Before the Fall.....

Growing up with a mother whose mind was both storm and silence shaped everything I became.

Unwell from years of abuse at the hands of people who were supposed to love her; warped her mind and body into twisted versions of themselves, broken and lost. Bipolar was the name they gave it, but it never really told the whole story.

Twenty years have come and gone.
We have more language now - complex PTSD, schizophrenia, bipolar, dissociation -
but do we have any more understanding?

Back then, all I knew were the two versions of my mother,
wrapped up in one.

Before the Fall….

by Kelly Colon

The house was red.
Not bright red —
faded, chipped,
the kind of red that looks tired
even in daylight.

Inside,
a mother whose mind
was both storm and silence.
You could hear her before you saw her 
the pacing, the muttering,
the scrape of a chair,
the slam of a drawer
for no reason at all.

I learned early to read weather before I learned to boil water
not skies or rain patterns
her moods.
The tremor in her voice,
the way her fingers tapped the counter,
the tilt of her head before she broke.

Some days she was laughter.
Too loud, too bright,
her eyes glassy with mania,
singing John Denver in the kitchen
like a woman who could still be saved.

Other days she was silence 
smoke curling above her jet black hair,
eyes fixed on something
I couldn’t see.
She’d vanish into her bedroom
and I’d stand at the door,
listening to the sound of her not moving.

I loved her like a prayer
and feared her like a warning.
Her love came in bursts 
sudden, fevered,
then gone.

I learned to stay ready.
To anticipate.
To disappear when needed.
To laugh when she laughed
and stay quiet when she stared.

The red house taught me
how to hold my breath,
how to walk soundlessly,
how to survive inside a body
that was always waiting
for the next storm.

Now, when people call me calm,
I smile.
Because calm was never safety.
Calm was the eye of the hurricane 
the silence between her highs and her breaking.

And still,
sometimes when I hear John Denver,
I see her 
head tilted,
a cigarette in one hand,
singing off-key,
almost free

And I remember
how much I wanted
to believe in that version of her.

The one that smiled,
just before the fall. 

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