Fuck You

This one is a lot. As it needs to be.

Fuck You

Yes.

You.

All..

The ones who think,

no, not me…

Yes. Yes you.

Fuck you.

Fuck Everybody.

The ones who look in your face,

smile and cry with you

and rub your back

and let you relax

and it’s not until

the tip of the knife

pierces your skin

that they just warmed

do you know what

they’re doing.

And fuck the ones

who don’t give you

the benefit of hypocrisy

and tell you hard and plain

when you aren’t enough.

At least some will tell you.

The others?

Fuck you and your cowardice.

Fuck you and your cruelty.

Fuck you for fucking her.

Fuck you for not getting me help.

Fuck me for not asking.

Fuck you for not believing me.

Fuck you for not seeing me.

Fuck you for not caring and

Fuck you for caring too much.

Fuck you for wanting me to change

and fuck me for doing it

again and again and again.

Fuck you for dying.

Fuck you for holding a place for me.

Fuck you for being so perfect.

Fuck you for being too good for me.

 

Fuck this body for putting up with what I’ve done to it.

Fuck this brain, for telling me lie after lie after

truth and letting me fuck my body

and my brains and anyone

who touched either. .

Fuck me for always pointing

when I should be looking.

For taking on what isn’t mine.

For believing when I should doubt.

For building safety net when I should

trust the fall.

For knowing I should shut up

For knowing  I’m full of shit.

For knowing when I shouldn’t open my mouth

to say fuck you, get out

when what I mean is I love you,

please don’t leave

Please don’t grow up.

Please don’t need her.

Need me because

what am I if you don’t?

And fuck me for thinking that.

Fuck everyone who doubted

and that was everyone.

That was me.

Fuck my empty back account.

Fuck my empty soul.

Fuck the anxiety that

puts a pill in my mouth

and a pit in my heart

every single day.

Fuck my therapist

that knows so much

but doesn’t get it

and the insurance

that doesn’t pay for him.

I’d say fuck my mother

because that what we always say

about our mothers

because they’re just like us,

but I’ll probably have to move

back in with her soon ,

so I can’t say that.

Fuck her cat though.

That bitch is an asshole.

Fuck the constant struggling.

Fuck that fact that I have it easier

than almost everyone I know

and it’s still really fucking hard.

Fuck the fact

that I don’t want to give up.

Fuck that I still write

and look for beautiful sunsets

want to believe in love

despite every bit

of evidence that it’s as real as faeries

dancing a reel in the dew.

Fuck you for dancing with me.

I know better.

I don’t want to know better.

Fuck knowing better.

Fuck your sorry.

Fuck your it’s okay.

Fuck you for loving me.

Fuck you

for not telling me

to fuck off

when I was

selfish

and awful

and that’s what I needed

to hear.

You didn’t say it.

What in the fuck is wrong with you?

What’s wrong with me?

Bitter and caustic are easy.

Hard and closed are comforting.

Shut off and locked away are safe.

Fuck safe.

You know what isn’t safe?

Hope.

Hope is fucking hard.

It’s devastating.

Like your smile.

 

Smiling. is hard.

You only smile.

Fuck you for making me smile.

I’m trying to be pissed off here.

I really want…

Fuck you for making me

want again.

Want so much

And

not want to fuck anyone

but you.

Fuck you for making me think,

fuck everyone…

but you.

You,

Fuck you most of all.

I don’t want

to want you.

I put that in a box

years ago.

Big fucking box

big fucking lock.

And now, I’m sitting here

key in hand, flipping open

the lid.

Fuck you. Really.

It was old and rusted shut

and I cut my knuckles

prying that thing open.

Fuck you,

for kissing it and

making it better.

Because that’s not

supposed to work.

I didn’t want it

to be better.

But it did.

You made it.

And now what do I do with that?

Except not fuck you,

but hold and wonder,

love and trust

and then fuck you.

My new novel Drowning Above Water is available in paperback and Kindle through Amazon. 

Pre-teen Blanket

This is my latest Dark Yarn. 

On the surface, it’s not dark. It’s bright and cozy. The idea is adorable. My son’s new step-brother has a nursery filled with Winnie the Pooh and friends. 

I couldn’t quite bring myself to make the baby a new blanket. I started. I tried. His mother and grandmother are beautiful yarn artists, so the young one with have his share of cuddly wrappings. It’s good he didn’t need mine. Because I couldn’t keep going. 

I wanted to make a blanket for my own son. But, one he could share with his new brother. The one who shares his father and his initials and his half-birthday. 

So, we came up with this pre-teen blanket. No too baby-ish. (I was warned. Several times. Someone is not a baby.) But something that could bridge the gap between the boys-the distance spanning their rooms and their ages.

