That Smiling Girl on Portraits

Enough is a poem I wrote a few years back. I'd been living with my family and after a divorce, all the expectations of doing the housework fell on me because "I was a woman," "I was good at it", and I spent a lot of time at home. I also struggled heavily with my mental health, something that I never felt was included in their narrative about who I was and could do.

I wrote this poem at my breaking point of being threatened into domestic labor, third shifts beyond my capability, and the result of not being good enough to their standards, always resulted in me getting yelled at. It lasted for years. Every single day. And I broke, and this poem is me wishing they saw me as the broken and mentally ill person I percieved myself to be instead of someone healthy and capable of doing this "easy house work" - that they percieved it to be. (Housework is thought. It's exercise and it is sisyphusian.)

The second line is the most impactful one for me. "I do not wish to be the same or be the name \ They say when they think “sane.”"

And I truly didn't. If being healthy to them meant yelling and complaining at others at the point of the other person breaking and feeling physically ill over it. Neither did I wish to be the idea of me they had that still was mentally well bc she was not real anymore.

Despite it, I continued. Cleaned up, cooked food while loosing myself in the process. I was being shaped into an idea of me that only benefitted them, and I'd had enough. Especially, bc I was spending all my energy on this instead of my studies or future, that they already had and was about to even leave behind. I was supposed to spend this time of my life learning and soaring about, not inside a house cleaning all day.

An for someone who spent these years unraveling their identity as someone who never did anything wrong and didn't make issues, becoming the issue of the family and running with that dark arcetype, made me stronger. For the first time in my life, I realized I didn't have to wait for their approval to be who I wanted to be.