mental-health – Fauna Lewis Writes

My Father, the Mountain // post four.

*from my poetry book, My Father, the Mountain*

When I was suicidal a few years ago, my father called my husband.

“Take her somewhere that makes her smile.”

“Get her a surprise.”

“Take her to places that feed her soul.”

“Don’t do what I did.”

“Don’t put her in a closet and close the door.”

That’s what he did to my mother.

When I was depressed as a child, he tried to beat it out of me.

To hit it out.

Ignore it.

Scream it.

The first time I tried to kill myself, I was 8 years old.

I look at my children now, the oldest of whom is two-decades, and they are still so precious and young and in need of me.

And I tried to check-out in second-grade.

“Take her somewhere that makes her smile.”

Fix the mistake I created.
Help her, because I couldn’t. Because I can’t.
Help her, because I was incapable. Because I am incapable.

A desperate plea from a father for his child?

A desperate plea so a father can avoid his child?

I am always someone-else’s job.

I wonder if there will ever come a day when I’m not.

written 6/11/2025

This collection of blog posts will include poetry, retellings, introspection, and train-of-thought additions until I decide I have got it all out and can breathe. I recently published a poetry book that coincides — My Father, the Mountain — and you can find more information and follow the blog at http://www.faunalewiswrite.com

My Mother, the Moonbeam // post one.

*from my poetry book, My Mother, the Moonbeam*

Sometimes I wish my mother had died in childbirth.

Then she could be a mystery.

Then I could pretend she could be love.

I could have pretended she tended to me at night when I cried, a loving soul to envelope me, rather than the banshee which greeted me instead.

She is tangible and real and I am alone.

Which is worse: to mourn the dead and all they did not get to do, or mourn the living and all they refused?

This collection of blog posts will include poetry, retellings, introspection, and train-of-thought additions until I decide I have got it all out and can breathe. I recently published a poetry book which coincides — My Mother, the Moonbeam — you can find more information and follow the blog at http://www.faunalewiswrites.com

B97 5HP // post two.

a serial-memoir

Notifications were all blinking when I finally logged in.
I clicked to the ‘messages’ tab first.

You all right?
How was your day?
Are you there?
Do you not want to talk to me?

I sighed in ‘two-retail-jobs-and-an-infant . . . and zero friends’ and folded into the chair. The most recent message was a couple hours ago; the first was maybe twelve.

Hey!!
I am so sorry
I swear I wasn’t ignoring you
I was at work, blargh

Immediately, the ‘typing’ indicator popped up.

Oh, you hadn’t mentioned.

Sorry, yeah, I had work today.

I pulled up my writing program and typed in a few lines before the notification blinked again.

Are you getting my messages?

Yes

Sorry, this messenger
doesn’t work right on
my computer.
Do you have a different one?

Uh, I don’t know,
what one do you use?

Have you heard of SkUpe?

Yeah, but I don’t have it.

You need your phone number,
if you send it to me I can add you —

Typity-type in the browser; download pending.

No, I just need an email.

Oh, okay perfect.

After a few minutes coordination, some swearing, and favorable download speeds, I signed-in and hopped-on. Within moments a new chat window popped up.

Hey! Long time no talk 😀

Hi!!!! 😀
Is this working better?

Yeah, it is working a lot better.
So, how was your day?
What are you up to now,
hanging out with your boyfriend?

At the mention, I sat back and stared around our dark apartment. The table where we never ate together. The quiet in the corners.

No.
He went out
hanging with his car friends.

Like his friends are cars?

Hahaha 😀 , no.
They all go drive somewhere
and stand around
and talk about cars.

What do you do while he does that?
Besides talk to hot British guys 😀

Lol, well.
Usually I read.
Or write.
Or clean.

What do you write?

I clicked back to my writing program and frowned at the screen.
not much, I thought.

It is kinda random right now.

Can I read it?

You want to?

I’d love to read it.

Really?

Sure! 😀

I scoured some recently-disgorged typing: very ‘diary entry’, very ‘angry teen’.

Well?
Where’d you go?

<<<webcam request>>>

I stared at the screen. A raw kind of panic shot through my belly.

