i've been staring at the pleasant red-on-rose-red of this page long enough that when i look away, retina-fatigued red cones asleep on the job, the world is briefly, entirely absent of that color. it's an unsettling feeling, to be presented with the all encompassing totality of a color and then look away to find it gone.
that feels appropriate. physiological epigraph; red-on-rose-red is the inception of C--- itself, rose/red-on-unripe-green the inception of the story, the ripening of C--- the ripening of the story itself.
i read this, inescapably, from my own perspective, one differently mothered, but which all the same felt mirrored over and over and over in my reading of it. my mother refused to let me out of her sight, even if that meant taking a child into rooms that a child maybe shouldn't be in, where things happened that a child maybe shouldn't see. she was right to worry, she still worries, never having learned that her fears were not unfounded, because it's the sometimes-duty of children to protect their parents, their mothers, from the consequences of their attempts to do well.
(creed for her, nine inch nails for me, jewel for the both of us, steam of too many baths shared, i care about animorphs and she doesn't get it, decibel ache of not-quite-maternal frustration, sharing a dirty mattress in anywhere nowhere texas. knives. drugs. moans.)
C--- and Rosie-Rose-Marie are etched in my heart now, or fit neatly into a spot already shaped like the lives they lead shown here. i feel and understand deeply the lack of moral education C--- has to work with, the way that influences what feels right, what seems wrong. i recognize so much of R---'s anger as squirming under the thumb of societal norms, societal pressure to participate, to serve and serve and serve and never be served except as emotional fast food grist for the lives of others lucky + discourteous enough to carry on functioning while digesting her usefulness for their own nutrition.
in every way, in every form and shape, everything, is fucked, has been fucked, can only be survived through fucking it up, fucking it out, fucking it apart. it's the only tool in the toolbox of any use.
this vn manages to make all of them human. i feel a visceral gratefulness at the sheer effort you've made to render them as such, to process the humanity of the people who have failed us as a result of being forever failed by others.
after i read 50 or so other entries, i will be reading more Bernadette Meyer. thank you for writing this.
context: i've played the main narrative + read the post-mortem ("half-perimortem"), and will be reading the letters over time, to savor them, to stretch out the time i can spend with these recollections. i hope i wrote this respectfully of the plurality of the people involved.