I Won't Be Telling You This in Heaven Because I'm Going to Hell for Writing It

I won't be telling you this in heaven because I'm going to hell for writing it.

Mom. Forgive the memories. I don't know how to forget.

You would always tell a story about your childhood, about a toy box with all but some broken crayons at the bottom. Telling us that's why you made sure we always had toys. And you did.

Sitting on a pile of laundry, speaking to someone from CPS.

Sitting on a pile of laundry the prior day being lectured about what to say to CPS.

When I'm 10 years old, you'll threaten to kill me. Five years later, my boyfriend will do the same.

In a downtown restaurant after therapy. Cotton candy flavored ice cream. I've never willingly gotten that flavor since.

All of us crying in your room, in the dark, after the news.

You lost over 100 pounds from treatment. You said you thought you looked nicer that way.

I forgot your birthday—your very last. My dad helped me pick out $5 roses from Safeway on the way to the hospital.

A goodbye letter, typed in a cursive font, trying to emulate human penmanship. It would have been too painful for you to sit up and handwrite it. I clung to a scrap of your handwriting I found in a box for a while, a replacement for that letter I didn't have. I don't remember when I threw it away.

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I heard your voice a few months after you died, echoing through the living room. I was terrified. My dad was re-watching videos of us. I went into my room and cried.

I stopped going to therapy 4 months after you died. My therapist saw a lot of growth in me.

Cleaning out your car—which is now my car. Finding empty packets of opioid painkillers. I didn't know things were that bad.

My dad will hand me my medical history to see if we can find my glasses prescription—I find I'm predisposed genetically to depression and anxiety, on your side.

My friends, getting loaded: "You don't have to become her. But you'll never get away from her, not fully. For fucks sake, we were made in our mothers. How do you ever get away from that?"

Mother's Day. I keep pictures of you and Grandma pinned to the wall next to my bed. I look at them briefly in the morning.

I'll have dinner with my roommate's mom; give her the title of mom instead. They got her a Mother's Day gift and added my name to it, too.

I'll give our theater teacher a gift from my roommates for her birthday. Call her by the name mom, also. They've put my name on the card as well.

For my stepmother, for Mother's Day, I didn't even call.

I'll spend hours scrolling down your Facebook timeline some days. Pictures of me in pigtails. Pictures of me holding my sister. Pictures of you with shitty edited clip-art doves around you. Happy Birthday, Amanda.

The cat misses my brother, your second son. She still likes to sleep in his old room. I get letters from him, descending from Alaska, heaven-sent, trying to convert me to Christianity. I remember your Bible, notated and bookmarked. I pin the letters to my walls, next to your pictures. I don't reply.

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I look exactly like you.

I was the only one of your children to inherit your dark brown eyes and dark brown hair. When I look in the mirror, your reflection stares back. When I pick ground turkey over beef in the store, how you always did, your reflection stares back. When I pick up your guitar, your reflection stares back. When I listen to Colbie Caillat, your reflection stares back. When I step onto the scale, dripping with self-hatred, your reflection stares back. When my boyfriend cries and I yell, lashing out like a cornered stray dog, your reflection stares back. When my brother, who couldn't swim, grabs onto me in a pool, thinking I'll save him, just as your sister did to you as a teenager, your reflection stares back.

Mom, are we destined to be dragged under by those we try to keep afloat? Are they destined to come down with us? I wish they didn't have to. I wish I was a better son.

All you ever did was all you ever could. I need you to believe that I forgive you. I have forgiven you again and again.

But I can't forget, Mom.