Uh, I don’t have a webcam.

Oh, sorry
I accidentally clicked it.

Okay.

Can I read what you’re writing?

No, nevermind
it’s all stupid.

It probably isn’t.

I gave it another scroll.
no, actually, it is, I thought.
I couldn’t bring myself to send any of it.

Please?
I bet it is great
the other stuff you posted is great.

I chewed on my lip as again my eyes flicked from paragraph to paragraph.
something he won’t think is stupid something he won’t think is stupid

Five seconds.

Ten.

Finally, I just copy-pasted half a page and dropped it into the chat. I quickly returned to the word document and typed OMG OMG OMG OMG over and over again until the notification ding’d.

Wow, this is really incredible.

Really?
I thought it was dumb . . .

Hey, how old are you again?

I think you act much older
much more mature.
I would have guessed 25.

Hahahaha, thank you 😛

You’re very welcome.

******

Okay, I should probably go to bed.

Really?
You don’t want to talk to me anymore?
😦

No! I’m just getting tired, is all.

Okay 😦
I guess I’ll just sit here
Alone

Hey!!! That’s not fair 😦
I mean, what about you?
We’ve been chatting for like
hours.

I’m not tired.
Do you have any writing anywhere else?
A blog somewhere?

Not really.
It’s just whatever I write and post.

Do you have any other pictures?

Just what’s on my page.
Actually . . .

I browsed through a friend’s profile and downloaded a few photos they had of me.

Actually?
Where’d you go?
Did you leave me again?

<<<webcam request>>>

Accidental click again?
lol
Here’s a pic of me and a friend
I’m on the left

You’re really beautiful.
You were blonde?
When was this?

A year or so ago.

What were you guys doing?

We were in dance together . . .

******

Okay, now I should go to bed for real.
I think the sun is coming up.
I hear literal birds

😦

Staaaaaahhhhhhp

Okay, fine.
Goodnight.
sweet dreams.

Good night!

You should take more pictures tomorrow 😀

I don’t have a camera.

You can take pictures with a webcam.

I don’t have a webcam!!!

Maybe you should get one 😛

GOODNIGHT
I AM TIRED

Goodnight.
Message me tomorrow!

Shut down.
Brush teeth.
Bed; shut down.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Poison and Whimsy

I have known since single-digits that if you are bitten by a snake, you suck out the venom.

I don’t know if it was first in books (related: one of my favorite childhood books is Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, wherein this is mentioned) or told to me because I played in creeks and watery ditches, but I took that to heart.

They were the words to express what I had already experienced tangibly through buried slivers which made the skin around them red and angry. Through thorns and prickers which littered my bare arms and legs, sat middle and atop the little eruptions they made there. In the bee stingers which taught me how allergic I was.

When something gets in which doesn’t belong there, you get it out. You can’t heal until you get it out.

You could die if you don’t get it out.

I used to get so angry at bees, how dare they actively attempt to kill me, until I learned they aren’t attempting to kill anyone. They are attempting to protect.

That’s ultimately how I was able to convince myself I could fight back, and that Jesus would not be angry with me for doing so, even if I hurt someone in the process.

I learned all of this when I was still in single-digits.

And I never did fight back.

As though I could believe beings as humble as bees and I had anything in common. Instead, I admired that the bees had something available to them in moments when they required protection.

As a child, I thought surely I would be dead by 10.

Then 12.

Then 15. 18. 21.

I have been on borrowed time since 1986, and now I am an adult who protects the bees. Despite the allergies and the fact they have no understanding of what that even means.

At my Godfather’s 40th birthday, he had black balloons. All my aunts and uncles joked he was ‘over the hill’. I thought he surely would die soon, yet here we are in the big Two-Six, year of our saviour and lord Luigi Mangione, and I am due for black balloons.

My Godfather is still alive and well, yet I feel I won’t live past 40, and I am still protecting bees.

While I have never been very good at fighting back, I do agree I have to get out the poison. I may not have a stinger — but I can type.

And you have to get it all out, or you could die.

— FmL

pity party*

So much of the time, I seem to be angry.

