Carrying You Then, Fearing You Now #Parentafteraddiction #Parenting #AddictionRecovery #MightyPoets
How wild is it that I carried you under my skin, heartbeat synced to heartbeat, and now I can’t even string the right words together to reach you? I built you cell by cell, bone and breath, and here we are strangers in the same bloodline.
The cruelest ache isn’t anger. It’s loving someone so hard it rattles your ribs, while biting it back because you’re terrified you’ll get it wrong, terrify them, push them further. Loving from the sidelines like some ghost parent. Screaming silently: I love you. Please hear it. Please believe me.
And somehow that love louder than any storm, still feels locked in my chest.
I get it. You weren’t raised by me. You didn’t grow up experiencing my bipolar morning rituals and phases of “I need coffee first” and the “I’m not a coffee drinker”, you don’t know that I just have a natural “resting bitch face” or that sarcasm is how I cope, you’ve never got to see just how bubbly I really can be. How is it that not even one percent of you seems to carry any of my traits? None of my quirks, my stubborn grin, my quick-fire humor. Just an empty mirror when I look at you, hunting for myself.
I’ll never tell you this, but I am terrified of you. I walk on eggshells around my own child, trying not to say the thing that lights the fuse. Most days I pull back, skip the texts, dodge the moment, because I don’t want to step up and “parent” you and risk the explosion. Even asking you to pick up after yourself feels like lighting a match in a dry field.
It’s shameful to admit I avoid my own kid because of fear. The silence between us is heavy, like there’s a glass wall I can’t break without cutting both of us to ribbons. I don’t know if this is what redemption is supposed to feel like. Watching you drift farther while my chest caves in with love I can’t safely hand you.
I pray so hard that the anger and hurt you carry loosens its grip on you. Even for just a breath, a heartbeat. The anger you carry is louder, heavier, more expressive than anything I’ve ever known, and it scares me. I look at you and see a spark in your eyes that tells me, without hesitation, you could hurt me. That some part of you even wants to. I never dreamed the person I’d fear most in my life would be a human I once carried inside of me.
I keep wondering if you’ll ever see how much I’ve fought for sobriety, for stability, for a life I can hand you with open palms. I wonder if the years I wasn’t there carved out a canyon too deep to cross.
All I know is that I still love you messy, terrified, clumsy love that refuses to die, even when I’m too scared to reach for your hand.