my mother sent me a message one evening at 3am. “my mother’s grave’s lease is over at the end of 2027,” she’d said, “and i don’t know whether to continue or not.” 

admittedly, i was a bit confused. i didn’t really understand why she’d ask me about it, nor why she’d position it as if it were something she required my counsel on. my mother and i have a notably strained relationship, stretched and folded over years of emotional neglect and narcissistic tirades. really, i should be the last person she’d ask about my grandmother’s grave.

for context, my grandmother passed away when my mother was thirteen. Make, my grandmother, was particularly depressed when my grandfather moved her and my mother to Africa. they moved from country to country: Ethiopia, Nairobi, South Africa, Egypt…the list goes on. Make was emotionally distant, reserved, and hardly a presence in my mother’s life. prescription drugs and alcohol were her only sustenance, so she stopped eating.

slowly, Make deteriorated. “i remember coming home and not knowing if my mother would be alive or dead,” my mother once recounted while telling myself and Bill—my dad who is not really my father, but close enough—about a nightmare she’d had. “that’s why i was so angry to see her in my dream. i just kept screaming, ‘you’re supposed to be dead!’”

my mother, to this day, hates her own mother, and the irony is that her reasons for hating Make are the same for why i’ve hated her.

Johanna is what you’d call a high-functioning alcoholic. as i was growing up, i would see sides of my mother no one else could fathom. crates of white wine purchased in bulk, sitting in the backroom of our condo where she had set up her own bar. the Black Cat Bar, according to the faded black and gold artwork she mounted behind the counter—Johanna loves her artwork. 

every evening, after a long day working the help desk at a travel agency, my mother would slather her face and neck in expensive moisturizers she kept chilled in the refrigerator, take out a big wine glass, and pour glass after glass until her bottle for the evening had all but evaporated. i would come into the room, take her wilted glass and dehydrated bottle, turn her onto her side, make sure her alarm clock was set, and turn out the lights. then, i would go to sleep myself, hoping i’d hear her footsteps in the early morning as she brewed her black pot of coffee. 

if i woke up to nothing, i would get up, check to make sure my mother had not asphyxiated on her own vomit, and then attempt to wake her up. most of the time, she would get up without concern, miserably skirting around the house to get ready for work. some other times, however, she would ask me to call in for her, telling her boss in the smallest voice i could muster, “mommy’s really sick today, she can’t come in.”

my sister managed to escape our mother’s misery by moving to Finland with our extended family, but as i grew older, i remained in Miami with Johanna, and i really started to fucking hate living with her.

i have been many things in my life—a friend, a lover, a woman, a god, and oddly enough,  also a father, an ex-husband, a secretary, and a monster. so many hats, and skins, and identities i’ve become, but i’ve never been my mother’s daughter even once. 

Lara says i’m our mother’s favorite, but she doesn’t understand. the expectations have never fallen upon her shoulders, and while that can be a problem on its own, it isn’t any better having our mother’s every expectation pressed upon you. in fact, i once wrote a song where the pre-chorus sang: 

where is my talent?
why can’t i have this?
who am i if i’m not outrageous?
i’m supposed to be rich
supposed to be famous
but i cannot make it
yeah, i keep on failing

and i have failed. time and time again, i have failed at everything i’ve tried to accomplish. but sometimes, i’m not sure if it’s because it simply didn’t work, or if i made sure that it didn’t. i’ve asked my therapist about this before: am i failing because i’m bad at everything i do, or am i just trying to spite my mother?

my mother who once called my father in a drunken rage, and shouted, “Amelia is going to be so successful; so rich and famous, and you won’t see a fucking dime of it!” my mother who would parade me around in front of her friends and colleagues at parties, boasting, “isn’t my daughter just so smart, funny, and talented?” my mother who admitted to me that she’d given birth to me out of spite for David after he’d asked for an abortion, then grimaced as she said, “you look just like your father when you make that expression.”

was i born to be spiteful?

my mother decided to take care of make’s grave, telling me, “she was a mere girl of 36 when she died. in a way, i find it somewhat cruel to leave her without a resting place.”

maybe i’ll end up taking care of my mother’s resting place in the future too. but in the slightest chance that i was born a creature of venom and spite, i will never have a child of my own to wonder if they’ll take care of my resting place when i die. instead, my line will end with me, and i will have the people in my life at the time burn my body to ash, distribute them into tiny, transportable bags, and take the dust of my corpse along on adventures beyond death. 

maybe to the Himalayas, or along a beach on Costa Rica, or in the cold depths of Siberia. regardless, i will be everywhere, and nowhere, and live on in a legacy of black ink and the paragraphs of all the tiny universes i witnessed within the shallows of my mind.