This used to be my song for like lovers but more and more these days, for songs that used to be for lovers, I find myself feeling it towards my mother lmfao
Renegade by Big Red Machine and Taylor Swift
I tapped on your window on your darkest night
The shape of you was jagged and weak
There was nowhere for me to stay
But I stayed anyway
AND IF I WOULD HAVE KNOWN
How many pieces you had crumbled into
I might’ve let them lay
You fire off missiles ’cause you hate yourself
BUT DO YOU KNOW YOU’RE DEMOLISHING ME?
And then you squeeze my hand as I’m about to leave
Are you really gonna talk about timing in times like these?
LET ALL YOUR DAMAGE DAMAGE ME???
And carry your baggage up my street
AND MAKE ME YOUR FUTURE HISTORY
It’s time, you’ve come a long way
OPEN THE BLINDS, LET ME SEE YOUR FACE
You wouldn’t be the first renegade
To need somebody
Is it insensitive for me to say
Get your shit together?
So I can love you
Is it really your anxiety
That stops you from giving me everything?
OR DO YOU JUST NOT WANT TO?????????????
I stayed even when there was “nowhere to stay,” or when it hurt, or when I knew her sharpness could slice me open again. I still wanted to love her. I still hoped she would let me in. That maybe this time, she would see the truth and hold it with me. But over and over again, I had to carry her damage, absorb her silence, shapeshift around her anxiety or avoidance or shame or cruelty until my own voice blurred at the edges just trying to stay whole.
This is the rupture that so many of us who loved our mothers fiercely end up arriving at… When you realize the wall might not just be made of fear or wounds or miscommunication but CHOICE. That hurts more than anything because I would have carried some of it. I did. But she never let me love her in the way she needed because she never let me be real in the way I needed.
But I AM STILL HERE, REAL, LOVING, AND WHOLE. Because unlike her, I know when to stop carrying what was never mine. Even when I ache for something different, even when I remember the child in me still holding out hope, I choose TRUTH and love that doesn’t demand silence to survive.
The damage stops with me.