Rising Tides
Whenever I sit alone at home I feel like a different person. Every day I put on a mask, act a certain way and talk like society dictates. Not as my heart screams; I reject myself cast aside the feelings within me for foreign life. I feel like there is little to no meaning to my life. Who will miss me when I’m gone? Who will care if I die today?
The truth is, lots of people would care. Or at least only the people and things that matter to me.
My mother.
Who I cherish more than anything, would mourn for my passing. Smudge her face and let anguish run red in the earth.
My brother.
Who is only half of me but we shared a womb and that is all that matters. Although few words pass between us and we didn’t always harmonize; I know my passing would hurt him most.
My horse.
My brother, my heart and my soul. When I lose all faith in humanity. When I can’t take the unending pressure of the city, he is what brings me back. When we ride I feel alive. I feel whole. I feel true to myself and who I’m meant to be. When we ride I feel In’din.
My father.
Not the man that made my mother pregnant. I’ve never known that man and never will. Over the 29 years I’ve lived on this earth, I’ve never asked my mom his name and she has never spoke it. The man that I call father was my grandfather. He has been dead for many years but I know my passing would bring him great anguish. We only spent a little time together but as a young man and an adult I realized I meant so much to him.
These people are what has kept me from ending my life. I’ve thought about taking my own life more than once over the years. Never for a specific reason. It’s hard to relate but over periods of time and strife I would feel so much pressure. Unbearable pressure. It felt as If I were underwater. Tremendous weight threatening to crush me and annihilate my humanity.
It manifested in a very specific way; I’d feel voices in my head. I couldn’t ‘hear them’ but feel the weight of uncountable screams from uncountable voices. Incomprehensible white noise that filled me with undeniable sorrow.
When the pressure came I’d think about death. Taking my own life and just leaving this world to cross the wall and see what lay on the other side.
And there is another side. I have felt the other side as a child and have learnt to deny it as an adult.
When I was a small boy I learned much about death.
My uncle drank until he made himself disappear, my grandmother died years after strokes had trapped her soul in a broken shell and grandfather left the world as his heart gave out.
I watched a native man get beaten death and could do nothing to stop it.
I saw a father destroy his daughter’s childhood. Kill her innocence. And I didn’t know until I was a teenager.
I hated myself for it.
I hated him.
I wanted nothing more than to split him red from head to toe.
He still lives. Dying slowly from the crystal in his lungs.
She dies slowly from a fire in her veins.
Life is beautiful and cruel.
A close friends father took his own life; hanging himself from a tree fort in the early morning as the sun rose. This was a father figure that I hated losing but never shared how I felt about this loss.
I always wondered if he watched the sun rise before he took the nose or if the sun burned as his feet swayed in the new day.
A man died along the highway where we lived. I told my mom about him, describing him and she closed my mind and sent him away with a song and a prayer.
He left and my mind slowly closed.
But I saw much before my vision left.
I saw my friend’s father at his home.
I saw grandfather.
I saw grandmother.
My uncle I could never see but I could feel his sadness.
It would make me feel the worst. The pressure in my head would make me want to curl into a ball and die. Never pleasantly. I’d think about hammering my fists into my skull to open my head and let spill my life.
I saw the man that was beaten to death. I saw his life drain away in piss and booze.
I can hear him say “Why brother? Why?”
I would also see all the masks that people wore. And I wished no one could see through mine. Over time I realized people couldn’t see through mine. My mom thought I was happy and that made me happy.
But I could see through them.
As clear as day.
I hated them all. I was so angry all the time. I’d grind my teeth constantly.
The dentist asked “What on Earth could be stressing you out? Stop grinding your teeth. It’s an odd habit to have.”
“Stop grinding your teeth you little fucking weirdo.”
That is what I’d hear as his breath labored and he fumbled around cutting up my gums.
He also filed my canines down because he thought I was weird enough without “Freaky little fangs.”
Fuck you, I will murder you in your sleep and take your teeth from your skull.
“Why are you always alone?”
“Why do you always wear black?”
“Are you goth? You’re such a little freak?”
“You die your hair black right?”
“You don’t look Indian. Your skin is pale and you don’t have those cheekbones!”
“Why does it matter if they call you Indian, that is what you’re; Just an Indian.”
“Your mom is a whore. Spreading her legs for white men.”
“She made you. You’re just filth.”
“Your mom is the reason our people are dying. Fucking slut.”
“You’re not native. Get the fuck out of here.”
“Cut your hair. You don’t deserve it.”
Through it all I tried my hardest to let words roll of me. Like a duck and water. Rain just rolls off a ducks feathers as if it never came.
I wanted those words to wash off me, instead they pushed me into the ground. And the white noise would come and I couldn’t do anything; I’d lash out and become moody or just go missing.
I realized that this kind of tension either keeps you down or you learn to rise.
I rose with my held as high as I could until it came crashing back down.
But I had my way out.
I’d read and draw and get lost in a fantasy.
I never, ever told my mom how I felt. I felt like my problems were meaningless in comparison to what she managed.
She raised me and worked as a single parent.
I had to be the good one.
I had to be a good boy.
I hated it.
I wanted to feel my anger, I wanted to feel sad. I wanted to cry.
And more than anything I wanted to be native, I wanted to be with other In’din kids.
The few elders my mom knew and people of her generation that I was exposed to were the only people I could feel comfortable around. Ed and Miss Whitefeather made me feel comfotable in my own skin.
And Joel. Mr.Standsalone.
And the Mexican people I knew and loved. I felt good around them and they treated me and my mom well.
But being native just wasn’t meant to be; acceptance is never possible. Only rejection. Rejection is constant and inevitable.
We would go to every Pow Wow that came near us. Well all those that my mom could make. I wanted to dance and sing.
But people made me feel ashamed. Unwelcome and disliked.
I hated myself for letting the few people that treated me like dirt dictate how I behaved. But the truth is nobody stuck up for me.
Being teased by full bloods was no different than being teased by the white kids back home.
Nobody gave a shit. Nobody stuck up for me.
And why should they?
I didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
It didn’t matter how I felt, it didn’t matter how I lived, it didn’t matter who my grandfather was, it didn’t matter that I wanted to belong and that I really needed to belong. To have a sense of community. Have a sense of myself.
Have my heart reassured.
All that mattered was that my mom slept with a white man and I turned out having porcelain skin.
But my eyes aren’t white, my hair isn’t white it is black as jet, my heart is red. I knew how to be a redman.
I knew how to live. I knew my morning prayers. I knew pain, I knew shame. I knew heartbreak. I knew what it meant to hate yourself. To be ashamed of being yourself.
Nothing mattered.
I didn’t matter.
9Y��zau�
