You Exist Too Much

by Zaina Arafat

Not that day. Wearing my uncle’s baggy trousers, I enjoyed occupying blurred lines. Ambiguity was an unsettling yet exhilarating space.

At the time I didn’t realize what it was that separated the two sides of my family: that my paternal cousins did not live in the noisy neighborhood, go to the community pool, and wait to eat hummus sandwiches at home by choice.

When guilt morphed into resentment and grew so big that I was blinded by it, it seeped out of my pores and left me feeling powerless.

I craved the wisdom and guidance they willingly offered and that my father withheld.

ah shit

I didn’t have to do a thing to be loved, I just had to be. But as I got older the same people who’d kissed and pinched my cheeks would try to talk to me, assuming that I possessed her charming attributes only to discover that I didn’t.

She drank and tasted me. She did everything but feed me, though not for lack of trying.

I’m aware I can be exhausting—“you exist too much,” my mother often told me.

“I swear,” she said, “sometimes I think I’m done with men altogether.”

“Of course you love me,” I snap back, if only to keep my ego intact. “I have no doubt that you love me.” I begin to laugh crazily. “I gave you the most authentic parts of me,” I tell him.

I am lost in my mother’s possibility, in what could’ve been, caught between her frustrated potential and a desire to fulfill my own. I lament the disappointments that have come from surrendering her approval to pursue my own desires. I lament what she’s given up for me. Our mutual sacrifice creates wounds that may never heal. I will carry sadness for her pain, and also for mine. In receiving love from others, it will always be hers I crave most.