Continued:

The coyote scared me, but he (or she) did not hurt me. He considered it.. but it didn’t happen. I vividly remember him looking at me up and down, assessing me as potential prey. I’ll never forget it.. it was clear, in his eyes, that it was strictly business, the business of nature, nothing personal. But he didn’t prey on me. Following the two encounters, on two different days, I resumed my walks, there was no pain and injury left over from the encounters.

On the other hand, my mother- my emotional predator- did hurt me. And it was very personal. There was pain and injury carried on from one day to the next, and to the next. It was emotional pain (hurt, shame, guilt, loneliness, despair), and it was physical pain and distress: there were occasional beatings, but mostly the physical pain I am referring to involves a whole lot of physical discomfort and distress aka anxiety which is my experience almost every moment of every day, when I am awake. Like right now (right shoulder twitching and in pain, being sore from the tics, breathing interrupted, unnatural).

My mother was my monster, not a mother. She or it.. was not for me; it was against me. She didn’t kill me, but it would’ve been less painful to me if she did. And throughout it all, I craved- deep inside- to one day make her a mother. This craving, this hope kept me close to the monster, forevermore craving her absent love… stuck in a vacuum of love, stuck in the absence of a mother.

To be continued.

anita