How to Make Friends in the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

My mother was all I had. Other kids had dads. Aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins. Sisters. Brothers. Even stepparents. All my life, it’s just been us. No dad to plop me on his shoulders or cuff me on the head like the dads who picked up their kids at the daycare. I had a vague, mythical presence. I had: The Person Who Shall Not Be Named.

Of course I’d asked my mom over the years about The Person Who Shall Not Be Named, but she always got squirrelly and shut down, and no kid wants to make their mom angry or sad, and she was all I had, so I just stopped asking.

You’re afraid the woman in the television show you’re watching right now, crying as her daughter tries on wedding gowns, will never be your mother, and you will never be that girl standing in that gown for her in a ritzy shop, or any shop, for that matter, your face glowing.

There will always be this emptiness inside you and beside you, where your mom is supposed to be, and only you will know the emptiness. Other people won’t be able to see it. They’ll see you, moving around the world, just like before. You’ll look alive on the outside but be dead on the inside, flicking your wings and watching everyone through the jar.

Who would ever guess that it isn’t your bones or your blood or your heart that keeps everything humming along inside you, it’s your freaking mom, and when she’s dead, it all disappears.

Someday, when people ask us about high school, and dances, and kisses, and all that stuff, I know that what we’ll remember most of all is how normal was stolen from us.

I think about what those two odd guys said. You must go on. I can’t go on. You must go on. Because what other choice is there, really? You have to make friends with the dark.