naima

I'll start of with expressing the joy I have for this new tattoo. It's just a few days old, and is becoming my favorite work I have as of yet. It signifies the most important events of the past year; maybe even of my life.
April 9th of last year, my mother died after being in a coma for 8 days. She was in a coma because she hung herself on April 1st.
All throughout my childhood, school was a refuge for me, away from my mother. We had a very volatile relationship. As I got older and into my early teen years, it lessened a bit. On good days, I would stay home in the spring evenings to garden with my mother. My friends thought I was crazy, but of course they ate up whatever I grew. Mainly tomatoes, roses, some zucchini, and lots of sunflowers.
Roses were special to us. My grandmother, her mother, practically sprouts roses from her fingertips. We always had fresh cut roses from our garden adorning every flat surface available. In short, we loved roses, roses are in our blood.
Mom loved sunset colors. Burnt oranges, dusky pinks, bright pinks, flashy reds. Big, bold, bright colors.
Mom loved the Beatles. She loved John Lennon. She instilled in me his words and philosophies from a very young age. One in particular she mentioned frequently, was how important "doing unto others"... you know the rest.
Anyway.
One big rose for her, 3 for my brothers and I, all hugged by those important words.

The day itself was nothing short of brain frying. Beautiful day in SF, shadowed by a very intense conversation between my brother, boyfriend, and I on the way to SF. Which of course led to misunderstandings, lots of tears over the next few days, and a mild catatonic state of being for yous truly.
It's funny. You go your entire life thinking and feeling about yourself one thing, one very important thing you cling and grasp to, then realizing it wasn't even true in the first place. Talk about self realization. The other funny thing about that, is that it's almost literally identical to the same sort of self realization that spurned my mother's last depression swing. I can see why it was so depressing now.
Trying to change something I felt was so essential to my personality is interesting.
I'm very bossy. I like things a certain way. I bitch at people, too much. My needs are tantamount; and sometimes they are so specific and insane, no one can ever meet them. Clutter drives me ape-shit. Too much visual and auditory stimulation exhausts me. And others. All those things, I put in front of everyone in my life. I can't keep my mouth shut sometimes. Trying to preserve myself, my wants and needs, and working so hard for that, steamrolls everyone around me. Thankfully, someone helped me see this. If I went a lifetime unaware of that... I can't imagine how painful that would be, knowing what pain was caused, you know?
This past weekend, I lost that desire to be so vocal and opinionated. It's just not important to me anymore. It's gone.
Think of a tire deflating. That's how I felt, physically, the past few days. and still feel. Just not as much. Realizing that sort of thing about yourself hurts, a lot. For so long I felt like I was selfless, when in fact, I was selfish. Ouch.


For fuck's fucking sake. Growth spurts hurt