57. Kendall
Kendall
Drip drip drip .
I don’t remember a lot about this time. Mostly because I had retreated so far inside of myself that I can’t.
I refuse to. A trauma response, my brain trying to protect itself maybe.
But I remember the drip of the leaky faucet in my small apartment, my first apartment with Akio.
I remember my moms dragging me out of bed and to the bathroom, helping me get undressed, and forcing me to wash myself after days of not bathing.
Days of sitting in my own filth, my own stench, my own inner turmoil.
Darkness and misery and intrusive thoughts swallowing me up like a black hole.
The burden and pressure of being a parent to this tiny little human has cracked me, broken me somehow in places I didn’t know existed.
To the point of inaction. I’m frozen, sinking in quicksand with no way out.
Too scared to move forward and I can’t go back.
Trapped in a life I don’t want and never asked for.
Everything is about him now, my whole universe is him.
My world has gotten very very small almost overnight, and so have I.
I feel so obsolete and so alone that I fade into the background of my life.
I’m not even sure I can actually do this. That I’m cut out to be a mom.
“Ken, we need to try and brush out your hair, okay honey? It’s really tangled,” Mommy says but she sounds like she is somewhere far away.
And I feel numb. Untethered. Disconnected from my body.
I mean I’m here and I’m breathing and I’m going through the motions, barely.
But withering away until I crumble into dust also sounds like a very good option.
And she’s talking to me like I’m a child.
Why is she doing that? Why can’t I get my voice to work?
I don’t look at her but I nod. She helps me sit down in the tub.
I’m no longer wearing my ratty t-shirt and stained sweatpants.
They must have helped me change into a sports bra and athletic shorts at some point.
I bring my hand to the top of my head. My hair is wild, greasy, and disgusting.
I’m embarrassed that I’ve let it get this bad, but not embarrassed enough to do anything about it.
It hasn’t been brushed in days and it’s starting to mat together and dread in some places.
My mom drenches my hair, pouring water over it from a large pitcher the way she used to when I was little.
She lathers it with conditioner and starts trying to work the knots and tangles out.
She’s pulling and tugging with a brush, trying to untangle some of them by hand.
I don’t wince, don’t flinch, don't utter a word. Even though it hurts. Because I want this pain—I need this pain. I’m aching for anything that might make me feel like myself, anything that would make me feel alive again.
I’ve migrated so far from the person I used to be, I don’t even recognize myself.
The person staring back at me in the mirror these days can’t possibly be me.
This disheveled woman with chaotic hair and spit up caked to her shirt.
She has pale purple bags under her bloodshot eyes and dried spit in the corner of her mouth and she reeks of desperation and bone deep exhaustion.
She looks more like a ghost of my former self.
I’m sure I’m an apparition floating around, meandering in and out of someone else’s life, one that certainly doesn’t belong to me.
She pulls on my hair hard and I’m brought back to this moment and reminded with overwhelming terror that this is my life now.
Endless crying and sleepless nights and poopy diapers and warming up bottles and trying to breastfeed and navigating a pumping schedule.
It’s shushing him until my lips feel numb and rocking him until my shoulder throbs and everyone telling me I should be so happy.
And all my aunts asking, "Don't you just love being a mom?” And telling me to “cherish the newborn stage because it goes by so fast.” It makes me want to revolt, recoil, run away. I want to scream and cry and claw at my roots and pick at my cuticles until they bleed because I don’t love any of it.
And I’m starting to panic out of fear that I never will.
My mom’s successful a few times but after a half hour, she sighs.
“Ken, I think we have to go to a salon. Like the one you used to go to that specializes in curly hair. Have a professional look at this. They’ll probably do a better job than I will,” she suggests.
“No,” I shake my head vehemently. “I’m not leaving the house.” I’m barely keeping my shit together in this apartment. If you can even call what I’m doing keeping my shit together. I don’t want to think about what would happen when I set foot in polite society.
“Okay. Well, the only other option is to get the knots out that I can. The ones I can’t we’ll have to cut. Are you sure you want to do that?” She’s looking straight at me, sitting on her knees outside the tub, her brown eyes locked on mine. I only nod in response.
Drip drip drip.
God, the sound of that fucking faucet. It’s driving me insane.
I want to smash it to pieces, rip it out of the wall.
I grip the side of the tub tighter and grind my teeth together in irritation.
The drip is all I can hear, all I can feel or think about.
It’s also the only thing securing me to reality at the moment. So, I let it go.
My mom trudges on, releasing some knots and restoring a few parts of my hair back to its former state.
Every so often, I hear a snip of scissors and feel a delicate handful of hair on my legs.
What were once beautiful, springy, vivacious curls fall to the bottom of the tub in thick matted clumps as silent tears roll down my face.
I hear my mom say, “Okay, I think I’m done.
You are going to have to get it fixed by a salon eventually though, Kendall. ”
I watch in horror, unable to say anything, as my hair swirls down the drain of the tub and disappears. It feels like my former life, and every shred of happiness I have ever had evaporates along with it.