Nov 6

I was scrolling the internet yesterday – mindless scrolling really, as my brain often demands atrophy through numbing stimulation. My brain has been taxed considerably these days as I find new ways to hate myself. Executive functioning has been kicked into overdrive – as it usually is – but part of this top-down effect includes one part of myself lacerating my other parts into submission and subordination. “You’re slipping… slipping…” it screams, “you should be embarrassed. This is embarrassing.” And then we collapse under the abuse and hate, and scroll, scroll, scroll, until we have the energy to hate ourselves once again. In the scrolling, I saw a man saying he was imagining his future self and what that future self would say to him. His future self would say to him “don’t eat so much,” as he then rattles off all the ways caloric restriction and periods of fasting inspire longevity of the body.

My future self would say to me: love your body. And by loving our body please stop bringing on this rash that covers our hands in the same way it did mother's – remember her creams, as she sat there on the couch slathering it all over her fingers in pain. I used to feel sorry for her; the rash never went away, the cream only lubricating the skin so the cracks did not run so deep – which I think was a little late for her anyways – the damage far beyond any potent cream solution with steroids and whatever else is meant to quell pain and suffering; and my god that woman suffered all the same. She suffered so deeply, but I picture her now, sitting on the couch like it’s some ordinary day and that she’s not dying in agony, one half of her body stretched over the edge of breaking.

Such a simple thought launches me back into memory: back in that house in Cloverdale where we would eat cream of mushroom pork chops and captain crunch – of mother breaking in that house – no that is where the shattering took place. She was breaking the whole time, but still together as one cracked object, held together by creams, and rubbing alcohol, and the concept of family, walking around this Earth – trying to take me to school on good days, sleeping in and taking me to McDonald's on average days, and bleeding from the sides from the mouth on bad days (with bruises that would last for weeks). But it wasn’t the McDonalds or the clobbering of fists that fed the engine, spokes turning enough to get her out of bed every morning. I think of how impossible it is for me now, on so many days of the year, to get myself out of bed; so how did mother do it? She would get out of bed, and yes some days she would take me to school, and sure she managed to keep my brother alive by feeding him and making sure he did not succumb to SIDS, or maybe that was just luck, and at the end of the day, many a day, she would be there to feed us with mushrooms and pork chops that stewed in a cream like the one she tried to lather her hands with. Some of these nights, by the time the pork chops would hit the table she would already be blasted, some nights the blasting would come later on, and then her and my stepfather would erupt in the middle of the night – despite the cream that lathered our bellies, and the cream that seeped into mothers cracking skin, all so that we could wake up the next day and hurt ourselves all over again, keeping the rhythm of this perpetual cycle of kicking and screaming for cream as if it were the solution – because they could not withstand the life they were living. And yet, they just kept on living it, for ten whole years.

Oh mother I love you and recalling these images now brings me piercing pain and little pricks of water to my eyes – it is funny what cracks in the skin reveal. And is it some algorithmic joke that mother, who left when I was 12 and my brother was 5, left because she discovered the insatiable relief from crack rock and a crack pipe – which I later learned in my teen years that these simple little pipes could be bought from any corner store since they were made from the little glass vials that enveloped the stems of roses. To think, one goes to the corner store to buy a rose on their way to the hospital, a date even, and use the petals, stems, vial and all as a loving gesture; an attempt to recognize somebody else's life and circumstance and these very same roses were being bought by crack addicts as a loving gesture to themselves. “Here dearest here is a rose because I love you enough to protect you from your own life” – words you might hear a man say to his wife as he tries to keep her from real love so all she can depend on is the familiar discomfort day in and day out. All of our bodies become addicts in their own way. Mother always asked, “what makes any addiction better than the other? Some are addicted to food, tobacco, porn, relationships, and I happen to be addicted to a good feeling – in fact, the first time I smoked crack was the first time I ever felt “good”, in the way that normal people use the word. I try all these programs for relief, and all I find is more pain in a well that runs so deep,” I was 18 at the time and she was fully convinced there was no difference between her and I, as I gorged on french fries and whip cream as it was the only feeling of love my body would get. My body didn’t care that the foods contain enough poison to bring my life to an early end if I would let it, dopamine is all the same to the body. Mother almost convinced me we were the same.

And this is why my future self would say get rid of the fucking cracks. Don’t play the same loving game mother played: chasing relief. It is just another example of how the Buddhists are right, and they will forever lay claim to impermanence inside my head – the Buddha and his fat fucking belly, was he really fat? And if he was then there can’t be an image that taunts me more. Giggling as he looks at me every time I try to look at this world from a different lens and all I end up seeing off to the horizon, as whatever image that is grabbing my attention vanishes: pay attention, now only, it never stays the same. Not even your pain about the past, your dreams, your skin, your nightmares, your body. What seems to have remained the same is an enduring image so deep inside of me, that might just elucidate the funniest, earliest fragments of life. Mother as a broken woman, raped by every man she came in contact with, raped by the fury and indifference of life itself. Life itself is not cruel, but we often find ourselves in savage yet natural predicaments.

That which endures is the hurting broken woman. How does mother come to represent anything else? Maybe above and beyond the rape and suffering is the woman that survives. Enduring, in the face of the Buddha, with a piece of her that is permanent. She might just be a cockroach as she has kept on living even when others have tried to kill her, even when she has tried to kill herself. I love that woman. I cry because I just want to hug that woman every day until she feels some semblance of being loved. And if there is any image that I need to hold right now, any image that could endure at all – contrary to Buddha – is the cockroach in all of its enduring glory. Perhaps if I saw my body as a cockroach I would love it then too. Rather than ignore it, enslave it as a dopamine machine because it is above and beyond that, yet, we reduce it to that so often. The cockroach might just be what will teach me how to love, beyond chasing relief.