This is How it Was
I was the invisible child.
Never mattered unless I reflected back
to them for them something of worth
they could add to themselves.
Of myself for myself I didn't matter.
I was as in the words uttered to me
*You were a mistake*.
So live with that notion for years
and try to decipher truths from lying
lips and untwist the twisted and
make sense of the chaos and unreality
and knowing all the while that the farce
is in full swing even though you're only
3 years old - you know and are told
insidiously to play along or warrant
annihilation - so you do but fighting
it and them and their lies and their
stupidity - all the way.
A scene from a day in the life of an invisible child
and the players who share/d the same blood - nefesh as I
and their distance and indifference - just one scene
of the thousands till I upped one day as all did except
birth mother - and left the scene of the crime.
Who we see here - mother, sister, brother, dog Ginger, myself in the distance with a neighbor. Towards the end of this clip a strange woman.
In the clip, Father is visiting this day, filming as he was usually doing. Removed from the scene behind a lens. My sister is hamming it up, trying to interject levity into another tense visitation. The clown in the bullfighting ring. Distracting the animosity away. The mood of my mother is self evident. Brother and sister interact with mother. this is usual - as I am like a stranger to them. Never included, held or acknowledged except for feeding times and those instances where my rage explodes. Otherwise I am left alone, in rooms, outside, with a babysitter while the others are living their lives. There is no mirroring - but there is extreme sadness and grief that is interspersed with hysterics that I am made to claim as my own by proximity to mother and becoming her sound board - and the alleviator of her intense misery by any means possible with whatever skill I can muster up between the ages of 1-11.
Parents during this time are in the midst of a bloody divorce, mother conveys displeasure to father behind camera. Here I am 4 or 5. The separation and animosity began way before my inception, but siblings were able to develop a bond between them and parents. When I arrived the collective disintegrated, parents each unavailable, brother left, sister preoccupied, I clung to animals and slowly learned to fade, become invisible, then I learned to rage against the insanity. Then I imploded. Now so many years later, I am faded, invisible, porous, estranged and avoidant. I am still trying to make sense out of being ostracized in my family of birth. I am still trying to understand the dynamics of why.
Never mattered unless I reflected back
to them for them something of worth
they could add to themselves.
Of myself for myself I didn't matter.
I was as in the words uttered to me
*You were a mistake*.
So live with that notion for years
and try to decipher truths from lying
lips and untwist the twisted and
make sense of the chaos and unreality
and knowing all the while that the farce
is in full swing even though you're only
3 years old - you know and are told
insidiously to play along or warrant
annihilation - so you do but fighting
it and them and their lies and their
stupidity - all the way.
A scene from a day in the life of an invisible child
and the players who share/d the same blood - nefesh as I
and their distance and indifference - just one scene
of the thousands till I upped one day as all did except
birth mother - and left the scene of the crime.
Who we see here - mother, sister, brother, dog Ginger, myself in the distance with a neighbor. Towards the end of this clip a strange woman.
In the clip, Father is visiting this day, filming as he was usually doing. Removed from the scene behind a lens. My sister is hamming it up, trying to interject levity into another tense visitation. The clown in the bullfighting ring. Distracting the animosity away. The mood of my mother is self evident. Brother and sister interact with mother. this is usual - as I am like a stranger to them. Never included, held or acknowledged except for feeding times and those instances where my rage explodes. Otherwise I am left alone, in rooms, outside, with a babysitter while the others are living their lives. There is no mirroring - but there is extreme sadness and grief that is interspersed with hysterics that I am made to claim as my own by proximity to mother and becoming her sound board - and the alleviator of her intense misery by any means possible with whatever skill I can muster up between the ages of 1-11.
Parents during this time are in the midst of a bloody divorce, mother conveys displeasure to father behind camera. Here I am 4 or 5. The separation and animosity began way before my inception, but siblings were able to develop a bond between them and parents. When I arrived the collective disintegrated, parents each unavailable, brother left, sister preoccupied, I clung to animals and slowly learned to fade, become invisible, then I learned to rage against the insanity. Then I imploded. Now so many years later, I am faded, invisible, porous, estranged and avoidant. I am still trying to make sense out of being ostracized in my family of birth. I am still trying to understand the dynamics of why.
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