liar liar

parents tell many lies to their children
for example:
there is no monster under your bed
there are no monsters in your closet
jaws can’t get to you through the shower drain
i’ll love you no matter what

cynical huh?
yeah yeah i know
i gotta work on that
but then my writing would be so boring

so those other lies
they don’t really mean much 
in the grand scheme of things
and there other ones for sure
like heaven and hell being real
and you go to hell for being other
and not for the things that you do
to yourself and others

but that last one
is what really messes kids up
and young adults
and suddenly you’re twenty five and
flinching at the parent’s voice
raised at their child to almost
a yell and it is carrying
from five grocery aisles over
and asking yourself just what the hell happened
to get you where you are today

my mom told me that last lie
and i believed her
but not enough to tell her that i 
was a lesbian until i had told
what few friends i had at school
and even our dog

and i didn’t tell her at home either
because i wasn’t an idiot
and could smell the alcohol on her breath
when she picked me up from school

so i told her over appetizers
and then maybe a burger at
a restaurant that charged maybe
fifteen bucks for a slice of cake
and she told me back that she
would love and accept me no matter what

and that night
i almost told her that i had felt different
like a freak
like a monster
like i was broken
like a boy
since i was seven years old

but looking back now
from a different gender and sexuality
with scars to prove that where i came from
no child should have to go through that
i am so glad that i didn’t tell her
anything more than that i was a lesbian

because that next morning
she broke the promise that she
had been making since i was
a baby and then a child
that she would love me
that she would accept me
no matter what

and there was fresh alcohol
on her breath and weed
stink sewed into the fabric
of her clothes as she yelled
at me that i wasn’t being authentic
to myself and that i wasn’t being
my real self and that 
i just hadn’t met the right boy yet

i stopped telling my mother things
like how i felt wrong in my sexuality
like how i wanted to die
when i started to bleed each month
like how i went to bed with blood
stained onto my wrists
like how i starved myself down
so she would maybe love me again

maybe that’s why 
when i finally found the word
for what i was at sixteen years old
i told my blog
and the friend’s family i wished was mine
and the dog again
before i told my mother
that i wasn’t really a girl

and only then did she accept that
i had been a lesbian for the past
three years as a way to throw that
back in my face
because i couldn’t be a boy
if i was a gay woman
and i couldn’t be a boy
if i had no bottom dysphoria
and i showed no signs of it
as a child
but she was just too drunk
and stoned and absent to notice

and she tried to tell me that lie again
how she would love me
how she would accept me
no matter what
but that was followed by how she
still saw me as her daughter
and that was the first time
surprisingly enough
that i thought about slitting my throat

so parents lie to you
they lie about a lot of things
like how they will never die
the things you see aren’t real
the voices you hear aren’t real
you aren’t a monster for being you

so parents lie to you
they lie about a lot of things
like how they say:
i’ll love you no matter what
i’ll love you no matter what
i’ll love you no matter what

i’ll love you no matter what