The world is on fire; the president of the USA is a rapist; and so much of the time, I seem to be angry.

It does not seem to ease or to wane. In fact, with time it simply seems to encompass more.

I have gained other emotions alongside, over the years.

I have learned to love and to forgive and and and . . . and yet, this anger is ever-present. Co-mingled.

Being a parent myself has made this anger thicken.
Burned the water from the sap.

Was I so impossible to love?

Were the signs my parents needed help too quiet?
Did they need support, or were they bad people before I arrived?

Did I MAKE them bad people?

Do I blame the times? The government? Society?

What do I do with all this anger?

I survived the home of an abusive alcoholic who did not hesitate to raise his hand to his wife or his children.
I survived a childhood with a mother who never completed a maternal task in her life and regularly used me for her own gains, even if it meant letting others use me.
Two of my siblings survived to go on to be rapists and pedophiles — one awaiting federal sentencing and one in his 30s with his freshly 18yo bride whom he groomed beforehand.
I find photos of myself from my childhood and am transported to a nightmare, because the outfit I am wearing is one I had been abused in.

So much of the time, I seem to be angry.

I don’t feel like this anger even belongs to me; it was given to me.
Handed to me softly or thrown against my body.
Ripped stitches.
Off-color comments.
I received it wrapped and with blood and with smiles and with silence.
And I don’t want it anymore.

My parents used every opportunity they had to call me ‘entitled’ and ‘ungrateful’. That I was disrespecting them by not showing appreciation for what they had given to me (which was not even consistent food, medical care, or shelter, folks) so I finally decided this: I am no longer undeserving of them.

They are 100%, no cap, frfr, undeserving of me.

The narrative that somehow in this equation I would always come out lacking for admitting it is laughable.

Why is it always, “but they’re your parents!” and not, “but they’re your kid!”

I desperately hope this generational mindset in which children exist only to benefit the mother and father dies with my parent’s generation. Them being upset in their old-age that I am not upholding my side of the ‘deal’ and care for them no matter what is a hard pill they will have to swallow. They did not raise children on intimacy and closeness and trust and safety, so why they expect it in their final verses makes me very uncomfortable.

I am giving my children everything I can while simultaneously building myself a Fountain of Youth so I can help THEM into THEIR old-age. One of the things I cry about as a parent is that no one will love my 80-year-old babies like I would. I want to pre-pack a whole house for each of them with all the clean laundry and food they would need.

If I gave my parents in old-age what I received in childhood, their days will be very dark, very painful. They will have no blankets nor food. They will not be allowed to speak. They will watch what I put on the television, or listen to what I put on the radio. They will sleep in pissed sheets and bruises. They will be told not to tell anyone — what happens in my house, stays in my house.

I deserved better, and because of that I also feel like my children deserve better.

Thanks, Mom and Dad ❤

*Tonight’s Pity Party Post was brought to you by: days of cyclical depression, CPTSD, and the letter ‘Y’-the fuck didn’t you love your kids, Parents of Mine? Let’s see if I feel comfortably unhinged enough to write another.

My Father, the Mountain // post two.

I feel silly having such human, girly emotions while the country is in literal flames (fvckICE,btw) but I have been thinking about my reasons for writing this poem a lot recently and tbh, I want it out of my head thankyouverymuch.

So, let’s write it out and get some decent sleep, shall we?

Looking back over my father’s life, I can acknowledge there were plenty of things present to cause him to be easily overwhelmed with fatherhood and responsibility, and I acknowledge he may not have necessarily been able (capable? willing?) to access adequate supports which may have made things better for all of us, so . . . am I an angry daughter? Am I an empathetic mother?

Loving my own children may be the only thing that has allowed me to continue to see humanity in my father. That perhaps he just wasn’t meant to be a dad and I should cut him a break for it because he was once a child too and his childhood may not have been that great.

But, wasn’t I also a child?

Onto the point and the reason for the poem #cringe

My dad was my hero. He could do literally no wrong. More than once, I can remember him hitting my mom and thinking she absolutely deserved it

I wanted to have his attention as much as I could (and as much as my mother would allow — that’s another blog post) — even if it meant I was in the line-of-fire.

