deepundergroundpoetry.com

For Her

For Her,


When you were small you weren't protected, I acknowledge that and I am angry. Things may not be what they are now if you had been, I acknowledge that and I am angry. My childhood was not what I would wish on my child, I acknowledge that and I am angry.

Your Mother told me a story last year, about when you were eleven, she said your Father was hitting her and you got in the way. I am proud of you for protecting her, more than I can put into words, you shouldn't have had to, you were so brave. She said she left, moved in with her parents, with you and your brother, only to later decide she couldn't handle that lifestyle. I don't understand what sort of person would choose a lifestyle over their child's safety. As a parent, I can't fathom a person who could do that to their child. She said you were wild, you were eleven, you were a child, you never did anything to deserve being put back in his eyeline, near his fists, you deserved love and admiration and thanks. She was your Mother, he was your Father, I am so sorry no one protected you. Your inner child must still be seething, regardless, I seeth for you.

I hate that you lived there, that it happened to you, that, due to it all, you were entitled to many things as an adult. You were entitled to wanting to be a vegetable some days, you were entitled to harming yourself, you were entitled to being unable to maintain jobs, friends, loving relationships, to be fearing of intimacy, to be fearing of leaving me with others, to a broken relationship with your family. It stops here though. I love you in a way only a person who desperately wants to save another can. You know that love, you had or have it for your own Mother. However it must not be abused, and what you went through, those awful, awful things did not entitle you to hide my Father, to separate me from my Sister, to make me help you mutilate yourself, to mutilate me, to drug yourself away with me in the house, to make me endure the mental spirals without seeking me help, to use me as a counsellor for the tales of abuse when your cup overflowed.

I love that eleven year old that protected her Mother, I love how strong and brave and loving she was. I love the you I choose to remember, playing backgammon somewhere warm, when it seemed like you'd never been mistreated, when you were together mentally and our time was truly ours and I could keep you happy. I love even the worst you, the sad you hiding and clawing at herself, angry and buzzing and clawing at me, I love you in a private way saved for only you and I but I won't side step the things of my youth. I won't pretend they didn't happen, I seeth for my inner child also.

I have one opportunity with my daughter, and I have the strength and the freedom to choose a clear path for her, one without skin mutilation, without drugs to cope, with a Father she loves as equally as me, and that being okay, to have a mundane and 'normal' day to day because it is a luxury I can afford for her.

I wish you so much love and light.
Yours, Poppy.
Written by ImperfectedStone (The Gardener)
Published
Author's Note
Go slowly with me, my inner child is rocking this morning.
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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