hard, did it hurt so much, did you suffer so terribly that you couldn’t find reason enough to live in your wife, your child, your soon to be born grandson?

“I really wanted to ask if you changed your mind at some point, realized it was worth holding on but it was too late? You had already succeeded.

“Well, I just wanted you to know that I think I understand now. And I think you were right. I just might try it myself.”

It's not just my parents, sometimes it's my grandparents, sometimes it's just people. It's what everyone wishes they could say when they can't form words.

Sometimes it's "I'm sorry."

Sometimes it's "Pease stop."

No matter the day, in my family, there is always somebody yelling.

When I panic, it's both.

When I'm mad, it's neither.

"But it's always good to be polite"

When you family is in a shouting match, does being polite matter?

Why do people say "Just practice, You'll get better."

Especially coming from my parents, it's so infuriating.

Take it from me. When your parents tell you, "Just practice"

Tell them that isn't how it works.

Mom. Dad. Hi.

You've ruined marriage for me.

I think this way because you guys are still married even though you both gave up on each other years ago. I remember experiencing the crumble.

Your marriage is so broken. I wish you were divorced, and it's clear you divorced each other in your hearts years ago. I still struggle to accept the details that my dad was the one who wanted a divorce, that he said all those awful things to you, mom, to make you feel less than your worth. Yet all I see these days is my mom buried in some man she's never physically met, and it makes me angry.

I'm better off single if this is what marriage is supposed to be like. I'm so afraid of loving someone, getting hurt, and just never trying to mend it. I'm afraid of committing adultery against my future husband, if I get to have a husband. I'm afraid of unforgiveness, of holding a grudge to the point where I just abandon my husband, and I'm hoping if I did this, that he would divorce so I might come to my senses that this isn't how you treat another person.

The fact is, you're both broken. Both filled with deep wounds of unhealed trauma and pain. Yet you ignore it, and in the process of your ignoring it, you ignore us, your kids, and we're all left broken and wounded and traumatized and unhealed. A family of hurt people hurting people.

I could tell you all of this, but I doubt you would listen. You didn't want to listen to me when I wanted us to be closer as a family all those years ago. Maybe we tried too hard, why did we give up trying? This whole place is falling apart and all I see is brokenness and selfishness and I wish I could unlearn it.

As I write this, I wonder, why don't I pray for us more?

I'm sorry

This month marks 5 years since I woke up from my coma and in January you will be gone for 2 years. I've never told anyone but I feel like the cancer is my fault because you told me that you prayed it was you in the hospital instead of me. The doctors told you I might not wake up and if I did I might not talk or walk again. And you told me that you prayed and I laughed at you. Less than a year later you were diagnosed and now your gone. I can't help but think that your prayers were answered in that I woke up and I walked and talked and lived..but you didn't and I never even told you thank you. I'm sorry mom, I miss you.

Fuck you mom and dad

I know you messed up bad

You should've, should've done, should've done better

Fuck you mum and dad, for all the time You had to get your life, to get your life together

But You didn't

In 2002, you gave birth to me

Sweet little baby girl

Had the world at my feet

Before I could even stand

Cradled me in your right and left hand

A precious bundle of unmade plans

Hopes and dreams of bigger things

A bright future so it seemed

Oh, but that light grew a little less bright

As I grew and we began to fight

When I was 13, You were so damn mean

Blaming me for everything, stopping short

Of I hate you

But that's not true now

I just don't, I just don't know how to say

Fuck you mom and dad

I know you messed up bad

You should've, should've done, should've done better

Fuck you mom and dad

For all the time you had

To get your life, to get your life together

But you didn't

I never talk about you to my friends

Because you deserve the second thought

You dropped out of college for a man

You insist for me to follow that to the end

I followed your example of how to treat myself

Putting myself up and tearing myself down

Fuck you mom and dad

I know you messed up bad

You should've, should've done, should've done better

Fuck you mum and dad

For all the time you had

To get your life, to get your life together

But you didn't

I'm sorry that I couldn't be her

That perfect daughter in your head

I’ll never be her so don’t waste hope

I know I didn't make you proud

I needed to be myself instead

But I never figured out how

I'm sorry that I couldn't be her

That perfect daughter in your head

I’ll never be her so don’t waste hope

I know I didn't make you proud

I needed to be myself instead

But I never figured out how

Fuck you mom and dad

I know you messed up bad

You should've, should've done, should've done better

Fuck you mom and dad

For all the time you had

To get your life, to get your life together

Fuck you mom and dad

I know you messed up bad

You should've, should've done, should've done better

Fuck you mum and dad

For all the time you had

To get your life, to get your life together

But you didn't

Sincerely your daughter.

____

Written cover of "To My Parents" By Anna Clendening.