Unselfish

"V are you okay?!" My step daughter finding me on the bathroom floor trying to hide from them the pain.

"Don't worry about me sweetheart I'll be fine!" Trying to smooth things over, she can see my tears... see through my little white lie.

"I have to, you're my mom now." She heartbreakingly states kissing the top of my head.

I can't control the sobs, I know they can be heard throughout the house. Trying to pull myself together stop my pain from seeping out.

"I don't want you too be sad!" The innocence of a child who does not yet understand.

"Babygirl holding in feelings will only hurt yourself, you have to sit with it a while, give it a cup of coffee and let it scream!"

Shes thoughtful contemplating my words, I know she has been taught by actions to hide whatever hurts.

As I'm sitting with my pain sipping the morning afters coffee, teaching my step daughter a lesson I learned along the road, I look back on last nights confrontation and soak up the hateful slurs.

"Selfish" "childish" "negative" yet here I sit letting your daughter have a voice, putting my pain aside so she can feel her hurt.

"V I have bad dreams at night, mommy is blue and quiet but shes staring at me. I keep calling for her but she doesn't answer,I can't wake her up." A childs mind doesn't understand that their parent wasn't ignoring them but instead had left this earth.

"Hunnie, your mommy loved you very much, she just had alot of scars she numbed instead of healed. It wasn't her intent to leave you, but only to make it through the night. The pain was to much for her to bare. Please don't blame yourself, or doubt that she even cared."
I am winging this because this is new to me, how does one explain death in such a way that doesn't damage an innocent mind.

She slinks into the floor beside me, lays her head on my shoulder, crying, gripping my hand.
I kiss her little head turn her head to meet me in a stare.

"Shes still here baby, look in the mirror shes here inside of you!"

We are silent, for the moment I have forgotten my own pain, my tears are only bleeding for this little one who knows more of loss then smiles.

But I'm the selfish one, cradling pains that are not my own, setting my feelings aside so hers can scream out, I can handle everything, but this child should not!

It occurs to me that this child is immulating me, putting her own feelings aside to comfort the pains of everyone else.

You may, I won't let this child feel what it is to become cold. You might, I won't let her feelings bottle up to coddle unhealed wounds.

Selfish is in the mirror, when you look at your reflection, letting your own pain, your own loss, consume the good in all the imperfection.

Childish is in the bottle you drown yourself with every night, ignoring whats around you, all the love and life.

Negativite is rehashing the loss as if if it is all that matters when your children need their dad and look to you for answers.

So it seems, I think,  that everything you point at me is simply you projecting your own shortcomings, simply putting me in place of your hatred for ones reflection.

I don't feel so sad anymore. I am angry! Long to beat my fists against your chest, demand of you what you damned from me. Damned from them. Love is more then what is gone, but what lays here right before your eyes.

Choose to be blind, choose to be the loudest pain in the room, but don't regret when all you have becomes all you had. Order in the court room! I am guilty of loving you, letting you break the flesh of my heart, letting you bury me in the ground, but I am unburying myself from you now!

My voice will be the loudest in the room, you will hear the fire in my soul crack a whip against your self pity, you will see the flames rise as you shut your eyes and darlin I promise with all I am and all my heart I will bring you back from ashes!