Nothing/Everything Changes

Note: Written a long time ago, never posted. My mother has since died.



On the days I feel reflective, I oscillate between two completely opposing themes: Nothing changes / Everything changes.

I begin : I find myself in similar situations, emotionally bankrupted, hurt, ashamed of my poor choices. Obsessing over trying to find "the moment" that everything began to turn, and whether or not it's possible to backtrack. I am not proud. Is it inevitable that I will always feel this way?

I continue: If I could stand at the center and call out for everyone to slow down, stop, wait for me, I would take the time to memorize every line of my mother's face. Every modulation of her voice. I would watch her sleep, feel the magic of a little girl looking at her mother's dresser, dreaming of wearing pretty jewelry, delicate clothes, perfume. I would breathe her in; I would fill my heart with her love and my hands with her hands. So rapidly have these years passed, I don't remember the details. I will fill in the rest, embroidering my life with wishes for the changes that I so desperately want her to be there to see.

I find myself in this heartbreaking stasis, longing for the milestones of life that a mother and daughter should see together. Marriages, first homes, first fights, children, children becoming teenagers.... There is so much wisdom that I will need, so many instances in which I will look to my mother for support, but I know with a heavy heart that she will not be there to give it. I am buckling beneath this knowledge, devastated.