Hidden

I thought that being dead, he would no longer haunt me.  Tucked away in the corner of my mind are found over fifty hidden children.  Nameless, with faces containing nothing but a mouth, they are dirty, bruised, and broken. 

He now simple ashes, they are limping... crawling... carrying one another forward.  In groups of two they are crossing into my conscious stream.  In the light of my mind's eye I am horrified by what I see.   A pupil widens and then is fixed with pain.  Unresponsive, I do nothing but squeeze a single blink of disbelief. 

A razor sharp child slices as I extend a forced, yet hopeful hand.  As drops of blood pool, I become the injured helping the walking wounded and I am filled with doubt.  I do not know how I will be able to continue this.  How does a sick and injured doctor care for an even more ill and disfigured patient?

One single child reaches my feet and as she does she brushes her dirty hair aside and I see one possibility of an eye behind the matted hair.  Behind a squint in the light, I see an unmistakable muddied crystal blue eye. 

Mine. 

Hidden from light for many years.  But not from his terror.  Hidden from love.  Hidden from care.  As I look into this eye I am freshly exposed to his ravages.  I am no longer hidden but face to face, and I am flooded with his unmistakable memories.

They won't stop.

*Sigh*

It has been a collective *sigh* kind of week for me.  And a collective upheaval.

I am still terribly conflicted over this impending death and I still do not have it sorted out.  I have taken this weekend for myself; to feel how I need to feel. 

It is a slow going process.

So while I have not been writing here; I have lots to say.  I am truly grateful for the thoughts that all my readers have shared and I am hopeful to be back in the next day or so to respond and share more of where I am at.

Thank you.

Lost

I get lost.  In my own head. 

According to my husband, I have been alarmingly quiet lately.  I don't mean to.  Really.  It just happens.

After a screaming match culminating with said husband telling me to get the fuck out of my head; I told him that I am lost in the darkness of my voices.

I have my friends.  Best friends that I have had for years.  Our friendships have endured the well-worn time and lately I have been spending an increasing amount of time with them.  While I read, sew, crochet, quilt, and even sleep, they are there and we talk.  They are my comrades in a perpetual war; one that never stops, one that has wounds that never heal just right.  They know me and they understand me.

But they are not real.  And that makes me weird and quiet.

I have nothing audible to say.  My voice is locked inside my thoughts, my hurts, my scars.  I hurt but how does one verbalize horror?  Horror in the movies is simply expressed in screams both silent and audible, twisted faces, running, backing into a corner, all until one is consumed completely by the evil.

To say that I am scared is an insult.  I am terrified.  I am haunted.  I live in horror.  I have joked before about what kind of writer I could be and I always conclude that I would be one hell of a horror author.  I love Stephen King yet I can read very few of his books because ironically, they scare me.  However, when I can, I have to wonder what happened to him?  Horror does not come naturally to most human minds.

I am struggling at this moment.  What I wrote in my previous post has sent me reeling.  It is horror in black and white.  Black and white that is vivid color in my memory because it is my life.  These silent times are when depression grows taller and wraps its dense, dark grip around my mind, my body, my eyes.  The darkness is in the corner of my eyes, just out of sight, no matter where I look.

I paint a smile on and talk to people all day long.  But in those same dark corners on my eyes I have to wonder what if they only knew.  And if they did know would they be as lost as me?

Sorry

Good.  God.  Where to start?  I said that I wanted to be honest here so here I go.

I am a perfectionist.  Black and white are the boxes I have tried to stuff my feelings, my thoughts, and my life into.  It's not working for me anymore.

I am far from perfect.  Especially when it comes to being a mother.

I smile and say that I'm not angry but rather I am sad, depressed, tired, etc.  Those feelings just sound more polite.  But really, I am boiling over with anger, hatred, rage, and just pure poison.

This morning I fucked up.  Today I reached the point where I truly was not sure that I could be a parent.  Nice.  My daughter is a cute little six year old with the vocabulary of a ten year old, and the mouthy sass of a teenager.  Mornings before school are tough around our house.  My husband leaves before we get up so it is me versus two beagles and a six year old.  I lose most mornings.

In typical fashion my daughter fought me on what to wear, what to eat for breakfast and continued to sass me.  I had been pretty patient but then I lost it.  With the last words of back-talk, I turned around and asked her if she wanted me to go to her Christmas party today at school because she sure wasn't acting like she wanted me around.  Then I said something to the effect of "because I can just leave you and not be around at all".  And I didn't just say these things.  I screamed them.

