filet me like a fish

My daughter came home for her two days today. I got all excited. She is a vegetarian/pescatarian now. So I made her balsamic salmon, mashed potatoes, and lentil stew. Dinner was a success but still things are different. When she comes in the door she looks at me as if she is just meeting me for the first time. I don't see her except for dinner. She hides in her room. I don't know what to make of it. I just get sad. I clean the kitchen. I stare off into space and imagine her licking the cake bowl when she was three. She doesn't smile anymore. It is killing me. She is slipping through my fingers. I don't know her. I want her to be something she isn't or doesn't want to be or she can't show who she is.

It hurts. I am standing in the rain trying to hold it as it falls around me. I am living in the past, stepping in to old photographs trying to make time stand still. How cruel is life? After you give birth everyone you meet on the street tells you how it goes by so fast, and in your head you keep thinking shut the fuck up. The dog is pulling at the leash, and you have left the house for the first time in a century, your baby is crying because it is feeding time, your breasts feel like boulders. I get it now. 
I have lost her and it is all gone. She walks in to this home I made to a place where she apparently doesn't want to live anymore and she looks at me like a stranger. If I had known it was going to be this hard, this heart breaking, would you think I was weak if I told you I would have chosen not to feel this pain?

I learned to build walls. I used to be tough. I used to be able to say I didn't care and walk in to the void. The day I had her, I knew I was in trouble. I looked at her after almost dying. She didn't want to leave me. She was stuck and I suppose life repeats itself. She was stuck now and so was I and now she has moved on. She came into this world in her father's arms and I was so so drugged up and bleeding out; I didn't know him, not that I ever have. I thought the anesthesiologist was my husband. There is this picture in her baby book, right after she was born. I was in shock, bleeding out on the table. I slipped away to that place very few come back from. I like to imagine I saw her, not just the picture but I just saw the picture. Her eyes were wide open and she didn't cry. She was looking at the world, like ahhh yes, here I am.

Anyway, I don't want to feel this pain right now. I never thought my daughter, my twin, would cut the cord before she graduated high school. I imagined one of those movie mother-daughter-relationships. I wanted to be by her side when she gave birth to her daughter. I live in a dream world and sometimes the hope gets me to the next point. I am a fool. A dreamer is just a dreamer. Everyone is making fun of me for believing in something better.

So I am grieving now. Each time my daughter looks at me like a stranger. The night I gave birth to her, I had predicted she would be born at 2:00 am on Halloween in some hypno-birthing class. It happened. I wasn't surprised. So while I was getting an epidural because I needed an emergency C-section, I didn't want any men in the room while I gave birth because of my issues but there ended up being about a hundred because it was an emergency. The guy giving me the epidural was supposedly an asshole according to X but I swear I saw a halo around his head.  That day I wasn't scared at all and every day of my life I live in fear. Maybe it was the hypno-birthing, but I don't think so. I felt Annabelle's soul in the room; we talked to each other. I told her to hold on and she did. I felt the presence of angels.

And now she doesn't want anything to do with me. Why does motherhood have to suck so much? Children are little vampires that suck all the life out of you. I look like a hag now. My daughter chose her dad, my abuser, seriously? what the fuck? Whatever happened to justice. I am too sad to get mad right now. I did attachment parenting which was torture; obviously it didn't work since I have no relationship whatsoever with my one and only daughter. I am too old to have any more kids and after I had her they made X tell me it wasn't a good idea for me to ever carry a child again because of my hips. I wanted three children and I secretly hate all people who have three children because I am sad. I had a miscarriage. I know he was a boy. He came to me in my dreams. The doctor, X, my best friend at the time, pretended like it was nothing. I even threw a baby shower for my friend at the time because we got pregnant at the same time. I got drunk and threw up in the bathroom and cried and pretended I was fine because that was what was expected of me.

So my kid doesn't love me anymore and I am sensitive. I want that hard heart I had before she was born. I want my porcupine coat. I don't know how people do this. I want to die. Her not wanting to live with me is a huge loss. The fact that she has chosen a man that is incredibly cruel to me is a black spiral of pain. Everything I have gone through and now this. Seriously fuck everything. My daughter doesn't want to be like me. Filet me like a fish and hang me out to dry. I want the world to feel this pain. Maybe I wasn't meant to be a mother. Apparently I am not anymore. I am just going through the motions. When my daughter is here it is worse when she isn't. Things are different, it is killing me. I used to know her, Our hearts were one; we connected. Now she eats jackfruit nuggets and looks at me the way her father does.