Salt and Mothers.

I hate you sometimes.
I really do.
I hate that I always feel like it's my job to heal things.
It is not my lot in life to fix everyone's mistakes.
And you never really asked me to... but
somewhere I blame you for this burden.
I know that it isn't really your fault.
You grew up with the same kind of need,
the desperate need to please and prove.
But sometimes I watch your pride for me
like I watch a thinly stretched balloon-
expanding, with me cringing in its wake.
Because I was your dream child. I was perfect.
I performed the role you wanted me to be to a tea.
But now I'm getting a little older,
and sometimes when you are smiling at me
I am cruel and say salty things that go straight to your rawness.
Salt has a healing power if you can endure the burning sensations.
But with you it always backfires,
I end up choking silently on tears that taste like the dead sea.
I feel sorry for you,
I get so terrified at the thought that you might be lonely or sad
or worse- that one day you'll be gone.
Because you do everything in your power to show me you care.
You do all you know how to do to express your love.
And I wrestle with the possibility that you may never understand.
I thrash violently at the realization that my life is not
for changing you-
but for change in me.

... I love you because
I have the capacity to hate you.