This may be even weirder than a lot of what I write. Also: my keyboard is sticking obnoxiously.

How do I manage to feel like I belong here? I don’t know. I don’t belong anywhere. I have long felt like “mother” was the only club that I’m allowed to be in that I would actually join. I love the easy camaraderie that is mothers talking about their children. “Us” and “them”. Every other version of that has resulted in me hissing.

But I love being a mother.

I will not discuss my local sports team vs your local sports team, but the endless variety that our beautiful progeny demonstrate? That I can discuss all day. Yours isn’t better. Mine isn’t better. They are all amazing.

Mothering is probably the only activity I engage in where I would be ok with competing if it didn’t mean that people who aren’t me were measured. Everything else I do: art, dance, writing… I know I’m not shit. I’m not great. I’m not wonderful. But I think I really deliver on the mothering skills pretty damn well. If someone could have a way of measuring attentiveness and I liked the prize, I might consent to be judged. But I don’t care to earn money for other displays of possible skill. I don’t know if I’ve ever had that kind of potential–but I know I shoved it away from me with great force.

Do you know that my house is set up the way it is because of child protective services and not because of what I want? I want to ensure I won’t have people knocking on my door accusing me of mistreating my children. So I go to ridiculous lengths to center my children to the degree that sometimes I feel like I cease to exist in my house.

Which is hilarious. Because my presence oozes from all the strangely painted surfaces.

I fear that Noah and I both fear to exist in this house.

Neither of us want this to be “my” house. We both backflip and somersault to say no! I am leaving it to you!

All families should have such strife.

No really, this is complicated. Who owns this house? Both of us. Only not me. Only Noah gets upset with me because he’s done everything he can to gift it to me.

I didn’t earn it. I don’t deserve it. I didn’t pick it.

But I sure as hell did change it.

I think Noah could move out and I would still channel this as Noah’s house in perpetuity. It cannot belong to me because it has had his name on it.

I have heard people deny responsibility for ownership in similar ways, but usually people ascribe the ownership they refuse to gods.

I could name the person who lived here before us and for whom mail still rarely comes but that’s kinda silly. It isn’t my house. It will never be my house. This is practically a religious observation.

Sometimes I wonder about the purpose of procreation. Are they just… pawns? Are they individual creations with minds of their own? Does that mean I’m a God?

Yo, if every Mama thought of herself as a Goddess that might explain some of the conversations I’ve been having.

But I truly don’t feel like that has been happening.

Yet I wonder what would happen if there was space for me.

I fucking hate that in my head this ENTIRE THING has been read with a Jamaican accent. WHY ARE PEOPLE WITH AN ACCENT INHERENTLY MORE SAGE AND EXPERIENCED.WHY WHY WHY.

What would happen if there were space for me to grow up? Space for me to blossom? Space for me to be free?

I’ve had my own room for a lot of my life. Ok, that’s a lie. I haven’t. But I had my own room intermittently as a child. It was always punishment. Since I was small, being alone has always been something I have perceived as “You do not deserve unity. Go.”

I was born from rape. My very existence was experienced as a sundering. A break. A rift. A chasm in connection. I was born blue.

When Noah suggests that we should reorder the house to make space for me, to make a room for me, he is motivated by love and consideration and caring.

Break; rip; tear; shove.

I will crawl into that room and die.

All space made for me is space made for nothingness. Made for the heft between forces. Made for the absence of legitimate force.

When I freak out it isn’t about you being inconsiderately or inadequately just.

No creature can be other than what it was made to be.

I am not wanted.

I was created in violence. In erasure of self. In force of self upon other. I am the erasure of the other. I am the force the begats the violence then violence forces the situation. It’s all perfectly natural.

I am a rapist. I will never be anything but. I am the daughter and sister of rapists. We are what we are. We cannot change.

We are.

What is?

Is my sister a rapist? Am I? Are her children rapists? Are mine? Can they ever be anything else? Honestly this question is on the list of reasons I don’t talk to my sister’s children. I just… can’t know.

Other people seem to believe that “knowing someone” means they can’t be a violent rapist. I think that me knowing someone increases the odds they might be.

I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’m evil and I’m afraid I’m less evil than average.

What would happen if I opened my mind to the idea that I could have a lair in this house.

I don’t know. It might be interesting. It might be diabolical. It might be trite and boring as shit.

That’s me for you.

In an alternative universe a Fox newsroom might say that I’ve resigned.

It is of utmost importance to point out that I do not think Noah is responsible for me feeling like this isn’t my house. He’s done a lot of stuff to try and help that happen. He put my name on every thing he legally owns. He has done everything that can be done in any forum to make me half owner of everything he has.

It isn’t Noah’s fault.

This is about me.

This is about the fact that I don’t feel like I fit. This about half of Noah not feeling like my birthright.

I may be brilliant. I may be accomplished. But I ain’t shit. I ain’t never gonna be shit.

I don’t deserve half of Noah’s wealth. I can’t. No human being can deserve that. He sure as shit doesn’t deserve it, but he gets it.

I don’t know how to make sense of these things.

I have more than I need but I don’t have enough. What I want is my mother. I think I could have been ok being poor forever if she loved me but I’m not that lucky so I make due. I have other comforts. Some of them are more material than others.

I hate my mother. I love my mother. I hate my mother. I love my mother. I hate my mother. I love my mother.

Does my father even occur as a blip? I don’t know. Some fathers are everything. My father…

I am a product of creation. You are a product of creation. Does that mean that we are all part of the great story of creation? If so, who is the author? Who gets the byline? Is it God? Do I believe in God? Do you? Do I care?

Are you my God? Do you want to be?