linear algebra

disclaimer: this is not actually about math

[this particular work can be read alone, but may make more sense when read after what to expect when your abusive father dies during finals week]

[tw: implied abuse, death]

it’s surprising what reminds you of people when you’re around nothing they’ve ever touched. i think more about my father away at college than i did back in my old house that has never been home, hiding myself away the way i did in high school when locking doors was an instinct (i say as if the habit has gone away). there are some things you have to do to feel safe, even four flights of stairs and five hundred miles away from his tombstone.

last semester, i was told that you died not twelve hours after my last calculus midterm. my last linear algebra midterm is on wednesday and i wonder who will die while i’m testing inner product spaces.

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to solve a system of equations, you create a matrix and change the matrix into reduced row echelon form. this preserves the system of solutions. i realize that all the things i like about myself are coping mechanisms and wonder what was fundamentally preserved about me when you showed up.

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you will teach me math on friday nights in third grade. you will give me algebra problems, x and y and z, and watch me solve math the way i still try to solve my problems with you. i will go around and around, never sure of where to start and terrified of messing up, squashing equations together and hoping for an answer.

on the first day of linear algebra, i learn how to solve a three-variable system, i learn how to manipulate matrices the way i am terrified of doing with people because of you, because my worst fear remains doing what you did to me, but there are more than three ways to hurt a person.

i learned the right way to solve your problems ten years after you gave them to me, and i wonder if it will take me ten more years to solve these.

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every matrix represents a linear transformation. sometimes, two matrices represent the same change, but reference different vectors to express that change. i wonder if you and i are the same change, but different references, if i will turn out like you. i am terrified to turn out like you.

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in eighth grade, i will come to your desk with a question about math homework. when you can’t answer it, i will decide that the question must be wrong, because you can’t be.

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you construct a change of basis matrix by finding eigenvectors, by finding nullspaces, by finding homogenous solutions, by finding nothing. you build yourself change from the number zero, you build yourself a life from an empty bottle while i build myself love without you.

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i will get sick for one of the dances at elementary school, and you will promise to make it up to me. you will promise me a night of solving math equations at your desk and i will get excited because i don’t know yet how many bottles are under it.

a week after you die, i will remember this fact, in painstaking detail, and sob on the stone wall behind coffeehouse. this will be the first time i actually cry over you for you and not because i feel pressured to.

i will still never know if i’m crying about you or the fact that i deserved better than you.

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i do linear algebra problem sets for hours the way you promised we would do together, losing myself in the algorithms of row reducing matrices and finding linear transformations in different bases. it is long and laborious processes, putting in effort and time until a nice answer arrives. i wonder if i gave up on you too soon, if i was only halfway through the problem and decided it was too difficult, if i just went through the steps incorrectly. i wonder if i should have learned to love you the way i learned how to find a change of basis matrix, trying again and again until the answer looked nice.

but relationships are not like math, i cannot color code my way through my family, love is not an algorithm, and there was never a due date on figuring you out.

(i don’t know whether your death means that this assignment is late or i have forever to finish, and there’s no ta to ask.)