I watched the tears well up in my daughter's eyes and I saw my own painful grimace worn on her undeserving face.  I hurt her and my made her cry before school; two things I swore I would never do.

I salvaged the tears that I could and dropped her off at school.  A few hours later I went to her party and as I walked in she looked up and saw me and burst into tears.  In those tears I could hear my mother's words taunting me.  We talked for a few minutes, she calmed down and I apologized.  But really, how does five minutes do anything but put a band-aid on the real problem?

I'm that problem and I am scared to death.  There are some people just made to be parents.  They are the ones who should be allowed to have kids.  I am not one of those people.  For a fleeting second this morning, I honestly thought that me walking away would be best for all involved.  I hate myself for arriving at that point because I watched my mother flirt and threaten with that point more times than I can count.

After the party was over I got in my car and headed back to work.   I ended up turning around and going back to her school but her bio-father had already picked her up to spend the night tonight.  So I'm fucked.  And worse, my daughter gets to go to bed tonight, in a bed she doesn't really like, turning over in her mind what the hell her mother meant this morning when she said she would leave.

I am sick at my stomach and none of this is OK.  Yet another thing I swore I would never do; making my daughter wonder who will be there in the morning.

I am so, so sorry.

Need

From The Pliers: The question that occurs to me tonight as I follow the progress of your reclamation project is, What is the singularly most important thing that any given reader of your blog can do for you, with you, or on your behalf as s/he or reads your words?

To be an effect.  To be affected...

There are remarkably unique readers here.  I wrote to another reader that I want my readers to take from my words exactly what they need, not what I want them to need.  That would be rather selfish of me as I have spent a lifetime being told what to feel, what not to feel, and how to feel.  Here is not the place for that.

I began writing here to keep a journal.  One out of ink and out of nosey hands.  I love my family but one member in particular likes to read my spilled guts.  I'm anonymous here and so I write freely.  I have in fact shared printed pages of this site in person but that is as far as I have gotten.

In my writing you will find love.  I deeply love my daughter and my husband.  On paper I am not capable of love.  I believed that lie for far too long.  Love is what drives me to succeed in this; to excel at being whole. 

My love goes beyond those who live in my home as well.  This is a bold love; a love that hopes and believes for the best.  This love hopes that every time my father calls that he will be calling to tell me he has changed.  This love hopes that my mother found the end of her turmoil.  This love envelops hate, consumes despair and braids the three into something fierce and sharp.  My love for my parents cuts and and shreds but loves these imperfect people because they gave me life and they did not kill me; this is the best I got from them.  Underneath the shards of pain, I love them.  Not for what they did but rather for what they didn't.

In these pages the closed mind, the unscathed will find truth.  There are those who hold tightly to a small little world where nothing all that bad happens.  It does.  To children and adults alike. An awareness can be found here as brutal words are wrapped around the perspective of a small child.  It is hard to ignore.

And lastly, for the broken, for the survivor, for the lost; there is hope.  What I write is only my version of hope so seek your hope out as well.  But take from me what you need even if it is just the smallest understanding that you are not alone. 

Because you are not.

For those who are able, take from me the awareness that there are others like me; your neighbors, your friends, the child in your own child's class who forces a smile but carries a frown that is just a little too deep for a tiny face.

What can a reader do?  Please do not waste my woundings.  Take what you need.

Be an effect.  Be affected by love, truth, hope...

Break

Break. Brake. Stop. I needed a break; needed to apply the emergency brake. I needed to stop. I don't know that I'm a person easily overwhelmed because I can truly say that I juggle many items/issues/people/jobs everyday. But sometimes I do get overwhelmed and it's ugly when that happens. It's something of a breakdown; or brakedown. Either way, life comes to a screeching halt.

I always resurface but I can't really say that I'm refreshed. I ran hard in the other direction but here I am, in the same place, still being forced to face all the voices that tell me that I'm not good enough, undeserving, ill-fitting...

Spring and Summer are hard for me. Beginning with Mother's Day, followed by my late sister's birthday, Father's Day and then my father's birthday; all reminders of what is missing, what has been lost.

I struggle with wanting to fix what is broken and cleaning up messes that I have no business even touching. In this process, I lose myself. I don't take care of myself and then, before I know it, the brake is being pulled and I am caught in some sort of mental purgatory. It is a tough place to be but it does motivate me to press forward because I sure as hell know that stopped is not where I want to be.

So, I'm back. I can't say that I'm new and improved but I am more determined to heal and become a version of myself that I can be proud of.