Spite is a dangerous seed to sow: once it germinates, it crawls and twines through everything – every memory, thought, feeling. Like kudzu, it explodes, covering, smothering, filling every nook and cranny of your mind, your body. But in that moment, in that initial moment, when you sink to your knees, seed in hand, it feels so good – like a release into the earth, a return to the body from which you came.
I didn’t hate her then. At least not in a way that I could admit to myself. Sometimes I wonder if I ever did love her. Or, if she ever loved me. Thinking back on that time, I often get confused, running in circles in my head. She was so hard to love, and she made it so hard to love her. Because at the end of the day, beauty was the only thing she valued, and she wore it possessively.
The thing about spite is that it’s incredibly hard to remove. There’s no easy way to cut through to the core, or to uproot the initial plant. Because, like kudzu, spite spreads through runners – tendrils that shoot out from the mother, that snake across the soil, and that put down roots. Eventually, it becomes impossible to tell where it came from, or where it’s going.
I thought that I understood beauty – that I knew what it was and how it made me feel. In those early days beauty was us: like sisters discovering each other for the first time. We stepped into each others lives as easily as slipping into a favorite pair of shoes. Together we shone, and the earth we trod was ours. But, like most things in the end – like family, sisterhood, love – she ripped it from my core.
At some point, regret sneaks in. It settles into the soft places, far away from the sun. Regret has its own flavor of tenacity, the kind that thrives in the negative space between leaf and stem. And so they co-exist, spite and regret, in such a way that the edges blur – the righteousness of one bleeds into the dismay of the other – so that you can no longer see the earth, no longer sink your fingers into the soil, no longer find the place you came from.
Though from a family of excess, she moved through the world with scarcity colored lenses: with her there was never enough to go around. Looking back on it now, I understand – with beauty as her central paradigm, time would always be scarce – but back then, it became the wedge between us. It took me a long while to realize that what I gave so freely, to her, my ate, my sister, would never be enough. She accepted it – my beauty, my love, my sisterhood – and then she took it, demanded it, coveted it. The more and more she took, the more and more I gave, scraping the dredges of myself to offer with open palms.
Tend your inner gardens. It’s advice as old as the earth for a reason. Because spite, and regret, they can’t grow in fertile soils. They have no claim to land that is loved and nourished, respected and protected. But when that land is depleted, barren, spite (and later regret) is like flame to dry tinder.
With spite, it became easy. Easy to justify the ways I acted: the ways I stepped further and further from myself. And I don’t regret leaving, nor do I regret breaking her heart – it was the only way to end the cycle of extraction and exploitation – but I’ll always regret the loss of myself: of the ways that I was, and the ways that I can never be again. Because I’m a body full of spite and regret, with no clear path to follow, no map leading me home.
Home Sweet Home 