this doesn’t get forgiven

i’m writing this because silence has protected too many people for too long.
because love — real, fierce, devoted love — isn’t always enough to undo the damage.

there was a person i trusted more than anyone.
my person.
the one who shaped me.
the one who taught me how to survive.
and still, i’m left with this:

i do not forgive you.

i forgave being born into violence.
i forgave the choice to have me after a restraining order had already been filed.
i was born in 1989. the paperwork said 1988.
that should’ve been enough.

i forgave the choice to stay for a decade.
to stay while we were terrorized.
not because you didn’t know.
not because it was the 90s.
but because i convinced myself maybe you just didn’t know how to leave.

but the truth is —
the police came.
the police left.
everyone saw.
and no one helped.

and i forgave what came after.
the moving. the loss of the first place that ever felt safe.
the dog we gave away because there was nowhere else to go.
(or the one that got kicked to death)
the pull-out couch we shared at granny’s when i was a teenager, already insecure in every way.

the friends’ homes that became mine.
the blow-up mattresses.
the instability.
you tried. you loved me. and i forgave you anyway.

i forgave being poor.
i forgave you giving me what you could — even when it wasn’t enough.

i forgave the time i called after school — desperate — trapped in that house because the bus dropped me off like always.
i said he was going to kill me.
you said you couldn’t leave work.
you told me to call the police.

so i ended up on the roof of the garage — like usual — waiting for them to come.

i forgave the therapist who said we were lying.
i forgave the silence that followed.
i forgave the court that handed him custody — even though he didn’t want me.
even though he didn’t hide it.

i forgave being left with him.
over and over.
nowhere else to go.
i forgave the dismissal. the deflection. the way i learned to swallow everything just to survive another day.

even when i told you what i heard in that hotel room.
even when i said i couldn’t take anymore.
you couldn’t hear it.
you couldn’t admit that what i was saying was real.

even when you saw i wanted to die.
did you ever wonder why?

i forgave all of it.
i even forgave you when i told you my husband strangled me — and nothing changed.
because there are no emergencies when your life has always been a tragedy.

you didn’t help me leave until he put me in the emergency room.
only then.

but you didn’t bring me to safety.
you packed me up.
sent me across the country.
back to him.
back to my father.

the same man who terrorized us.
the same man you once needed protection from.
the same devastation and violence you never let us forget.

you knew if i stayed in colorado, i would die.
and still — you chose to send me back into the same fire you once escaped.
because your home was full.
because i found a man just like the one i was raised to love.
because that’s what love had always looked like.

i forgave the fear. the silence. the nights i tried to tell you things by saying them outright — and you looked away.
i forgave the dismissal. the avoidance.
the way i was always making things harder.

but i do not forgive what happened after she was born.
after i survived.
after i finally had something to protect beyond myself.

i don’t forgive you for leaving my baby in that house.
not when you knew.
not when everything was already broken and burning.

i don’t forgive you for not knowing where she was.
for letting him blame us — for suggesting we were the cause of your emergency.
your stress.

not to be a stressor anymore.
ever again.

i blame you for how easily you cast her aside.
for treating my child — your granddaughter — not like family, but like a burden.
for leaving her with a stranger.
(not that you knew. or cared.)

you knew what i was doing.
you knew i was running.
you knew i was escaping in silence, in the dark.

and you made me go back.

you made me return to hell and pull her out myself.
you watched me claw us back to safety — again — and acted like i was dramatic for telling you what i saw.

no.
i will never forgive that.

it will never be the same.
and i will never be the kind of mother you were.

that much, i promise.

the ashtanga cult

when i first went to mysore, i wasn’t chasing some big spiritual awakening—
i just wanted to see where this practice came from.

i’d been doing ashtanga for a while.
i kept hearing people talk about mysore like it was the holy land.
everyone made it sound like this magical place that would change everything.

so i figured... why not.
let’s see what the hype is about.

but within days of arriving, i remember thinking vividly:
these people are fucking crazy.

it wasn’t the asanas—those made sense.
strong. methodical. rhythmic.

it was everything around them—
the altars to pattabhi jois,
the hush around questioning authority,
the way people’s eyes darted around if you asked uncomfortable questions.
the yoga police—self-appointed guardians of "purity"—side-eyeing you if they caught a hint you drank alcohol or, god forbid, ate meat.
the weird ass conversations about "guruji," delivered with the kind of solemn reverence usually reserved for saints.

it hit me fast and hard that even though saraswathi was his daughter—and a truly remarkable teacher—
her son took the throne.

i saw how small her shala was compared to the anointed one’s.
it already made no fucking sense to me.
so i went back.
over and over.

maybe i’d missed something?
maybe they weren’t really this far gone?

i’d traveled halfway around the world to practice yoga.
but what i found felt a lot more like a well-dressed cult.

rigid rules.
idol worship.
a kind of quiet obedience that made my skin crawl.

sharath jois sat at the center of it all—
benefiting immensely, both financially and culturally, from the system as it stood.

and when the me too movement finally cracked the surface?
his response landed like a soft deflection.
more about his struggle than the people who had come forward.

and people praised it.
clapped.
sighed with relief.

because if they didn’t—
they’d have to face the truth.

that their practice, their teacher, their whole carefully curated identity
might be built on top of something cracked.
something dark.
something deeply fucked up.

it wasn’t just spiritual bypassing.
it was collective delusion.
the kind that protects power, punishes dissent, and wraps itself in incense and sanskrit to keep from being questioned.

i stood in the middle of it thinking:
how the fuck is this still happening?

mysore was powerful, yes.
but not because of the bullshit hierarchy or the inherited thrones.

