🟠🜄 CHAPTER 7 — THE PARENT

Not to punish — but to see if I finally would.

I stood at the doorframe of memory —
not the kind we share at family tables,
but the kind that lives behind the ribs,
where the child still waits
for a knock that never came.

There are truths I’ve never said aloud.
Not because I didn’t know them.
Because saying them felt like betrayal —
of my parents, of my blood,
of the version of me that learned
to survive through silence.

But silence doesn’t make it untrue.
And truth — eventually —
hums loud enough to shake a door off its hinges.

But myths break.
Time cracks them from the inside.

Behind every myth
is just a human
— unfinished.
Wounded.
Surviving.

They were still becoming
when they had me.

And sometimes they gave.
Sometimes they couldn’t.
Sometimes I paid for both.

I became the one who stays —
even when I didn’t know how,
even when the child in me was shaking,
even when I didn’t get that from them.

I said:
“I’m here.”
“You matter.”
“I will not leave.”

The Jester balanced a candle on their head, eyes wide.
“Who taught you that staying meant silence?
Whose rules are you still whispering to yourself when you cry?
Close your eyes. Listen.
What do you need to unlearn to stay with love?”

🟠 The Alchemy of Gratitude and Grief

Still… I would not be who I am without them.
They gave me more than pain.

They gave me instinct.
They gave me silence I now translate into song.
They gave me hands that know how to build.
Eyes that spot danger before it speaks.
A rhythm in my body that remembers
what they never had words for.

Even their absences carved me.
Even their mistakes made me remember
how to love with soft eyes.
How to protect what matters.
How to survive when no one comes.

I am not only healing from them.
I am growing because of them.

And so:
I light candles for their failures
and for their trying.
I honor both.

They reminded me to rest.
To play.
To feel.

They didn’t want perfection.
They wanted presence.

And slowly, as I learned to stay,
they began to trust me with their tears.

🟠 Mirror of Generations

Now… I see them —
not as giants, not as villains —
as people.

People raised in rooms with closed doors.
People who thought shame was love.
People who loved through fear and formula.

They weren’t heartless.
They were voiceless.
They were told not to cry.
Told to sacrifice.
Told to be the strong one.

They didn’t pass down just wounds.
They passed down songs.
Recipes.
Laughter disguised as survival.

They passed down what they could.
And when they couldn’t,
I learned to plant what didn’t grow.

You raise your voice,
and hear your mother’s echo.

You try to protect,
and realize protection sometimes smothers.

You sacrifice,
and wonder if you’re teaching love or depletion.

You teach what you never learned,
and pray it’s enough.

You parent while unhealed,
hoping presence will make up for what wisdom can’t.

You love, even when exhausted.
You fail, even when sincere.
You forgive yourself, or you learn to.

And one day,
your child does something small —
and you see yourself redeemed.

A laugh where you would have yelled.
A boundary where you once folded.
A kindness that didn’t exist in your bloodline before now.

That’s what healing looks like:
not perfect — just different.

🟠 Becoming the Root

I no longer wait for the apology.
I no longer fantasize about being chosen first.

Instead,
I speak to the silence.
I kiss the bruises I inherited.
I raise myself
the way I once begged for.

This is not about becoming my mother or father.
It’s about becoming the one who stays —
for the child inside,
for the self that keeps surviving.

I become the shelter.
The warmth.
The grace.
I stay.