Sometimes she looks like mum. Mum in the middle of a massive surge of anger and frustration, face crumpled, jaw jutting out, red wet eyes, hands clenched, shoulders hunched over, cowering. After all the effort, the trying, the making things right. All the bargains, and sewing and repairing, the brass polishing and weeding and fixing and wallpapering... after all this exhausting effort, nothing is right. Still not perfect. She can't make it perfect. It's destroying her.
Sometimes she looks like a little sister, desperate for a pee, made to wait because someone's taking a photo. Face crumpled into tears, trying not to wet her pants.
Sometimes she's another sister, curled up in a ball with the cat, just humming to it, not making eye contact with anyone. Just curled up.
Sometimes it's dad carrying a white baby coffin, the day my cousin Andrew was buried.
Sometimes it's Nana Ward saying she wishes God would just take her now.
Sometimes it's me wailing through the trauma of break up. Or watching my father die. Watching my mother die. Feeling, watching, the life force leave us behind. Leaving the cat behind in Canada. Coming home and being a misterable stranger in my own country. Lost at home with nowhere else to go.
Sometimes it's just nobody in particular, miserable, snivelling, snotty blurry salty hot tears for no particular reason.
But the point is emo me isn't actually me. This thing I feel like I've been dragging around is emotion. Sad emotion. It's just frustration and anger, indignity, feeling lost, failing, flailing. It's emotion. It's everyone's emotion. It's not mine. And that's not me.
Which is actually rather a relief. It's not mine or me.
It's life. It's everyone's. We all get our turn at the trough of misery. We all have to suck it some time or other. But we don't own it and it doesn't own us.
That's what I saw when I looked long enough.
NEXT: how not to find out who you really are
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