Lj Idol - 3 Strikes - The axe forgets; the tree remembers
An entry for Week 4 of therealljidol.
I.From the beginning, you hold them close, looking into the depth of their new world eyes, enchanted. Swaddled in a blanket against your breast, you promise to protect them, to keep them safe from the harm and the hate that the world has to offer. You will give all, you will do all, to make life as sweet and good as possible.
“I will never do you wrong, my love,” I whisper against your warm skin.
I remember the blueness when your eyes first opened - entire worlds of oceans unknown. When did the first cut happen? Was it the surgical scissors that severed the umbilical cord? Or did it mean something, that you were born in the days right after the towers fell? Did you already understand my anxiety and fear? Did you know my reach would be limited? Did you already know my promises were full of shit?
II.There’s a photo of you at five years old. You are skinny and small for your age, but you are dressed in every colorful piece of clothing you can find from my and your brothers’ closets - a long bright green shirt and dark shorts, rainbow-striped socks that come up past your knees, and a scarf that is too warm for the spring, but brings you joy with its oranges, pinks, and browns. Your front teeth are missing - too soon, as you’d knocked them out in an accidental fall - but you are smiling, fully, adorably silly and happy. You look free. If there is trauma from the past few years, it is absent here. This is one of my favorite pictures.
I don’t remember who made the first cut - if it was your dad, or myself, or something you witnessed between us. I know I tried to protect you by leaving. Maybe leaving was the cut? And then, it seemed, you fought back - though in hindsight, you may simply have been fighting for yourself. The grocery store trip when you dug your nails into my flesh until I bled, the shock of throwing cans into my face. The trip where you lost control and fled into a parking lot full of cars and I chased you, brothers in hand, crying and unsure. The time you climbed beneath a trailer at the school and hid. I was trying to help, to protect you. I didn’t always know how.
III.I know I spent years in meetings with professionals. Counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, LCSWs, teachers, principals, educational instructors and advocates from across the state. I know I fought for you. I have binders of individualized education plans, medical records, typed up letters, journals of medicines trialed and titrated I held as evidence. But I know you hated it. We hated it. I remember the shame and judgment, and yes, even rage, that came with living in constant chaos and dysfunction. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that behavioral centers and involuntary holds and police intervening in our lives would put a greater rift between us. I was trying to protect you. It wasn’t for lack of trying. But it would take me years to understand the ways I also carried my own trauma over to you, and the ways we are so similar.
I wanted to be both shelter and roots - to be your safe haven, a fountain of love that springs from the earth eternal. And yet, I also never stopped trying to change you. To find whatever routine or change in approach or medication could help find a path to “normal” - or whatever might come close to that. Some days, I questioned if you were the axe. The cuts came from everywhere - sharp or blunt, every day felt like a hurdle. No TV sitcom family here. But you were a child, I was the adult. My job was to help you grow tall and wide and strong and bloom beautifully. Who was hurting whom?
IV.We struggled through the last few weeks of high school, the last year of which had been a nightmare of incidents. Somehow, you made it, hunched over a laptop into the late of night at the very end. But the resistance and fighting continued, and the stakes changed. You were an adult now. The mistakes were more costly, and harder to fix. You quit therapy and medication, and rebelled harder. You nearly took your own life in car accidents and a slew of careless and reckless driving incidents while upset. Refused to follow any house rules. I couldn’t keep you safe.
One day you locked me out of the house. Screamed at me and raised your fist, six-foot-two to my five-four. So I made you go. You left for nearly a year. Umbilical cord, take two.
It’s not that I didn’t care - I absolutely did. Most nights I laid sleepless and restless, wondering if you were okay, checking my messenger apps to see if you were active and alive. And yet I stood back. Some cuts are blunt, brutal, harmful, and painful - but some are pruning, sustaining, and life-saving. Perhaps my branches had been newly cut and formed and pressed into steel to become the axe - perhaps they had always been that way. Had I ever made the right choices for you, or was I the cause of your pain? I still wanted to protect you, but also to protect myself.
V.At one point, you hit bottom. And so we took you in again, but the rules had changed. You understood I would no longer be the chopping block for your anger, but I also had to let go of a desire to control your outcomes. You wanted to figure things out for yourself - even if it meant the hard way. So here I stand, at a distance under the same roof, my heart clawing in my chest for some way to protect you. Suggest, advise, encourage, and bear witness, I try to trust that you will make the right decisions in the long run. And we mostly retain this delicate balance for now. It’s still not perfect. In fact, it’s quite messy. Oh, it’s been a bit shit lately, honestly, especially in the past few weeks. Why else would I be writing this?
But it’s not all on you. It’s on me, too, and the pandemic, and the economy, and surviving as a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world, on top of the other ups and downs of life, and still carrying around the trauma that we do. But I’m still here for you, trying to help. I think you see that now. I hope you do. I see you trying, too, and beginning to understand where you need help, and where you’ve got this.
VI.We are both the tree and the axe, my love. I still hope to protect you from the worst that the world will throw at you, but I am trying to no longer weaponize my shelter. And you, also, are tired of swinging. I see you even now are trying to spread your roots, to find your purchase, and you are clawing your way skywards. I am finally able to clearly see you growing, separate and apart from me. I know there is the past, but we are still moving forward. At least we see one another now. At least we know our limits. I think we have both come such a very long way.