My father only let us kids hang around him when he was doing whatever he was doing. He was never interested in what I liked, but I learned a lot about nails and wood and pinup girls and beer and Queen. He was always ready for nails and wood and pinup girls and beer and Queen.

My dad had to be in the perfect mood to listen to me.

The right amount of coffee.
The right amount of nicotine.
The right amount of alcohol.
The right amount of uninterrupted time to drop his morning deuce.
(Bonus if he also finished his cross-word)

I learned my dad’s shit-schedule so I could plan when to talk to him without him putting me through a wall for approaching him, ya’ll. And it was all to do things I don’t particularly have interest in.

I sat through epic orations of Baseball statistics as he meticulously organised his cards. My brothers would get banished to their bedrooms because they were too loud and too physical but I did not mind being a statue on the floor next to his La-Z-Boy.

I would make myself so incredibly small in the garage, where my dad would be hunched over his workbench. Cut-off jeans, button-down shirt open to reveal his tan belly. Cigarette perched between two fingers while he measured something. His dark hair curling over the edge of his baseball cap. Beer in a cozy. The boys would want to hammer and bang and saw — I also wanted to do these things, but expressing so got you banished — so I was content with watching him work.
Sometimes, he would be generous and hand me a few wood scraps and some nails and tell me to build The Next Big Thing.
Once, he threw a wire brush at my leg. I can remember it feeling so heavy and hurting before I realised the brush was sticking out of my skin; I had thought it just glanced off, like everything else.

I would always end up being sent away for a stupid reason.

I sneezed.
I had to use the bathroom.
I asked a question.

And every time it happened, every time I heard that intake of breath and that buildup of, “Goddamnit, Fauna!” rumbling up from his naked chest with all the putrid alcohol from his guts, I hated myself.

I vowed that I could master myself in such a way I never needed to sneeze again.

Never use the bathroom again.

Never ask a question again.

And it did nothing but hinder me as I came of-age in the world. I was unprepared, uneducated, and felt wholly unwanted.

And I hated myself.

Now, I often wonder if that was the outcome he wanted?

I am ashamed of the tree I fell from, but not the one I grew, is all I can say. I really let this old white man fuck me up.

Ope.

Love, a Fatherless Daughter 🖤

This collection of blog posts will include poetry, retellings, introspection, and train-of-thought additions until I decide I have got it all out and can breathe. I recently published a poetry book that coincides, ‘My Father, the Mountain’ — you can find more information and follow the blog at www.faunalewiswrites.com

My Father, the Mountain // post one.

Well, a thing has occurred.

I sent my father a Christmas gift. Belated, because why send it on-time?, and it was delivered to his mailbox today.

Yes, you are seeing that photo correctly (unless it is not there yet, in which case dang, you got to it in the time between publishing from my laptop and editing from my phone): His gift was the poetry book I wrote all about him.

I packaged it as a little bit of a jokey-joke (you can see the video about it in my TikTok here) and thought I might let it sit until the label was deleted by USPS but surprisingly, I found myself slipping it into the mailbox the very next day.

I held a lot of guilt watching the tracking update. I knew the book might make him really upset, and I don’t want my father to be upset. I am not sure what I want him to be.

Aware. I want him to be aware.

I worry he won’t even care, that it won’t bother him at all.

I can almost hear him saying things like,

‘you’re acting so entitled’
‘you’re being dramatic’
‘you’re acting like your mom‘

and I realise maybe I don’t care if it bothers him?

Maybe I hope it does?

Because why was I embarrassed and ashamed my whole life for being beaten and neglected as a child?

Why do I care about him being upset about some poetry when he didn’t care as I lay in my bed some nights, bloodied and bruised by his hands, in piss-soaked sheets, with probable brain-damage, unable to even cry because I was so empty inside?

The last time my father gave me a Christmas gift was . . . so long ago I don’t even remember when it was. I can recall bringing home macaroni pictures or giving him hand-drawn cards; this year, he got a final hand-made gift from me.

I hope he appreciates it.

