and still i love her...

my aunt finally showed up after eight days of being missing in action. to say i was pissed was an understatement. part of me was hoping something bad had happened to her to truly warrant my worry. why? because then it meant that she wasn't around because of something serious as opposed to her not being around because she couldn't handle it.

she said she'd been kidnapped by her husband and his girlfriend. i know her husband is capable of heinous deeds. you see, he has tried to kill her numerous times, once by setting her on fire, another time by stabbing her. part of me wants to believe her, and yet i can't help but feel she just disappeared because she didn't want to deal with the prospect of losing her mother.

it's not easy to love someone like her, someone who does very little to earn it. she lies to us all of the time and disappears at the worst moments, those times when we need her the most. it's always about her needs and her frailties and she puts herself above everybody else. so what if we needed her. she couldn't cope, so she bounced.

and yet i still love her...

even though i was pissed the fuck off when she turned up, even though she has disappeared again and has done little if anything to help my brother with granny, even though she makes no effort to apologize for how she's behaving, i still love her. sometimes i wish i could stop loving her, stop worrying about whether or not she's okay, stop worrying about how she will survive once granny's gone, stop concerning myself with her health and well-being, but it's not so simple as all that. i have too many memories of the good times, memories that can't be erased by her behavior. i've had too many glimpses into her soul, talks that revealed her fear and her desires, moments when i could see every hurt she's inflicted upon herself and others reflected in her eyes.

she's still human

and so i still love her...

i can't turn it off. i can't delete it from my harddrive like it's a virus or wrap it up in a plastic bag and toss it in the dumpster, because my love just ain't as simple as all that. my love isn't what blooms beautiful only in sunshine.

sometimes it's that weed in my front yard choking my posies until their faces are drained of color and their petals fall like flaking skin onto the grass. meanwhile no matter how many times i yank the weed out, it's still there when i check in the morning.

sometimes it's that large wine stain blemishing the front of my favorite blouse, a crushed grape disgrace i can't camouflage with a pin or erase with the flick of a stain removing stick. but i wear that blouse anyway, cuz it i won't let something like a stain prevent me from wearing my favorite blouse. shit, maybe i can make that stain work for me.

sometimes it's that reoccuring nightmare that has me strangling myself with my bedsheets only to wake up drenched in the sweat of my fear before i curl fetal into a corner of the bed and refuse to go back to sleep.

sometimes my love ain't a beautiful thing to me.

sometimes it has an overlarge head with a receding hairline, a unibrow, eyes that cross, a bulbous nose dripping with snot topping split, dry lips with a double chin hanging on at the end. that mothafucka has b.o., like a combination between rotten eggs and toe jamb jelly and that brown shit on the end of my qtip from when i dig into my belly button. its breath stinks, and no matter how much mint gum or breath mints you give it, its mouth still smells like a stick of gum lying in a sea of sewage. it's a no-good thief, stealing my shit from the house and burying it in the back yard.

and yet despite this i'm still gonna keep it around. i mean, the head can be shaved bald and the unibrow can be plucked. i can blow its nose and give it a bath and see about getting its teeth fixed and its tongue scraped so its breath ain't humming so strongly. i could stick it in a support group for kleptos or something...

cuz there's always hope, right?

that's really what sustains love when it's ugly...hope.

hope that somewhere down the line things will change. hope that at some moment in the future she'll realize just how much she's needed and she'll make real effort to get herself together so she can help us help her. hope that one day i can sit down at the piano with her and play chopsticks and sing chaka khan and laugh so hard we're bent over cuz our stomachs hurt, the giggles coming in hiccups, the tears of glee streaming from our eyes cuz we were just bursting with it. hope for a transformation of something ugly into something beautiful.

but then, that might never happen. ten years from now she might still be the same person who's self-absorbed, who disappears and doesn't care about how it affects us, who lives her life as though she doesn't care about any of us.

and if she is, i'm still gonna love her.

cuz even if it never gets its brows plucked or takes a bath and stays just as ugly as hell, i'll never turn love away. it's always welcome in my home.

i'll just make sure i keep all my electronics and jewelry locked up in my bedroom and keep plenty of feb.reze on tap.