It wasn’t an easy blanket to crochet. Technically, it was simple. Emotionally, it was a tangle of dropped stitches and twisted wool. 

My heart hurt as I wrapped and pulled. I cried a bit. I made an absolute mess of the red yarn. I ripped it apart. I put it back together. And I kept on going. One stitch at a time. 

I hope both of these boys like their blanket. Something to share. Something to remember. 

I’m so glad I made it. 

And I hope I can keep on going. 

Empty Egg (or how to make your own coffee)

I have a problem with jealousy. It’s not a small problem. It’s not an idiosyncrasy or a cute quirk. It’s a looming, strangling flaw that has suffocated more relationships than I’d like to admit. Most of them, to be honest. Okay. All of them. And the ones it hasn’t killed, it’s prevented. No one wants to be new friends with an asshole.

My therapist (yes, I’m that girl. I’m starting a paragraph with “my therapist”, but come on. Look around you. Maybe more people should be doing this.) gave me a metaphor. He’s big on them and they tickle me.

This one involved brunch foods.

He really gets me.

First, we talked about coffee. The gist was that I’m an empty coffee cup. It’s my job to see that there is coffee in my cup. Not the cook’s. Not the waitress’. Mine. Others cannot be my coffee. They can be my Splenda. They can be my half and half. They can be my light soy foam. They can enhance, delight, make more aromatic and delicious. But other people cannot be the coffee. I have to be the coffee.

Next, we talked about eggs. My therapist described me as being a beautiful painted egg, artistic and engaging. But most painted eggs are hollow, the innards blown out through a tiny hole in the bottom. This makes them veneer thin and fragile. The slightest tap can shatter them. They are gorgeous. And the slightest wind will eradicate them.

That’s what happens to me. I want someone else to fill my mug.  If I encounter the slightest contrary force, I’m a mess of splinters. I’m a failed breakfast.

To get through life, I need coffee and eggs without the shell. And I need to be the one to order and make them.  I can’t let other people be my happy. I have to find or if I can’t find it, manufacture my own happy. If I can do that, fill the space with substance that sustains me, maybe I won’t be so easily broken.

Here’s the bug in that particular batter: when you are a parent, you rarely get to chase after your own fulfillment.

Now, I know that sounds awful. It sounds callous and selfish. As a parent, aren’t we told we should be filled with indescribable, ever-mounting daily joy, all the time, just because we have a child?

What if you’re not?

Don’t get me wrong. I love my son. With my entire soul. I love being with him. His laugh lights up my universe. When he’s not with me, it feels like my heart is bopping around the world without me. It’s crushing to go to sleep knowing he’s not in the next room.

But, the contrary is equally as strong and true.  Because I am a mother and I am committed to that job, and to raising a strong, capable, happy kid, I am usually unable to pursue my own happy.

Because simply being a mom isn’t enough to make me happy.

That’s horrible. It sounds horrible in my head and it’s horrible to see in print. But that’s what it is.

It hurt when I had to give up acting to be a mom. I resent that I can’t buy a decent camera to work on the photography I love because I have to pay for braces. And I am as bitter as that coffee I expect someone else to pour me every time I miss an opportunity to make a piece of art because I have to be at a school meeting or sit at an unending baseball practice.

And I’m not even good. It’s not as if the world is minus a master because I don’t have the time to put out another poem. But I feel it. And every time I see a friend or even my wonderful, generous partner succeed at their crafts, my own envy over takes me. I become as dark and toxic as yesterday’s espresso. It’s insufferable. I hear the words I say and I want to tear out my own tongue in disgust. That’s not me and I hate that woman. But she appears almost every day. I’m want to kill her.

The bleak reality is that there’s no good fix. I won’t spend less time and effort on my son. And I can’t put any more time into me. Therefore, I will continue to fall into deep caverns of rage, sadness and fuming jealousy.

And I know these are uptown problems. I can’t begin to even pretend I know what actual struggle is. If I was faced with the horrors people across this world are dealing with, I’d crumble. I’m not brave. I’m silly and vain and weak. I’m the woman Ruth Bader Ginsburg orders for brunch and spits out into her perfect napkin because goddesses like her don’t have time for slimy, fatty  omelets like me.

So, here with the computer and the silly words it is. Putting something out. Trying not to fall apart. Egg in the pan. Shells in the compost. Coffee in the cup. Trying  to add some light to the darkest  brew. I have to make my own coffee. Somehow find a way. I have to fill my egg with something. Because I don’t want to be a shell. I want to hold a life. Mine.

 

 

Alyssa Herron is a mom and author. The caliber of either is up for debate. Her new novel is available at Amazon.