My House of Pain: Blood of My Blood
The summer of 2007 crashed into my life like a goddamn meteor—hot, blinding, and absolutely world-changing. June brought heat that stuck to your skin like a desperate lover, but I didn't give a shit about the sweat trickling down my back as I held her for the first time. Ylse. My child. A few pounds of raw, screaming life that turned my entire existence upside down and inside out.
The hospital room reeked of antiseptic and that indescribable new-human smell. My hands trembled so badly I thought I might drop her, this tiny creature with fingernails smaller than rice grains and a face screwed up tight against the harshness of the world. The weight of her in my arms was nothing—featherlight—but the responsibility crushed my chest till I could barely breathe.
"She's beautiful," I said to her mother, still dreary of the pain meds. All I could focus on was the rise and fall of her chest, the absolute miracle of her existence, the terrifying thought that I was now responsible for keeping this perfect, fragile being alive. I had never known fear like this before. Not the jump-scare kind that makes your heart race for a few seconds, but the bone-deep terror that settles into your marrow and never fully leaves. What if I fucked this up? What if I wasn't enough? The questions hammered at my skull like angry fists.
Home became a different place with her in it. Our house—once just walls and a roof—transformed into a fortress, a sanctuary that needed to be defended at all costs. Gus, our bristle-furred corgi with eyes too knowing for comfort, appointed himself chief guardian. He'd sleep around her, his head resting on paws, ears perked for any sound that didn't belong.
Poor Emma, our aging beagle-terrier mix, didn't know what to make of the squealing creature that had invaded her domain. She'd skulk around corners, peering suspiciously at Ylse from a safe distance. But Gus would nudge her closer, as if saying, "This tiny human is part of our pack now."
Nights blurred into days, days into weeks. Sleep became a luxury I couldn't afford. Every tiny whimper from the nursery sent me bolting upright, heart pounding like a war drum. The constant vigilance wore me down to raw nerves and caffeine-fueled movements. Mary would rock at night, falling asleep in the room often, in nearly an upright position.
But even in that exhaustion—maybe especially in that exhaustion—I found a purpose so clear it hurt my eyes to look at it directly. I was a father. Her father. The word felt strange in my mouth, heavy with expectations and ghosts of my own childhood.
I threw myself into fatherhood with the desperation of a drowning man clutching at driftwood. I changed diapers with military precision. I learned to heat bottles to the exact right temperature using the inside of my wrist as a thermometer. I held her in my office, as she listened to the dulcid tones of John Fogerty's voice, a vocal sound she grew to love.
Being present became my religion. I'd watch her chest rise and fall while she slept, counting each breath like prayers on a rosary. Id heard the sounds of the fish tank mounted on her crib, with its fake water and fish dancing inside. And the sound of Pacabel's Cannon playing lightly through it. During her wakeful moments, I'd narrate the world to her, describing everything from the weather to the way light filtered through our kitchen window, as if my words could somehow protect her from the harshness waiting outside our door.
"That's the sky," I'd say, holding her against my chest as we stood in the backyard. "One day you'll understand how big it is, how it goes on forever, but for now, just know that no matter how vast it seems, you'll never be lost in it while I'm around."
But beneath the surface of this newfound purpose, something else stirred. A presence I'd been suppressing for years, locked away in the darkest corner of my mind. Wendy. She'd whisper from the shadows when I least expected it, usually in those quiet moments when Ylse and I were alone.
"You're holding her wrong," Wendy would say. "A mother would know better." I'd adjust my grip, shifting Ylse from one arm to another, trying to silence the voice with action.
The first time I changed her, Wendy's presence was so strong I nearly drowned in it. My hands knew exactly how to hold things, and move the diaper around, how to support her head just so, how to do things a mother would do.
"Where did you learn that?" Mary asked, watching from the doorway with a mixture of surprise and something else—something that looked dangerously like understanding.
"Just instinct, I guess," I mumbled, but the lie tasted bitter on my tongue.
Mary was a natural mother, moving through the chaotic early days with a grace I envied to my core. She knew when Ylse was hungry before the first cry even left her lips. She could soothe our child with just the scent of her skin, the sound of her heartbeat. Watching them together—this primal, ancient bond of mother and daughter—sent shards of glass through my heart.
"Want me to take over?" Mary would offer, hands outstretched, face soft with compassion.
"I've got it," I'd snap, then immediately regret the harshness in my voice. But I couldn't explain the jealousy that clawed at my insides, couldn't admit that sometimes, in the darkest hours of night, I wished I were a mother, I wish I had breasts that could hold milk, I wished I could do all those things.
Wendy understood. Wendy felt the same ache, the same desperate yearning. But I couldn't let her speak. Couldn't let her exist. Not then. So I'd push her back into darkness every time she tried to surface, hating myself for the relief I felt when she appeared.
She got stronger every time I pushed her down back into my psyche. Each time Ylse's tiny fingers wrapped around mine, each time her eyes—so fantastically blue they hurt to look at—locked onto my face, Wendy clawed her way closer to the surface. I'd feel her scratching at the walls I'd built, her nails drawing blood from my psyche.
At night, when Mary slept, I'd sometimes lay staring at the ceiling, with Ylse in my head, telling her that I would take care of her, I would also be there for her. But I couldn't let Wendy be her mother, because that would be weakness. So I resigned myself to my role as her father, even though I wanted to kill myself instead. Where was that bridge again? Would it really hurt that bad to jump off of it? I didn't know.
"You're doing it all wrong," Wendy would hiss, and her voice was like gravel in my skull. "She needs to be burped more firmly. She needs the pressure on her belly. Don't you remember how it works? Don’t you remember what Helen taught you? Have you forgotten already?"
