Mother, Stop Counting My Joy: I Need to Live, I Need to Thrive.
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“When did you become this person?” I want to ask her.
I want to ask her, so many things.
When did she start measuring our happiness in dollars and cents, counting out our change like a miser, curling her lips in pain if she felt we got too much?
When did she start resenting our good fortune, and when did she start hoarding hers?
“There’s nothing for you here,” I want to say, “I don’t have any change. I have nothing left to give.”
“Plus,” I think, “Haven’t you taken enough?”
We were made for her, she says. The only thing she ever wanted to be was a mother.
It gives her ownership over us. Dominion. She made us to take care of her, to entertain her, to soothe her fears and ease her worries. We are her dolls, her keepers, specially made for every want, need, desire she may have.
Our lives were not given for us.
They were given to us.
And if she could, she would keep us.
Not out of love or devotion, or a desire to see us thrive: she would keep us because she could never bear letting the noise subside in her mind, the chaos quieten in her heart.
How many ghosts live there? How many shadows has she tucked away?
Is it ever quiet in there? Or do they scream, all night?
“Is that why you don’t sleep?” I want to ask.
I can’t be this daughter, this crutch, this endless well in which she dumps her sorrows, her disappointments. Life has not been cruel to her, and she insists that hers has been the most uphill battle among all of ours: our woes have never been greater, our illnesses never graver.
We have never been bigger than her.
I don’t want to live in this twilight, in this never-ending gloom. Death lurks here, sickness breeds in every corner, and I can’t remember the last time I didn’t tiptoe in fear of stirring the spirits.
My life is for living. For thriving.
Mother, I need the sunshine! I need the people! I need to laugh and to smile and to marvel! I need to climb the tallest peaks and to slip halfway down the mountain, skinning my hands on the red rock, breath catching in my chest and blood racing in my ears, because I am alive and I cannot waste it!
Mother, I need you to understand. My life is alive, and I must be, too. Please, stop counting my joy, asking how much of it you get to have. Please, stop trying to clip my wings. Please, let me live.
Please, set me free.
*****
Francesca Brio is an artist, writer, dream-weaver and universe-adventurer. Her feet are never idle, and her heart is always overflowing with wonder at the life around her: always persevering, always thriving. Life and love: they always find a way. Even when it seems impossible. Through her life making art as art, she seeks to inspire the feeling in her fellow travelers that each moment is a dawn, every breath a new beginning. To remind them their heartbeat’s song is whispering, “Keep going; the adventure is not over yet.”
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