I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness

by Claire Vaye Watkins

I slam the computer closed. After, I send pictures of the baby and small loops of video, to prove I am not a banshee. I am a banshee, but cannot get comfortable with being one, am always swinging from bansheeism to playacting sweetness and back. The truth is I cannot play nice and don’t want to, but want to want to, some days.

One way to say all this is, My mother was an opioid addict and she overdosed. Another way is, My mother was suicidal and she killed herself. Another way is, My mother was poor and ignored, dismissed, called hysterical and hypochondriac by doctors who believed instead their well-paid colleagues who spoke on behalf of Purdue Pharma, believed the FDA who renewed and renewed Purdue’s patent, and so despite her history of addiction, despite the fact that she was in recovery, that she had all those years sober, that she did not even have bananas flambé on Mother’s Day, her doctors put her on legal and extremely profitable heroin. Another way is, Medicine tossed her to the Sacklers and they sucked her dry, destroyed her and everyone around her, and blamed her for it. Another way is, She needed help and no one gave it to her.

Pull my hair. Be kind to all plants and animals and children. Leave me alone. That’s how I like it.