I.From the beginning, you hold them close, looking into the depth of their new world eyes, enchanted. Swaddled in a blanket against your breast, you promise to protect them, to keep them safe from the harm and the hate that the world has to offer. You will give all, you will do all, to make life as sweet and good as possible.
“I will never do you wrong, my love,” I whisper against your warm skin.
I remember the blueness when your eyes first opened - entire worlds of oceans unknown. When did the first cut happen? Was it the surgical scissors that severed the umbilical cord? Or did it mean something, that you were born in the days right after the towers fell? Did you already understand my anxiety and fear? Did you know my reach would be limited? Did you already know my promises were full of shit?
II.There’s a photo of you at five years old. You are skinny and small for your age, but you are dressed in every colorful piece of clothing you can find from my and your brothers’ closets - a long bright green shirt and dark shorts, rainbow-striped socks that come up past your knees, and a scarf that is too warm for the spring, but brings you joy with its oranges, pinks, and browns. Your front teeth are missing - too soon, as you’d knocked them out in an accidental fall - but you are smiling, fully, adorably silly and happy. You look free. If there is trauma from the past few years, it is absent here. This is one of my favorite pictures.
I don’t remember who made the first cut - if it was your dad, or myself, or something you witnessed between us. I know I tried to protect you by leaving. Maybe leaving was the cut? And then, it seemed, you fought back - though in hindsight, you may simply have been fighting for yourself. The grocery store trip when you dug your nails into my flesh until I bled, the shock of throwing cans into my face. The trip where you lost control and fled into a parking lot full of cars and I chased you, brothers in hand, crying and unsure. The time you climbed beneath a trailer at the school and hid. I was trying to help, to protect you. I didn’t always know how.
III.I know I spent years in meetings with professionals. Counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, LCSWs, teachers, principals, educational instructors and advocates from across the state. I know I fought for you. I have binders of individualized education plans, medical records, typed up letters, journals of medicines trialed and titrated I held as evidence. But I know you hated it. We hated it. I remember the shame and judgment, and yes, even rage, that came with living in constant chaos and dysfunction. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that behavioral centers and involuntary holds and police intervening in our lives would put a greater rift between us. I was trying to protect you. It wasn’t for lack of trying. But it would take me years to understand the ways I also carried my own trauma over to you, and the ways we are so similar.
I wanted to be both shelter and roots - to be your safe haven, a fountain of love that springs from the earth eternal. And yet, I also never stopped trying to change you. To find whatever routine or change in approach or medication could help find a path to “normal” - or whatever might come close to that. Some days, I questioned if you were the axe. The cuts came from everywhere - sharp or blunt, every day felt like a hurdle. No TV sitcom family here. But you were a child, I was the adult. My job was to help you grow tall and wide and strong and bloom beautifully. Who was hurting whom?
IV.We struggled through the last few weeks of high school, the last year of which had been a nightmare of incidents. Somehow, you made it, hunched over a laptop into the late of night at the very end. But the resistance and fighting continued, and the stakes changed. You were an adult now. The mistakes were more costly, and harder to fix. You quit therapy and medication, and rebelled harder. You nearly took your own life in car accidents and a slew of careless and reckless driving incidents while upset. Refused to follow any house rules. I couldn’t keep you safe.
One day you locked me out of the house. Screamed at me and raised your fist, six-foot-two to my five-four. So I made you go. You left for nearly a year. Umbilical cord, take two.
It’s not that I didn’t care - I absolutely did. Most nights I laid sleepless and restless, wondering if you were okay, checking my messenger apps to see if you were active and alive. And yet I stood back. Some cuts are blunt, brutal, harmful, and painful - but some are pruning, sustaining, and life-saving. Perhaps my branches had been newly cut and formed and pressed into steel to become the axe - perhaps they had always been that way. Had I ever made the right choices for you, or was I the cause of your pain? I still wanted to protect you, but also to protect myself.
V.At one point, you hit bottom. And so we took you in again, but the rules had changed. You understood I would no longer be the chopping block for your anger, but I also had to let go of a desire to control your outcomes. You wanted to figure things out for yourself - even if it meant the hard way. So here I stand, at a distance under the same roof, my heart clawing in my chest for some way to protect you. Suggest, advise, encourage, and bear witness, I try to trust that you will make the right decisions in the long run. And we mostly retain this delicate balance for now. It’s still not perfect. In fact, it’s quite messy. Oh, it’s been a bit shit lately, honestly, especially in the past few weeks. Why else would I be writing this?
But it’s not all on you. It’s on me, too, and the pandemic, and the economy, and surviving as a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world, on top of the other ups and downs of life, and still carrying around the trauma that we do. But I’m still here for you, trying to help. I think you see that now. I hope you do. I see you trying, too, and beginning to understand where you need help, and where you’ve got this.
VI.We are both the tree and the axe, my love. I still hope to protect you from the worst that the world will throw at you, but I am trying to no longer weaponize my shelter. And you, also, are tired of swinging. I see you even now are trying to spread your roots, to find your purchase, and you are clawing your way skywards. I am finally able to clearly see you growing, separate and apart from me. I know there is the past, but we are still moving forward. At least we see one another now. At least we know our limits. I think we have both come such a very long way.