Songs

I rarely make mixes for people because I believe taste in music is extremely individual and territorial. I can appreciate when people make mixes for me, but I am too shy to push my own preferences onto others. I don't like putting myself on the line.

That said, I decided that if I were to create a playlist for someone, it would be for my first mom. I am quite sure that she wouldn't appreciate my choices (she's very into Country music), but it's no more than a musical tribute to my feelings for her. It is short because it's too painful to think about at length.

1. Mary Gauthier, "Mama Here, Mama Gone"
2. Mary Gauthier, "Blood Is Blood"
3. The Magnetic Fields, "I Don't Want to Get Over You"
4. The Pogues, "If I Should Fall From Grace With God"
5. Kirsty MacColl, "They Don't Know"

When I was born, you left me. I have cried, over and over, listening to Mary Gauthier sing about the baby's arms reaching for her mother over and over, and then finally giving up. There was no one to come hold me in the beginning, at least no one with a plan to keep me in her life. Something in me died as a result. Blood is what ties me to you. Not only in terms of its metaphorical associations with family, but because we have spherocytosis. You cannot erase our DNA.

I never wanted to get over you, even though people told me I should, and that it was my duty to forget you. That I should honor your wish--supposed wish--never to see or talk to me again. That I was interfering in your life where I didn't belong. I took antidepressants and sleepwalked through days and years until I had the strength to say "Bollocks!"

I have felt so separated from you, so alone, so desperately sad that I felt God and the world had abandoned me, along with you. I know it sounds melodramatic, but it is very real to me. It was incredibly difficult to live with the huge hole you left in me. As I told you once before, you were always the third parent in the room, the one I was trying to please and make proud. I just wanted you to acknowledge me and accept me as yours.

As for people not knowing: they don't! I am tired of arguing with people who call me bitter or say that I am betraying you or my aparents by doing one thing or another. No one ever understands that loving one parent doesn't cancel the other out. And you know what? I don't care if they know or don't know anymore. We have each other again, and that's huge. A year ago, I would never have dared dream of this.