Alyssa

Alyssa:  I wonder why I do it.  Sometimes I wonder.  

Like, why do I pick up my room, why do I do the dishes, why do I put away my clothes and do my laundry?

Why do I write, when no one notices.

I feel like I’m maybe invisible, like 

No, not invisible, exactly.  It’s more that everyone sees me fine but they turn away, and I don’t know why and so I also don’t know why I do anything for anyone – even when it’s just for me, which it never is anyway -- because it doesn’t ever work.  It doesn’t make anyone happy.

They yell, they kiss they have lives and I’m not there not for them, I mean not for my parents, not for anyone

It seems like, sometimes.

I shouldn’t talk like this.  If my mother heard me she’d cry and call me mean probably and she’d be right because it is mean to talk about someone and especially to say they don’t love you when all they ask is you don’t get in the way and you let them have a grown-up conversation once in a while—

That’s what they’d say.  I mean, my parents.  My mother, okay?

And they got me this computer, I mean she did, she got me this computer which I didn’t ask for because I liked my old laptop just as good only this one goes online only I never do that because I don’t do facebook or anything because no one wants to know what I’m thinking or doing

Sometimes it seems that way.

Sometimes it seems like she gets me things just so she can see if I’m using them, like, “Honey why don’t you go write, you like to write, go use your new computer,” and I’m thinking, I only wanted to sit with you awhile.  Only I never say that.

I just go up to my room and write

And sometimes I delete what I’ve written as soon as I’m done because maybe when I’m not here she comes in my room and checks to see what I’ve been doing.  Just in case, I also wink through web sites, like at least fifteen a night, because that seems normal and I want her to think I’m normal.

She doesn’t think I am, it seems like.

Well, I’m not making that up, because she takes me to a therapist in New Haven and she says I’m a good girl but I don’t know what to do with myself, like that’s a crime.

I know what I want to do, or I used to, but then I got all mixed up between what I want to do and what I’m supposed to be, like, supposed to be a good girl, but what is that, exactly?  Supposed to be normal so I try really hard, and supposed to not be underfoot and supposed to not talk so much because her ears are hurting and it’s not me, it’s her she says, it’s her job and she gets tired and she understands why some women have children when they’re young but she thought she had to do something with her life first only now look at her, all she is is my mother.  She hates that.

Sometimes it seems like

I mean isn’t it normal to

Like shouldn’t doesn’t every kid want to

Me!  Not every or any kid, me!  I just want to curl up in a ball next to her and if she cries it’s okay and if I cry it’s okay and it’s no trouble, I’m no trouble, I just think if I could get hugged, well that’s what I really want to do.

sometime.