The Ink Chapel

You know—the time of year when the internet tells you to be grateful, drink cocoa, and pretend your life isn’t actively on fire.

I didn’t even think about presents until a few days ago. Not because I don’t care. Because sometimes grief eats the part of your brain that plans joy. Then the sadness showed up. Then the anger followed right behind it like it had been waiting for parking.

I’ll be living in Palm Springs in January.

Palm Springs.

Do you know how close that is to La Puente?

If you drive from Palm Springs to La Puente, it’s about 88–90 miles.  

The drive takes about 1 hour 36 minutes

Close enough to taste it.

Close enough to feel stupid about it.

Close enough to still be completely locked out of normal motherhood.

Because apparently the only way I’m allowed to see my own kids is in a tiny office where I’m supervised like I might forget how to be a human being. There’s a grown man in the room watching me try to glue together a relationship that someone else gleefully shattered. There’s a clock that reminds me exactly how temporary my role is. And there’s the unspoken rule that I should be grateful for the privilege of crumbs.

Nothing says “family holiday” like institutional lighting and a countdown timer.

Everyone loves to say “the kids come first.”

It’s so poetic.

So noble.

So wildly fictional.

Because in real life, the kids always come last—after egos, after control, after revenge, after paperwork, after power plays dressed up as righteousness. The kids carry the weight while the adults debate who’s the bigger victim.

Spoiler alert: It’s never the adults.

What hurts the most isn’t even the distance. It’s the performance. The pretending. The way people wrap damage in professional language so no one has to look directly at the bruise. The way truth gets “managed” instead of told. The way everyone claims protection while actively breaking things.

I know what secrets do to a person.

I lived that.

And I’ll never stop being angry about what silence steals from children.

So yeah—I’m pissed this Christmas.

I’m sick.

My throat feels like it went twelve rounds with regret.

It’s early. 5AM to be EXACT.

And I’m wide awake thinking about how the only people who never got a choice in any of this are the ones everyone claims to be fighting for.

I don’t want a public war.

I don’t want sainthood.

I don’t want sympathy wrapped in scripture and hashtags.

I want honesty.

And I want my kids to one day read words that don’t lie to them about what was happening when they were too small to see it clearly.

If that makes me bitter—cool.

If that makes me difficult—fine.

If that makes me “too much”—I’ve been too much for people who did too little my entire life.

So Merry Christmas.

To the calendars.

The quiet damage nobody likes to name.

And to my kids—who deserved a holiday without conditions.

I’m sorry I missed another one.

Hopefully one day you’ll let me make it up. 

© 2025 | don’t steal my trauma. thnx