There is a very old curse, passed from mother to daughter, and it goes like this:

“I hope you have a daughter who’s just like you one day.”

Welp, it took me a minute to get here, but here I am.

My name is Taylor-Bridget Wolfcastle Jones, because I want to be Goddamnit.

I’m not supposed to be here right now. This week was “Father-Son Camping Time”, where I would bring my Pittie “Chai” with me and we’d load up into the RV and head down to Shenandoah. But time is relentless and his body aches and creaks and “I can’t leave your mother alone with Bella and Bruno.”

Those are their new English Bulldog puppies you see. I asked them “do you really want flying cinderblocks in the house at your ages? Maybe try a Pug or a Frenchie?”

But Momma wanted her Bulldogs so she got them.

And Momma always gets her way.

I am in my house, listening to “Stay Vicious” by The Gaslight Anthem, writing this with Armageddon trying to claw up out of my body. I can feel God’s lightning in my fingers. I just remembered I haven’t had breakfast yet, so I just came back with a banana.

“Empires” is playing now.

And they showed me no mercy

 taught me to weep and how not to get caught.

 Showed me no mercy,

Till I became like the wolves that I fought.

Sorry. I thought I knew what I meant to be proper angry.

I didn’t until this week.

Had to get up and take a walk, feel the sun on my skin.

Let the lightning in my belly quiet down.

The RV is in the driveway in front of their house, all the hookups for water and electric are set. I take Chai for a quick walkies and let him into the RV.

My parents love Chai. Sweetest dog in the world. First day is uneventful, cause they are old and getting the shit kicked out of them by these wrinkly cannonballs. Dad’s back is burning (a 7 out 10 on the pain scale he tells me), but still wants to staple the ceiling covering back in the bedroom, so I help him with that.

Dinner is crab cakes and some kinda crunchy salad with martinis.

My parents always have martinis in the evening, they get the Vodka from the Costco up in Delaware.

When Dad and I would go camping before, this would always be where the heart to heart would happen and we’d talk about shit from his childhood or shit from my work (I quit that fucking place last week, fuck AI, fuck shareholders, and fuck CEOs).

We talk about Deacon Blues.

The next day, Tuesday, was where everything went wrong.

I’ve been trying to get them to watch the Backrooms, but Mom kept pushing back (I need to be in the right mindset).

She’s really good at finding reasons not to experience things she doesn’t want to.

We watch the first half of Nope instead. Ended right before The Starlasso Experience.

Dinner that night is “picky things”, which are fancy arangements of leftovers.

The Martinis are there too.

I always say too much when I’m drunk. I’ve been drinking more this year than I have the rest of my life, partly because everything is too fucking much and too fucking horrible and too fucking stupid for no reason all the time and I don’t make good choices when it comes to my health.

The Martinis. We drink them, and I tell them I’m a girl. They ask me my name.

“Taylor-Bridgett”

I wanted to tell Mom I chose “Bridgett” because that was her mothers name.

And then like an idiot, I go and bring up my Sister for some fuck reason.

My sister is older than me by five years, and she’s been through hell. Had health problems all her life. Got prescribed pain meds that fucked her up even more.

I never had a good relationship with her growing up, cause I saw how mom treated her and thought she was a troublemaker.

Mom would always be talking about how “she lies all the time” or “she hangs out with losers”.

She’s married to a great guy, someone I’m proud to call brother and they love each other dearly.

I’ve been trying to make up for lost time, so we’ve been talking more often.

She was the first family member I came out to.

She’s still afraid of Mom.

Like an idiot, I tried to be peacemaker. I tried to ask Mom to show my sister some grace and understanding.

It was like a switch went off in Mom’s head. She immediately teared up, told me I was being mean and ungrateful and entitled because “you get some pronouns and you think you’re better”. She deadnamed me and I told her that if this was what she really wanted to do, that I would be gone in the morning.

She said good.

Dad agreed with her, and pathetically told me he loved me and walked out with Mom, saying “I can’t believe you could be so mean”.

There’s a God up in heaven with the calendar marked.

And he sees in the dark.

And he knows when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake.

And he knows where the bodies are laid.

I packed my shit, grabbed Chai, and left that night.

I forgot the scooper for Chai’s food.

I got home, blocked both their numbers, removed them from the group chat I had titled “Family”, and went the fuck to bed.

That was two days ago.

Curses passed from Mothers to Daughters.

Mom was the youngest of seven in an Irish Catholic household. “Nanny” was a devout Catholic with an iron will that I never fully got to see.

Nanny was well into dementia by the time I reached my teens, and Mom was the one who went over and helped my Grandfather with her.

