I awoke this morning soaked in tears and terror to lifelike nightmares that would not relinquish me.

I found fragments, parts, and pieces of me mangled in the wreckage that looks like her and bears her name.

I crept out of bed and made my way to the mirror.

I glared at our reflection, mano a mano, her daring me to blink first. Her green eyes against my blue. 

I relented like she knew I would.

I turned my eyes downcast, frozen in acquiescence.  Her angry eyes judging me, watching me, scolding me; her eyes a visual echo of her disappointment and disapproval in me.

I thought about her eyes all day and wondered, wondered, wondered. How could they never look at me with love?

I want to believe she gave what she could but delusions fail to stitch together the broken threads dangling where my heart used to sit.

I hope to be more of what she wasn’t and less of what she was.I am trying daringly but failing greatly, and that is the lesson she wanted me to know. 

“You,” she said, smugly pointing her index finger at me, “will never be enough.”

I resent myself for wanting her to love me.

I resent myself for needing her more than she didn’t need me. 

I am afraid that I will be a generational curse, destined to bequeath the failure she taught me I was.

I am learning to revise the portrait she tried to create of me.  

I am learning to love about me what she didn’t.

I am learning that I may not be enough, but at least I’m not her.

 

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