it was powerful because it showed me—up close—
how quickly devotion turns into denial.
how easy it is to call something sacred
just because everyone else does.

snaps fingers
wake up

for luna

i wish so fucking badly i believed in heaven
so i could convince myself that i would meet you finally.

instead, i carry your ghost with me.
every day.
in everything.

you have never left me—
even though you are nowhere to be found.

i felt you before anything showed up on a test.
before a line.
before i could even say it out loud.

i just knew you were there.
i was never scared to be your mom—
i was certain.

you were mine.
we planned you.
we named you.
i had never wanted anything more.
you were my fucking miracle.

when the lines started fading,
i thought i would actually die.

i went to the doctor over and over—
blood tests, questions, silence.
then, finally, nothing.
they couldn’t find you.

you were just… gone.

and i truly thought i might go with you.

i’ve lived through so many atrocities,
but nothing has ever devastated me like losing you.

i think my body gave out from all the pain i was already in.
i think it failed us both.

and i’m so sorry.
i am so fucking sorry.

i wish i could’ve saved you.
i wish i had been stronger.

i’ll think of you every day until i don’t have thoughts anymore.

people don’t know what to say when a pregnancy disappears,
so they say nothing.

they pretend you never existed.

but i know you were real.
you are real.
you are my child.

so when ryan came, i froze.
six different tests said she was still there,
and i still couldn’t trust it.

because i was still so fucking broken.
still grieving you.

and now i look into her eyes and i imagine you.
i imagine you being together.
because you are sisters. you are.

i imagine what it would be like to have you both here.
i miss the version of life so fucking bad that had you in it.

you were my first miracle.
my first experience with a love so big it terrified me—
in the best way.

you made me believe in something beyond survival.

and even though ryan is here now,
even though she saved me in ways i didn’t know i needed saving—
you were the beginning.

i will never regret you.
you are the most unbearable, beautiful love i’ve ever lost.

and i carry you.
in my every cell.
in my silence.
in the mother i am,

always.

you don’t get to call it love now

the pull doesn’t make sense to you
because you can’t fathom the violence it took for me to stay this gentle.

you don’t know how many times i had to choose softness
when survival demanded something uglier.
you don’t know how many times i could’ve turned bitter
and chose to stay whole instead.

you hurt me because i saw you.
clearly. sharply. without mercy.
i saw the truths you buried under your ego.
i saw the parts of you rotting.
and i held up a mirror even when it cut my own fucking hands.

and still—
when i had every reason to gut you,
i stayed soft.

i gave you kindness you didn’t earn.
compassion you didn’t return.
love that demanded nothing from you
when you had nothing real to give back.

and maybe that’s what’s still clawing at you.
not my anger.
not my silence.
not even my absence.

it’s the way i never became your cruelty.

it’s the way you gave me every reason to become like you—
and i didn’t.

you burned through every bit of goodness you thought would always refill itself.
but people like me don’t come twice.

you don’t get to call it love now.

you don’t get to miss what you tried to destroy.
you don’t get to ache for something you left bleeding.
you don’t get to name the wreckage "love"
just because you can still see the outline of what you lost.

i was real.
i was devastatingly fucking real.

and you will never—
never—
feel that again.

they tried to fucking kill me

i was born to a man who didn’t want me.
but worse—he didn’t care.
indifferent to whether i was fed, warm, safe.
indifferent to the fact i even existed.

he saved his fire for my brother—
a boy raised on violence and praise,
taught that love was brutal,
that women are weak.

my mother—
she worked herself to exhaustion.
five jobs. five hundred worries.
no time for anything but keeping us alive.
she cared enough to try,
but survival leaves no room for anything else.

i was always alone.

because they fucking hated me?
like my father did.
like my brother did.
like every man after them.

they wanted me small.
silent.
grateful for the suffering they handed me.
they tried to kill every spark in me.

i should’ve known.
when the first man tore doors from their hinges,
drove 100 miles per hour just to watch me flinch.

then came the biggest projection i ever invented—
thinking what was in my chest was real.

i miscarried on the bathroom floor alone.
sobbing for the child who could’ve tethered me to him.
screaming like a wounded fucking animal, bleeding out.

i died too that day.
realizing i was just another body to fill his emptiness.
replaced by literally anyone.
he must have hated me too.

or worse—
he was always a hallucination.

so i ran.
straight into the arms of a man i knew could destroy me.
i thought if i could create something whole,
it wouldn’t matter that i never had been.

and then i saw my own version of my father.
i had found him.

he took me from standing to flat on my back.
head against the wood.
pregnant.
his hands around my throat—squeezing.
his fist against my skull—again. and again.

i carried his child and his rage at the same time.
eight months pregnant.
cleaning houses while hiding bruises.
a ghost of myself.

days before our daughter was born,
he put me in the hospital.
then totaled my car.

but the most hollowing act wasn’t the fists.
wasn’t the strangling.
wasn’t the blood.

it was when he spit in my face.

inches away,
with our daughter still inside me.

because to spit at something is to say:
you are nothing.

and if i was nothing—
i was something that could be erased.

so i ran.
back to my father’s house.
a place where i was never a child.
still just a thing.

and it was just as brutal as i remembered.

but there’s her.
and i would not let her know the childhood i had run from.

so i went home.
to the place i bought alone.
just in case i needed to escape.
not sure how i would survive—
only that i had to.

because they fucking hated me.

they tried to kill me.
they tried to break me.
they tried to make me disappear.

but i am still here.

and my daughter?
she will never ask:
"why does he fucking hate me?"

they tried to fucking kill me.
and they fucking failed.