My stories about Mom scare white Americans.  They can’t understand why I laugh so heartily about the abuse I suffered in my childhood.  Honestly, I can’t either.  I guess it’s because It was just so ridiculous, how she used to tell me she shit me out or how she would refuse to apologize but would instead force upon me hugs and kisses, which didn’t at all cure the disease.  And the disease needed to be cured.

My mother is bipolar, has been since I was six.  Oh, she would pass it off as run-of-the-mill depression, but I’ve researched her medications and I know very well—from my own personal experience, in fact—their purpose.

Upper and downers and mood stabilizers and sleeping pills and, for me, ***.  Oh, ***.  Smoking *** chills me out and eases me into a state of productivity, a state in which I can write without feeling, as I did so many years ago, the pangs and bangs of abuse as if they were occurring to me in that moment at my writing chair.  On ***, I don’t have to excuse myself to the bathroom so no one sees me have a panic attack in the middle of a perfectly should-be-happy moment.  On ***, I can explore thoughts that would otherwise be too intense to even broach.  On ***, I’m not okay but I’m at least self-aware, so I’m better off than most.  I learned to walk on unstable ground, and that’s not my fault, though it will be if I don’t at least try to tell others they’re on unstable ground as well.

Warning.  That’s all I can give to this world.  And so I try to give this: through my stories, my poetry, my spoken words—I want it all to produce a thought that will produce another thought that, in turn, will produce another.  In other words, there are no limits.  Fecundity is indeed my power but not in the way my mother would have me think.  In fact, nothing has the meaning we think it does.

Indeed, white Americans should find my stories of Mom frightening: like Alice in Wonderland, they have difficulty facing the insanity of their own world and so see my life as a Wonderland sufficiently exotic, because of my heritage, to provide a comfortable distance from the abuse they suffered as children.  My oppression and repression was reinforced by blatant acts of terrorism; theirs was reinforced by the subtle art of subversion.  I was called “shit,” while they were made to feel they were shit on a profound level that makes them seek out domestic partners that share their fear and feelings of inadequacy, in turn reinforcing the oppression and repression of their childhood.  See how the institution is built?  Fear is its foundation; people are its pillars.  It isn’t wise to put your arms down, but spread your feet out: if you’re brave enough to look down, you will clearly see, we’re all standing on a fault line.