the end was the beginning

i was born out of a rupture most people never speak of. somewhere deep in the colorado mountains there was a family striving to create a new sense of unity, struggling to find peace.

both my father and mother had a life before each other, it wasnt the fairytale we spoon feed ourselves when we dive into what romance might come save us from this world of loneliness. the problems they faced are mostly mysteries to me, the youngest of seven, i wasnt given all the pieces and didnt understand for years why i yearned at all to know them. i was eleven when certain pieces started falling into my hands, they werent given as sparks of curiosity or gifts of wonder to behold. they were insults and threats and weapons meant to find new homes for the pains that my parents couldnt dispel from the life they so desperately thought they could give one another.

my naivety was taken again and again and yet it remains a vast part of my soul.

i remember swinging, swooshing from side to side when one of my siblings confronted the other with a fact that rocked the meaning of family right out of my grasp. that was when i found out that my mother had children from another man and my father had done so as well and the complexity of the family i called my own was only just beginning to reveal itself.

it was this same year i learned the truth of my birth. that was the year the space between my mother and i started to make sense, and the year i let it begin to grow into the monster it became for most of the rest of her life.

my father didnt aim his anger at me, he didnt mean to cause such an avalanche of pain but when he lost his temper sometimes he would black out, sometimes he would go too far…and when i was eleven he got angry with my mother and told me how she tried to kill herself and that was why i was born two months early.