And that was the fucking thing that chilled me to my marrow—I did remember. Every goddamn motion etched into my muscles from a life I'd already lived, knowledge burned into my brain. From Mel, my sister. Because when she was just a squalling, red-faced infant, I was the one who cared for her. No one batted an eye that I needed it like oxygen, that it fed the ravenous maternal beast inside me, even as a teenager with childhood dirt still under my fingernails. The perfect fucking angle to hold a bottle, tilting just so against those tiny, seeking lips. The exact rhythm of rocking that would calm colic—a slow, hypnotic pendulum swing that matched my heartbeat. The specific humming pitch that vibrated in my chest and made heavy eyelids surrender to sleep.
Zoe—that selfish bitch—would never lift a finger for her own flesh and blood. I'd be damned to hell before I'd let Ylse suffer the same fucking fate. Every skill I learned from Helen's weathered hands now pulsed through my veins, feeding Wendy's hunger inside me—a hunger that had been there all along, waiting patiently since I'd first cradled Mel against my chest and felt something primal click into place.
At night, as Mary slept soundly beside me, I slipped out to the bathroom and stared at my reflection in the harsh fluorescent light. My eyes were shadowed, skin sallow from months of interrupted sleep, but that wasn't what frightened me.
"Who the hell are you?" I whispered to the mirror.
"You already know. Why do you ask questions for which you already know the answer?" I heard Wendy reply. And for just a split second, my reflection smiled back with a face that wasn't quite mine.
The years rolled by like thunder—loud, unpredictable, leaving echoes that lingered long after they passed. Ylse grew from a helpless infant into a wild-haired, sharp-eyed child who questioned everything and feared nothing. She was everything that I would never be. The torrent of energy that my soul lost the ability to understand or even embrace anymore, was always there.
Our days together became sacred ritual. We'd escape the confines of routine, just the two of us against the world. Easter egg hunts where her mother and I would hide treats in increasingly ridiculous places—inside the freezer, taped beneath chair seats, nestled in the branches of the backyard oak tree. Her laughter when she found an especially clever hiding spot was worth every minute of preparation.
School drop-offs were a special kind of heartbreak. Watching her tiny figure, backpack nearly as big as she was, wade into the chaos of the outer world. Every fiber of my being screamed to grab her back, to shield her from the casual cruelties children inflict on one another. But I forced myself to wave, to smile, to pretend I wasn't leaving a piece of my soul behind those chain-link fences.
The zoo became a place of love. Her mom would map our route with the seriousness of generals planning a campaign, determining which animals deserved our attention first. "The elephants," Ylse would insist, tugging me toward the pachyderm enclosure. "They remember everything, Daddy. Like you!"
Memories fucking hurt. They sink their jagged teeth into my brain and refuse to let go, playing on endless loop like some sick, twisted movie I never asked to watch. And there was Wendy, scratching at the walls I'd built, her fingernails bloody and raw from trying to break through. "Let me out," she'd whisper when I'd catch a glimpse of myself in a store window, when I'd feel the wrongness of my body like a too-tight suit I couldn't shed.
The memories wouldn't fade—My stepfather's constant disappointed face when I didn't look man enough, the copper taste of blood when the kids in the school yard beat me to a pulp for not being like them, the burning in my stomach when a girls gaze at me felt... wrong. Wendy saw it all, remembered it all, used it all as ammunition. "This isn't you," she'd hiss through the cracks, her voice a mixture of honey and gravel. "You know it. I know it. Your fucking perfect memory knows it. Why do you keep denying me?"
And standing there, watching Ylse's tiny hand stroke an elephant's weathered trunk, I felt Wendy smile inside me—because this time, the memory being formed wasn't one that cut. It was one that healed.
And Ylse did remember everything—every promise made, every bedtime story detail, every offhand comment I thought had disappeared into the ether. Her mind was a steel trap wrapped in wild hair and glitter, relentless in its precision, merciless in its recall. The way she'd cock her head and remind me of some throwaway line from three months back would send chills down my spine. Ylse saw things that I would never see. Details that even at my age, my addled brain would look past and ignore, tiny fragments of reality that slipped through the cracks of my perception like water through cupped hands. She'd spot a hummingbird's nest no bigger than a walnut or notice when a shopkeeper changed the color of their door, her eyes cataloging the world with frightening clarity.
Our den transformed into a gaming sanctuary as she grew older. Video game controllers replaced stuffed animals as her treasures of choice. We'd sit shoulder to shoulder, battling digital monsters while the real-world faded to background noise. Years of platinum rankings in PUBG royale's that would only work because Ylse could see 2 pixels moving on a screen before I could, to find an unwitting foe in the distance. Jackbox games brought out her competitive streak, her face flushed with triumph when she outsmarted me, which happened with increasing frequency as years passed.
Food was its own war zone. Pasta, but only with butter and "pramesan cheese"— but no sauce. Apples, but peeled and sliced into precisely equal pieces. Chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, never any other form.
"You'll eat what's put in front of you," I'd growl when my patience frayed like an old rope.
"I don't like it," she'd counter, arms crossed, jaw set in a stubborn line that mirrored my own.
"Eat it or I swear, I will order an anchovy pizza right now. "
"You wouldn't dare!"
"Try me."
The standoffs could last longer than they needed, but underneath our stubbornness lay a bedrock of absolute, unshakable love. We both knew it, felt it, even in our angriest moments. Her mom would just laugh in the background. The safety of that knowledge allowed us our battles, our thunder and lightning, secure in the knowledge that the storm would always pass.
Some storms change the fucking landscape forever.
But then……
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