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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"I learned early to read weather before I learned to boil water; not skies or rain patterns;
her moods." Wow, Kelly. This got to me.