Dear Johnny #2 — Truth, Hope, and my Mom
By: Kevin Gibbs
Tags: Truth, Hope, Moms, Acceptance, Life

Dear Johnny,

I want to share a quote: “Why do you care that I’m dead when you’re still so afraid to live?” — Mark Manson

I broke down at that moment because it brought me back to my mother. It brought me back to where my perception about everything shifted for me, her death. That’s when I became a different version of what I had been previous to hearing the news from my sister.

Ever since she has passed away, I have held to the belief that I never got to show her what I could become. I never got to show her what she could have become if she kept on the path I took. The path I was angry she stepped off of in her own life.

I never got to make my point and receive the retribution I thought myself owed after having grown up in a house occupied by a man that was beneath both of us. A man she had to rely on for both of us to survive. A man I had to begrudgingly accept in order to have a roof under our head. I wanted to prove my point, by doing it all alone, on my own terms so she would feel bad.

Her death revealed what I thought our relationship had always been. What I had wrapped my entire identity around. So it’s no wonder I don’t really know who I am without her.

I stayed a shitty, angsty teenager well into my 20’s. Up until the point she passed away and I could no longer be that person anymore. I had to finally grow up.

I sucked, I know I sucked, and I made sure everyone else knew I sucked. Which is why I don’t have any long lasting, healthy relationships to speak of now. How could I be something to anyone when I wasn’t something to myself?

I never stopped to ask her about her life or about herself. I just assumed and built a whole identity on top of those assumptions. Which is why trying to figure out who I actually am has been so damn hard and painful. I have never known who I am outside of my mom and my trauma.

I think that is what made this book so profound. It revealed that I have never lived for myself, and her death showed that to me. I was just too dense to realize it until now.

Which is why that quote was such a gut punch. It’s time for me to let go of her death and acknowledge instead her life so that I can now create my own life and build my own identity. Independent of anything else but what I want out of my life. Which is ultimately all that she has ever wanted for me and my sisters.

I am so thankful to have had her as a mother. The choices she made for me are the only reasons I am sitting here today, writing these words now. I would never have come to this point if she didn’t value to power of education. If she hadn’t allowed me the freedom to accept myself and my several identities (even though I am only now getting there). She never tried to hold me back or tell me what the right way was to do anything when it came to live and figuring it out.

This is who my mother was, someone who understood that life is a journey and we all must chart our own course along the path.

You know Johnny, I was wrong to quote the Red Witch. The world is bright and full of hope, the only darkness I have to look forward to is death. Which comes for us all eventually.

Yours forever,

Kevin