Love, a Fatherless Daughter ❤️

This collection of blog posts will include poetry, retellings, introspection, and train-of-thought additions until I decide I have got it all out and can breathe. I recently published a poetry book which coincides, ‘My Father, the Mountain’ — you can find more information and follow the blog at www.faunalewiswrites.com

My Father, the Mountain — Tea Party for 1

On and off since the day of my forging, way back in the 1980s, I have had pits occurring in my mind. Like one would push the tip of their finger into wet sand and leave behind a dimple, such occurred in the delicate folds of my brain each time my father held me beneath his thumb.

Over the years, through the tides of life, information pooled in each.

This one is a glimpse of a man, red-faced, and it smells like beer.

So is this one.

And this.

And that, and those over there. Also, those in the back.

I even have some coming in to be installed tomorrow, they’re going up on that pretty ridge over there.

New shipments every week.

If I get close, the ripples tell the story, and I remember: this one taught me to be ashamed.

This one: to be silent.

To lie.

To hide.

So, this has been occurring for quite some time, but 8 months ago I could suddenly see it. 8 months ago I could finally see the enormity of it. I realised how much it pervaded; how deep it went; how badly I had been betrayed by someone who was meant to protect.

And that’s not even the worst part.

8 months ago, at the ripe old age of being born in the 1900s, I realised that I deserved better and none of it was my fault.

Decades of things I had internalised, maggots I pulled from memories to drown in the shitty dimples that pervaded, worked themselves out like botflys.

And now I am left with all these lapping waves.

Ah, poetic digression. Back on-track:

This realisation, that it wasn’t me, might seem like a great thing — in the bigger picture, it of course is — but it sucks.

Should it suck for me?

Well, after devoting hours a day of background consciousness (involuntarily, might I add) to this question, I finally decided on the answer:

42 (jk, you’ll understand if you’re old or really cool, but not both)

The answer to ‘Should it be me?’ is: ‘Nah’.

It should be my dad.

And since I’m an 80s baby and we all know Millennials love drama (this is in no way true I made it up right now), what better way to be dramatic than some silly, salacious blog post no one will read? hashtag i’m just a girl.

Of course, I am going to be called ’emotional’ or told to ‘get go of the past’, but I have heard them before and am no longer phased. These crimes are not mine and I refuse to hold the shame and guilt of them.

They belong to my dad.

My dad, the man who married and took advantage of a mentally-ill, physically-disabled woman. Even though she was desperate for support, he gave her none but made four children with her and left all of the childrearing in her lap.

My dad, the man who, when cops were called because he was beating my mom, grabbed our dog and hid in the garage (not really that wild, I just wanted to point-out he was a coward)

My dad, the man who, when I would ask from the backseat — past where my little brothers were asleep — if he could slow down, would say. “You think you fucking know more about driving than me!” as he took another swig of beer.

My dad, the man who beat his children — his babies — with his fists. Who insisted his children did not need glasses, or regular medical care, or supervision, or safety. The man who seemed to enjoy our fear as he whipped off his belt.

The man who drove his children to random abandoned homes in cornfields and left his oldest child (me) in charge of the younger three, all aged 9>, while he disappeared to do ???

My dad, who called his daughter ‘a slut like her mom’ when his daughter (that’s me!) asked permission for a piercing at age 16.

My dad, the man who told his daughter, survivor of childhood sexual assault, that CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) was ‘not a big deal if it was teenagers’. The conversation would come about when his son was arrested for receipt, transport, and distribution of CSAM of children of prepubescent age. (Andrew Branigan, defendant in the Southern District of Iowa — sentencing is November 2025)

My dad, the man whose favorite joke used to be:
“Hey, you know that cartoon, The Jetsons? How it is set in the future? . . . ever see a black guy on the show? Man, the future is gonna be great.”

Forty years is a long time to hide sins of the father.

I’m over it.

Love, a Fatherless Daughter ❤

This collection of blog posts will include poetry, retellings, introspection, and train-of-thought additions until I decide I have got it all out and can breathe. I recently published a poetry book that coincides, ‘My Father, the Mountain’ — you can find more information and follow the blog at www.faunalewiswrites.com