My life began on Friday April 27, 2012. Up until then I had existed. Existed in darkness, the deepest black of inherited addictive behaviors manifesting in self-hatred and self loathing with lost chances and a desire for death. There were glimpses of beauty, like the sun reflecting off the crusted snow, blinding in its temporality, painful in its hopeful acknowledgement of presence, but never sustaining enough for sustenance.
My childhood was just that, a hood for a child. A cave of invisibility like a mantle around me to protect me from the alcohol enhanced rage induced violence. Beatings at the hand of an iron fist propelled by a need to control, degrade, debase and annihilate. This hood, this cave, was the enabler in this mise-en-scene, in agreement about the ugliness of my being, the worthlessness of my existence, assisting in the nullification of self.
I left home, but I never left behind. I continued where it left off, using the power of my self-hatred to beat myself into oblivion, with self-sabotage as wingman, encouraging failure, depression, cloaking the horror of who I was with saccharinity and false genuineness. All the while the lure of enticing oblivion called in the form of addictions, negative situations and the pride of victimhood and self-abasement.
My son broke through the clouds June 25, 1992 at 4:58 am on Nantucket in a garage apartment after nearly 10 months of gestation and 6 hours of back labor. Before they lay him on my belly, I knew it was him. And for him, and for my love for him, the next 20 years, I waged war. I fought back against the darkness. I tore up the contract, that hood that was put upon me as a child. I fought to find my place in the sun, in the beauty, in the nature of this earth. I acknowledged the harm I caused others and myself, even as I continued to harm in all of my insidiousness. I continued in failure, in self-sabotage fighting for my breath as I drowned in the weight of what had been heaved upon me. Surrounded by the stench of mounds and mounds of heaped, festering refuse. Wanting only to spontaneously combust, but not, because of my son.
One day at a time, the sun shined brighter, the birds sang sweeter, the scents of spring became more intoxicating, and a life of beauty became more real than the existence of what I had been. And on that day, April 27, 2012, I began to live. This time, a life of my own choosing, where love is the guiding force, where my son can shine without the burden of being my reason to live. Where I no longer hide. Where breathing holds more solace than death. That day, the hood of the child was shrouded, buried with reverence, forgiveness and in gratitude. For if it weren’t for that hood, which encompassed all that had existed of me, represented all that was put upon me, I would not be where I am now. I am who I am because of who I have been.
The splendor of it pierces my soul, and I feel joy.
Monica Seggos
19 August 2015