What was that like, I wonder now?

No one ever had power over my mother like Nanny. Mom could steamroll anyone and anything with a stubborn pride I once admired.

I wonder if it’s because the only person she was afraid of withered away into a neurological miasma.

I am now thinking of words I kept hearing only on TV.

“Why did you make me hit you? Why did you make me do this? This hurts me more than it hurts you.”

The youngest of seven in an Irish Catholic house, where both parents still had their accents. What went down in that house, where my mother, with her tomboyish ways and her stubbornness and wit would push and push until there were consequences?

What lessons did she take from that, into her own parenting?

In hindsight, a majority of my family is on the Autism Spectrum with some ADHD mixed in for flavor. They didn’t know what that was back then. They just saw misbehaving children.

I believe my Sister when she talks about Mom.

I will continue to grow my relationship with my sister because the point of living and being alive is learning from each other. Learning new things and changing your perspective and updating what you thought was the world you knew into a blossoming wonderful new thing.

Mom doesn’t want to learn shit. She doesn’t want to grow. She doesn’t want to look back on things she doesn’t want to see.

Mom wants my sister to go away so she never has to think about things she can’t undo and words she can’t take back.

 and I won’t fucking have it.  

And He’ll show us no mercy,

though there be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

No mercy

No mercy for you, no mercy for me

My father has never laid a finger on mom. He genuinely loves her. He probably knows that they both have sins to atone for, but he’s too old and too broken to really push back on her.

My Aunts have their own shit to do, and although they are all Mom’s elders, I figured they gave up on reaching her years ago.

My sister just wants mom to love her and not be angry at her.

My brother in-law is a sweet teddy-bear of a man and respects my parents deeply.

My mother isn’t going to learn a fucking thing until someone slaps her, and for that reason, I’m hardening my heart and breaking contact until a miracle occurs and she starts the long process of unfucking herself and finally has a true heart-to-heart with my sister and they can finally end this chain of daughters eating their daughters eating their daughters all the way back to God-knows-when.

No mercy

For the lives that we took and the wars that we waged

No mercy

No Mercy come Judgement Day

It’s Friday now. Three days later. I held my parents’ wake last night. Ended a whole bottle of rye as I toasted their memory and better days and mourned what could have been. Today is day one of sobriety for me.

If they ever truly wanted to make this right, they would do the same. No more martinis.

No more hiding from the world, I would march them straight to the nearest Unitarian Universalists where they would be surrounded by everyone they don’t understand.

No more hiding from ideas they don’t want to have and perspectives they don’t want to see. There is so much beautiful, strange, horrifying, and joyous glorious art and they are missing all of it to stare at “Memorable Entertainment Television” and “Food Wars”.

And most of all, they would apologize to my sister until she runs out of things they need to apologize for, and not make one single excuse.

Honestly, I don’t even think they can do item one on that list, let alone two through four.

As for me, I am my mothers daughter, and I finally understand why mom never wanted to have bonding time with me.

She knows that I can see right through her, and has been running from me.

So be it.

I am the worst of all daughters. I am cruel and hateful and spiteful and mean. I am ungrateful because I think love should mean more than covering bills. I am entitled because I want to be the fullest self I can be, which includes catching up on all the time I missed with my sister.

I finally understand why there is so much monster and werewolf fiction in the LGBTQ community, because I want to burst out of this body right the fuck now.

The anger inside me is the anger of the righteous and the cursed and there is a world where I rip and tear my way out of my skin and out of my clothes and out of my house and tower over the landscape like the beast of revelations. Where I swallow the churches whole and crush all the stupid tiny men with their stupid guns with every step. Where I breath hellfire on all the fucking billionaires with their ugly houses and their fake money. Where I flex swelling muscles and take hold of the heavens and tear them down with my bare fucking claws.

I would be majestic and unspeakable and glorious and terrible and I would spread my wings and all the children who never asked to be here would take shelter and find warmth under my protection.

I would sunder the earth down to it’s foundations and raise up a garden of innocence and joy. And there would be a new world, with all the colors of heaven and all the symphonies of hell.

And Jesus Christ would put a hand on my head, gentle and kind, and say

“Good Girl. Show them No Mercy”

And all you motherfuckers whining about your children cutting you off, trust me.

That’s an act of mercy you don’t deserve.

Your children deserve Vengeance.

Your children get to decide when Judgement Day comes

I am Taylor-Bridgett Wolfcastle Jones

I am my Grandmothers curse. I am my mother’s daughter.

I am here at last.

And I will show you no mercy.