MEE MA<\/b>
\n
\nBy the time my father is eighteen,
\nmy grandmother had been psychiatrically committed five times.
\nMy grandfather would pack her in the car –
\nthe bags under her eyes heavier than those in the backseat.
\nShe never learned how to drive herself, you know \u2013
\nthe bridges would have been too tempting.
\nSometimes, she didn\u2019t know whether the voices telling her
\nshe was worthless were coming from her heart or her husband –
\nwe were told you sacrifice one for the other. We were told –
\nItalians are passionate people, you know –
\nSomeone screaming at you is the ultimate form of flattery.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We were told –
\nThe best mothers are selfless.
\nThe best mothers deny themselves.
\nThe best mothers make sure the fridge is stocked before
\nthey lie down for three days. My grandmother underwent
\nshock treatment, over and over again,
\nto try to steady her stomach to return to a home
\nwhere she was expected to fill everyone else\u2019s –
\ndespite herself running on empty since she was a teenager.
\nAt the end of her life in the hospital,
\nthe doctors stopped giving her the benzodiazepines
\nthat had allowed her to leave the house for the last 60 years.
\n
\nShe screamed at the top of her lungs: \u201cplease just let me die.\u201d
\nWhat we didn\u2019t realize was she had been screaming that for 60 years.<\/p>\n
We couldn\u2019t save her from the trappings, from the bounds,
\nof the kind of generational suffering that we thought
\nwould go away once she arrived on the boat.
\nIt didn\u2019t.
\nThe only thing we could do for her was allow her the ecstasy
\nof a temporary loss of consciousness through repeated shocks
\nto her brain. While she had to beg and grovel to access that ecstasy,
\nI honored her memory
\nby losing consciousness every few days.
\nI lapped up opiates, drank until my body revolted,
\nslept with strangers who sent shock waves through my psyche,
\nate all the things she never allowed for herself
\nbefore ripping open my esophagus to dispose of the pleasure –
\nyou know, the kind that makes my bloodline recoil.
\nAs I laid in a facility at 20 years old,
\nitching, itching, itching at the imaginary bugs crawling all over me
\nin the midst of withdrawal \u2013
\nwithdrawal from temporary loss of consciousness –
\nI screamed at the top of my lungs: \u201cplease just let me die.\u201d
\nMee Ma -I tried to break the cycle, I really did,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
but the bridges nearly got me, too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nNOT ALL MEN<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You see – you wouldn\u2019t need to protect me MEE MA By the time my father is eighteen, my grandmother had been psychiatrically committed five times. My grandfather would pack her in the car – the bags under her eyes heavier than those in the backseat. She never learned how to drive herself, you know \u2013 the bridges would have been too tempting. [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[328],"class_list":["post-13246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-art-by-anthony-diego-voci"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13246"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13384,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246\/revisions\/13384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nif you weren\u2019t all trying to kill me.
\nTo the man who boldly exclaimed that rape
\nstatistics were exaggerated and women lied \u2013
\nwe all lie – before gently and tearfully pulling
\nme aside to talk about his own PTSD \u2013
\nI\u2019m so sorry you\u2019ve been failed
\nby the same system I have. I\u2019m so sorry your tears
\nhaven\u2019t been captured in the statistics \u2013
\nBut I can\u2019t be expected to hold you up, to comfort you,
\nto affirm you, when you\u2019ve pinned me
\nto the ground while your friends trampled me.
\nToxic masculinity is a form of victimhood, I imagine –
\nBut you said you don\u2019t believe victims.
\nThe most insidious thing is you know
\nyou don\u2019t have to kill me to make me dead.
\n
\nGina Antonia is a poet, performer, and social worker currently based in Seattle, WA after having lived and accumulated stories in Minnesota, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. She has previously been published with Read<\/em> or Green Books,<\/em> and performed with Inspired Word NYC, the Nuyorican Poets Caf\u00e9, and the Barbed Wire Open Mic Series. Her writing largely focuses on trauma, identity, liberation, and shame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"