Mother Daughter Talks

There are things that my mother and I don't talk about.
We don't talk about intercourse.
We don't talk about marital vows.
We no longer talk about where I stayed at night or what I did while I was over there.
She never mentioned her first abortion but I never asked her how she felt about her second abortion.
She never asked me about my first abortion.
But we did talk about sex during your period which entails the butt...

there are things that I simply do not talk about.

I guess its called growing up, when there is less communication but more awkward silences in between phone calls and errands. I guess growing up is playing catch up with all of the things we end up falling behind on, like dreams. I am proud of my mother for having dreams. I am proud of my mother for attempting to enhance her English --she has taken up listening to Colorado Public radio filled with news. But she had other dreams. 

My mother dreamed about having a family. I never understood her decisions in life. I thought it was desperation, I thought it was her naivety, but after spending a night kissing my coworker's shoulder and spine when he snored as though he was my lover finally returning home from years apart, I understood her. She wanted to be better than the skin she was in. She wanted to give the man she cared for, at the moment, the one thing she wanted most for herself and I am proud of her. 

I have dreams. I have cluttered mascara brushes. I have dirty eye shadow palettes because I have dreams? I have a hormonal imbalance. This led me to a condition called poly cyst syndrome meaning my periods are irregular. Last month, I was late. Last month, my car was totaled. Last month, I moved back home with my mother. Last month, I made myself a promise.

I made a lot of things happen last month but unfortunately, I made a lot of promises too. 

I promised myself that the next person I slept with, would be my husband. 

But I still don't have a ring around my finger.

But then again, I didn't really sleep last night either.

6:30 in the morning.

When my bladder is so full from playing superhuman.

When his back is turned to me.

When my cat would be sleeping against my hips.

and the sun is barely starting to break through clouds.

I sat up.  I was fed up, of lying on my back, between a wall and a hard spot. I crawled over his sprawled legs and snuck into the rest room.

I want to differentiate the categories of rooms with toilets before I continue. The different names are determined by the location of which your toilet is. In Africa and Southeast Asia, a publicly shared toilet is called a comfort room. In Europe, it is called a water closet. In England, Australia, and New Zealand, it is called a public loo. In America, bathroom and restroom are used. Restroom originated in the west as a polite way for women and aristocrats to called a boxed hole off of long stagecoach rides. Comfort rooms serve the same purpose since it is a great relief to release your bowels but the difference is, in Southeast Asia, rest is categorized as a mode of sleeping or napping. I want to mark how important all of this is. These names are euphonies for something mildly disgusting but essentially human, animalistic, organic. In reality, toilet was an antique term for "dressing one's self".

After looking at my reflection, with melted makeup, oily hair curled and twisted inches reaching from my head, I had to, had to, think about what it means to be human. Human, was it our ability to develop societies? Human, was it our ability to innovate the images our imagination produced? Human, was it the way he kissed my body down to my toes and running his fingers underneath my knee? Or Human, the ability to up and escape a wife and family that wasn't yours to begin with?

Or Human, our ability to have cognitive thought?

I have dealt with infidelity often. My father cheated on my mother, my boyfriend cheated on me, my friends have been cheated on, and I have cheated too. But we all had the choice to turn left instead of head home. Wrapped up in those choices, came consequences and yet again, even more choices. Like when to tell your partner or whether to tell them at all. 

My partner last night was told that his child did not belong to him after six months of being a father. But his decision to run off will be erased like almost 80% of the child's neurons from the darling's mind. A child is to be loved and I have no room to love more of myself.

I chose to follow my dreams and I dream of traveling the planet with my multitude of degrees debating with foreign nations on how to effectively switch over to a sustainable fuel alternative. I have had no dreams of a family yet. I chose to take two pills 24 hours apart from one another. And just like the doctor said, within thirty minutes of the second pill, my uterus contracted, my cramps knotted my stomach, and my brown work pants were stained red. For three days. 

And then the nausea stopped. And then the ultrasound came out promising. But the days to come came with more cognitive thoughts.

As early as two weeks in the pregnancy, the fetus starts to develop neurons and brain functions. I had my abortion at about the completion of the neural tube. I told no one but my partner at the time. I wanted to see the sparkle every man has, at least for one second, to hear that he became a father. But he didn't ask me how I felt. He asked my how my body was, the flesh with similar structures as animals, how my body was but he didn't ask me how I felt. I was asked if I was okay and quite frankly, yes. My tests came out fine, my next cycle started, my body is okay. But no one asked me how I felt.

No one at the doctor's office asked me if I was okay. They asked me if I was sure. But I'm not sure. I'm not sure about my future or my career or even my wellbeing. No one asked my fetus whether or not it was ready to be born. No one asks a cancer patient if they are ready to die. Life doesn't even bother you to ask if you are ready to wake up. I am not sure. I am not sure about the karma that comes along with my decisions. No one asked my inner self what it felt when circumstance had to break promises I made to myself. No one asked my mom how she felt having an abortion and risking her dream. 

There are things we will never be able to ask. I will never be able to ask my friend how it felt to put her genes up for adoption or whether or not the adoptive parents are ready for her full blown personality in a boy two decades younger than her. I will never know whether her son will be like her. I will never be able to ask my other friend how it genuinely feels like to be a mom or her alternative self how happy she truly is. Hormones are a silly thing. 

One thing I will never fully understand is how to be a woman. I know how to cook and clean, I know how to make love and finish my partner but I will never know what it is like to be a woman. My mom was never ready for the routine of a family despite being a dream of hers. No one told her I was coming, me and my personality. No one told her how loud my voice would be and no one told her how many tears we would cry together on separate pillows. But she does her absolute best to be the woman she was taught to be, the woman she teaches me not be.

We talk about how to be Women with capitalized "W". 

But we will never have the chance to talk about what's it like to finally find the answers.