1000.layers
It’s a painting. It’s not. It’s everything.

I wonder sometimes if people saw something in me and invited me out, and I said no.

I wonder how many missed moments I’ve had because I couldn’t risk trusting that someone was actually being kind to me.

I wonder about the people who(m) I really liked in High School, who I felt I had to let go or leave behind because of things I didn’t believe in.

I am sorry. If I ever hurt you. I really am. Please come talk to me.

I still love you.

That message isn’t for you if I’ve closed the door. You need to wait for me to contact you. And I might not.

If you can understand that, then try emailing me again.

I try to think about why I would’ve said no to connection. Thinking back,

the biggest thing I hid was that I felt obligated to take care of my family at home, and was called the baby until I was— well, now.

The second is that I was genuinely tired every day of my life since I was born. Apparently, I slept 18 hours a day as a baby. That isn’t normal. I don’t know how much I cried, if I did at all. I don’t remember my mom reading me bedtime stories. I don’t remember my dad or sister either. I’m sure they did.

I remember waiting up for my mom to say goodnight to me one night, and sometimes it would be 9 pm, and I’d hear her head to her room and see my door cracked, listening, “Op, Mel, sorry honey,” She’d come down the hallway. “I was just finishing up some work. I’m sorry I didn’t come down sooner. I’m such a bad mom.”

“No, mommy, you’re not. It’s okay, you were just working. I understand.” (I don’t know at what age I started saying this, and just went to bed.)

Okay, balance restored. Goodnight. Light out. Darkness.
Because she was tired, too.

I think I was tired because I was protecting a family that damaged me, sometimes on purpose.

And then treated me like a moron for not seeing it.

I saw, I just had no other choice.

The third thing is that I was often not allowed out. Not on school nights, not after a certain time, and unless my dad would drive me, not without a ride. I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 19. My sister got a $75,000 vehicle on her 17th birthday. I understood how insane that was at 11.

The fourth thing was that I wasn’t allowed to shine. Meaning, I couldn’t be myself fully, and not in circles if my sister was in them. I could be baby sister, I could be “in training”, I could be seen, but I was not heard. And when people would ask why I didn’t speak, it wasn’t because I didn’t have the words.

It was implied that the threat was: we can make it worse.

Reading this, they would say I’m being dramatic, that I remember incorrectly, that it wasn’t like this. I know now, and they knew then. I was a child.

The part that still confuses me, that has me repeatedly ask kind people if they’re being kind, is: I never knew if I was getting a spot of their sunshine. A bright and sunny day could turn to hellfire in a moment.

You can’t control the weather; you can’t tell the storm it washed you away.

So I kept living in silence.

And then, when things got harder, I sent out a beacon. I found someone. And it felt like love, and pieces repeated, but this time slower, less, softer, but still the cage that told me to remain, wings slightly stretched, told to be grateful, closed around me again.

[There’s more between, but this is just 1000 Layers, not my memoir]

And eventually, I broke myself out. I think know the only way I did was because they could never fully break in.

I’m not sure, they’ll never say why.

Now I choose who sits here, because I choose. I choose the stories.

Because I hold the truth, and I am a storyteller, not the liar.

1000 Layers is every layer someone missed me falling away, and the proof that I am

very,

very,

very much

still alive.