VEGas

It's burning hot.  It feels like the firey breeze coming from an oven.  But you don't just feel it on your face, it breathes against your whole body.  I enter the house.  Immediately, I feel the cold sensation of the air conditioning.  This air conditioning.  It's unnatural.  It's just cold.  

It's been 2 years since I've been home.  The sounds of coins clanking, casino machines beeping, and loud music coming from afar invade my ears.  I feel a sudden sense of exclusion.  This is not where I belong.  THe worst is the smell of cigarette smoke and vomit from alcohol.  How the fuck did I grow up around this!? I thought.

Back to the house.  I enter.  It feels desolate.  I pass the living room where I remember seeing my father passed out on the floor on christmas eve one night after hearing a pot of flowers crash to the wall where my mom was just standing.  Snoring. ALcohol vomit next to him. And the smell of smoke.  THe living room smells like total shit.  Fuck, is all I can think.  Why do I still remember this?

I walk past the living room, and there it was.  The keyboard.  The keyboard that I had when I was younger because my dad chose to buy a car with my mom's money instead of a real piano.  The keyboard only had 6 octaves worth of keys.  It wasn't even a full set of keys. This instrument which freed me became a tool of imprisonment.  It no longer liberated the day I began to believe everything I was told.  Thoughts of inadequacy came rushing back.  I touched the keys. They felt warm.

Next to the piano is the door to my mom's room.  The same room that I remember my dad barged angrily into one evening as I hid in my mom's bed under the covers. Scared. I clung to my stuffed bunny, named fuzzy, crying.  Hoping he wouldn't come. But he did.  And he met my eyes w/ a pair that held so much anger, hate, resentment.  He looked directly into mine, and I knew with just that look that he was going to leave.  That he wanted to leave.  But for some idiotic reason, I didn't want him to.  So when he asked me whether I could survive without him, I said no.

Suddenly, I remember seeing it.  The letter that my dad received from some woman in the Philippines.  She loved him.  This woman was not my mom.  She sounded desperate.  God, why the fuck would anyone be in love with my father.  He is the most impossible person.  All he ever makes a woman feel is inadequacy, self-hate, fear, fear, and more fear.  And of course, that's all I ever felt growing up.  Every day of my fucking life, i can hear his voice telling me all of the following: you can't do it, you can't do it, you can't fucking do it. So don't even try.  Fuck, just give up.  

Dad, you didn't have to tell me all that bullshit to "motivate" me or shape me into some sort of "functioning" human being with a thick skin.  I've never built a thick skin.  Those words still hurt.  And they hurt me every day of life.  Everything I do, I have to build up an overwhelming amount of courage just to do it.  Those words have wounded my soul, and I have to use every ounce of strength that I have to repair it.  To transform it into something beautiful.  To heal it.  

All I needed to hear were three simple words: "i love you."  And to this day, I have not heard you say it.  You've told me many times before that actions speak louder than words so why should you tell me those words.  I know you've sacrificed a lot. and given your history, the way you grew up, the struggles, the hardship you encountered, you think you've done so much for us.  And now it makes sense to me.  Because it's true.  You probably gave as much as you could because you are so fucked up and what you gave to us was all that you could give.  I feel like an idiot sometimes.  Like, why would I even care to hear those words from my own father. Shouldn't I be strong enough to not need that?  But fuck that.  Every person deserves to feel like their home is their home.  Without that home, we all just feel so damn fucked up all the time.  Like there's something wrong with us when the truth is, there is nothing wrong at all.  

 I live every day with fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of people, and most frighteningly, fear of love & connection. But outside of this "home" is my real home.  The moments where I do not fear.  Because by the same token... and on the same days... I live with courage.  courage to love, connect, liberate, serve, and hope.   And those same violent words that invade my mind translate into the total opposite.  My words.  The truth. My mantra. And a poem to my daughters:

"Hey there baby girl

you are a precious... treasure"

Skin, eyes, nose, hands, feet, body, soul

everything about you is so precious

like a bird flying, soaring

you are precious

free

eloquent, articulate, and passionate

you are

don't let anyone tell you otherwise

hear, but don't listen

watch, but don't conform

This modern world is isolating

But there is a home that you forge

one that you create for yourself

one that is defined by you

it's where the world collides

it's contradictions make sense

and the pain becomes a source of strength

A home.  A place where we can take the mask off

To feel accepted, loved, valued

Speaking with freedom

to listening ears

instead of to the passive invisible walls

that imprints itself into the ground with heavy chains

Chains that clang, clash, cling, clack

binding us to those walls

disallowing us to touch

to feel

to embrace our inner pain

strength

a home

a home with no walls 

and the chains fall to the soil beneath

chains which turn into tears

Tears which turn into a home.

precious baby girl.

let the tears fall