Right now there is a picture of my mom on my fireplace mantle. If you came for a visit, you wouldn’t think it’s being there unusual at all. You would likely just think it’s a pretty picture. You would see pretty lighting, a pretty woman who looks a little like me, and pretty trees. You would see a pretty picture, and you would miss the significance of it’s being there entirely.
This is the first time since I was 14 that I have had a picture of my mom out in the open instead of hidden away in my “Mom box.”. This is the first time I have chosen to be confronted with her face every day, and be reminded of what happened, since the day she chose to kill herself.
Something has been different inside me lately. The last several months it’s like I’ve been trying to get my life in order, trying to find all the pieces of me that I’ve lost along the way and put myself back together. I feel like Humpty Dumpty, only there are no king’s horses or king’s men to help. There is only me. I don’t know if it’s something psychological with turning 30 or biological because I am 30 or what.
All I know is I’ve been driven by something lately that I can’t fully describe towards a destination I don’t know, and that if I’m going to get there I have to gather my lost pieces and put me back together. My mom is a big piece of me that was lost. Lost in the pain and shock and loss of the end of her life. But she is a vital part of who I am, of who I have become, and of who I am meant to be.
So, if I am going to do this, if I am going to put myself back together so that I can do or be whatever it is I am meant to do or be, I have to put her photo on my mantle. I have to embrace that she was so much more to my life than how she died. I have to embrace the biggest lost piece of me because I am determined to have a fate different from Mr. Dumpty. I will put myself back together again. I will reach my destination unknown.
-“Bad things don’t happen for a reason. It is up to us to give reasons to our bad happenings.
It is up to us to create meaning from our shit.” http://elizabethpottsweinstein.com/reason
