people used to wonder where i came from, so different from my parents, implying that i was a changeling or some funny business happened. far from the tree is about kids who are radically different than their parents. i used to think i was just trying to be, but i think i was really different, and felt like i couldn't be authentic because i didn't know who i was. another thing is generational trauma. the first generation might not want to talk about it and keep things light and simple and cultivate a benign life that actually saddens and kind of terrifies me: that's what i grew up in. and as soon as i discovered mind altering substances i rushed headlong into the alter state. still i had a long way to go to find out who i am. i remembered today in talk therapy that my drunk gramps knocked me over and that was when he was finally taken away and detoxed, decades into the trauma. i think the second generation feels the trauma once removed, trauma buried by time, mooted, unspoken. i remember again my nightmares of live burial, of the hollow haunting sound of dirt hitting the pine box i lay in unable to make myself heard or knowing the hearers aren't listening. i feel funky today, sad, funereally sad, and yet i hope you want to hear this, even though i'm not saying it like i would if i could.