We taught ourselves denial.

We have emigrated. We are covered in a  skinned frame of bone and muscle. Covered in a landscape of the native born.

Refuges not amongst, but without. So far down the inside we have lost touch with the we of before. The we that is now you but not us.


Inside of the inside, there is more of a parallel then you might imagine, though you never would.

We are the imperfect actors, attempting the part of the native born, in this stream of traffic and noise. We mimic. We cover ourselves with evidence of our surroundings.

We drop hints. We leave a trail. We blend the best we can. We hide behind a shell of walls and windows. Protected by our eye contact. Dependent on the myopic.
 We are self-taught in the art of denial so we can survive in a foreign land. 

Me? It doesn't take much. Every fraud has a tell.

I flinched when you touched me. 

Sunday phone call with Mom...

Warning. This is going to be personal.

In my Sunday evening conversation with my mother we were talking about, uh, weight loss, of all things. Somehow it started us talking about a rarely discussed topic, the one that had inspired my mother's most significant weight loss to date- the death of my father. Now, the topic of my father has come up once a year or so for the last 10 years....Before that it was a rarely discussed thing. My father died over 20 years ago. I was 10, my brothers were 5 and 12. While all sorts of chaos ensued in the years after he died, enough to fill many a blog post, tonight's conversation was about food. Food and death. My mother lost a lot of weight in the year after my father died. In fact, she turned into a machine. She didn't eat, didn't really talk...in fact, I don't even remember her being around for the year after he died. Maybe I was dealing with my grief in my own 10 year old way, but I remember almost nothing from after his funeral in DC to moving from Minnesota to Texas.  Seriously, over a year of my life is almost entirely gone from my memory.

My mom wanted to know if there was something else she could have done for us. But what do you say to your mother about something that happened over 20 years ago? There is no point in offering alternatives for what happened in the past. No point at all. No point in mentioning that you wished someone had talked about him, confirm my belief that my brothers and I had had a father. Somehow us kids learned some unspoken rule that required us to pretend he never existed.

All this came from a conversation about portion control. Because apparently my mother not only stopped eating, but sort of stopped feeding us as well. I don't remember that, but I've already established I don't remember much.

I know so little about this man. Tonight I found out that he liked the mountains more than the beach. It may seem like an insignificant nugget of information, but to me it was pretty significant. My basket of information is pretty empty, after all.

This probably seems way too personal for a blog, but it seems more like talking about a book I once read. Anyway, the upshot of the conversation with my mother was my brilliant suggestion that since it worked so well the first time, perhaps she should implement the "someone just died" diet. She laughed. And you people wonder why I am so twisted!

Proof.

Modifications

I have gotten to this point somehow. Is it possible to feel like you have come so far and at the same time haven't moved an inch? I have memories of participation, because one part of me knew well enough to know what would happen if I stopped moving. I force noise when the quiet seems too settled. I will act even if I feel like stone. I will stand and speak. I will move forward. I will cause disruption.

I will continue to do these things because I know enough now to know I will thank myself for it later.

So much has happened it will take too long to explain.

Sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day.