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I Can’t Heal From This

by | Oct 17, 2018 | Abuse, Anger, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Coping With Divorce, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Boundaries, Fear, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Resources, Guilt, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, Helping Someone In An Abusive Relationship, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Intimate Partner Rape, Intimate Partner Rape, Major Depressive Disorder, Marriage and Partnership, Marriage Problems, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Psychological Manipulation, Psychological Manipulation, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexual Addiction, Sexual Coercion, Stress, Trauma | 3 comments

Three years ago, my husband attempted to rape me. I didn’t really think of it that way at the time. I did shove him off me with a hand to his throat, and he was extremely angry. A few months later, he completed the rape.

He’s always been terrible with boundaries and when I would say no to sex, he would keep trying until I gave in. I didn’t like it, but didn’t recognize it as anything more than annoying.

It was a red flag I guess, but didn’t seem like “real abuse” because I wasn’t being harmed.

After he raped me, I slowly spiraled downward.

We did marriage counseling. I did individual counseling. Still, I wound up checking myself into a psych hospital with severe post-traumatic-stress-syndrome, anxiety, and depression.

We have managed to stay together, but, as you’d expect, It hasn’t been easy.

He still struggles with boundaries, which are obviously so important to our relationship. Unfortunately, he will touch me sexually even after I’ve explicitly said that I don’t want to be touched that way (when my anxiety is at a high I do not want to be touched at all; much less sexually).

He’s started having sex with me in his sleep despite me saying no – when he’s aware of what’s going on he stops, thankfully. When he is very much in the mood, he won’t come to bed with me because he’s afraid he can’t control himself. I suppose I should just be grateful that he stays away but I  don’t like hearing him say he can’t control himself. It freaks me out.

He has been (for the most part) patient and understands why I’m like this now. He’d do absolutely anything to make me happy.

I feel guilty because a large part of me hates him. He has told me that he doesn’t think about the rape unless I’m struggling, which is devastating to me. Something that changed me at my core so much. Traumatized me. Destroyed trust, my ability to enjoy intimacy, gave me massive, crippling anxiety and he…?

He doesn’t even think about.

We are in marriage counseling again; but we haven’t yet told the counselor what happened.

We’ve only had two sessions so far, and I haven’t been ready to discuss the rape.

The counselor is giving us all these tools to work on things and I just…I don’t know. I don’t know how to make it work.

I can’t afford to care for my kids alone. I’m a stay-at-home mom, no good work experience, no family to help me out. I MUST make this work.

And my husband really does try to make me happy and I feel so guilty that he can’t.

I will never be the same again.

Part of me wishes to just end it all and escape the constant anxiety and feeling like I will never get better. Don’t worry; I would never do that to my children.

I’m just struggling with so many feelings of anger, sadness, depression, stress, and frustration.

My husband used to be my best friend. We get along pretty well now, but I just can’t see him romantically again.

Can we make this work?

 

Antepartum/Antenatal Depression

by | Oct 16, 2018 | Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Blended Families, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Family, Fear, Guilt, Hope, Loneliness, Love, Major Depressive Disorder, Pregnancy, Prenatal (Antenatal) Depression | 0 comments

The only thing I’d wanted was another baby.

So when, after meeting a good guy, marrying him and buying a house in the suburbs with a yard (like I was Suzie-freaking-Homemaker), I found myself knocked up once again just like I’d wanted, I couldn’t begin to understand why I was so miserable. After living through my first pregnancy — something that can only be described through a particularly bad country song — raising an autistic child, escaping my alcoholic parents and finally having another baby, this time the way I thought it was “supposed to be,” my feelings were beyond bizarre to me.

Certainly, my life was stressful. But my life has always been stressful. I’d had to quit my job and money was tight, something my new husband worried about often and loudly. When we’d moved to the ‘burbs, we’d left behind our friends so my support system of single friends was gone. We’d occasionally talk on the phone but it became more and more obvious that we were no longer on the same page. It stung more than I’d thought it would.

Day after day during this pregnancy I sat alone on the couch, or praying to the porcelain gods, while my husband worked 14-hour days. My distant son, never a source of emotional comfort anyway, was in school all day. These were the days before I’d adopted the internet as Your Aunt Becky, so I was Becky, As Herself. I had no one to confide in, no Band of Merry Pranksters to confess my feelings to, and now neatly severed from all of my support systems, I floundered.

I’d been depressed before, but the feelings I was experiencing were new. I felt like I was mired in quicksand, rooted in one spot, unable to move forward. Always a social beast, I could barely leave my house. A simple phone call became too much to handle. The isolation bred isolation and now a trip to the store exhausted me for days beforehand and afterward.

It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning.

Sleep was an elusive mistress. Night after night, as my son churned in my belly, I tossed and turned, unable to ever fall into that deep REM sleep that the doctors insist we need to survive. I remembered that sleep deprivation was a technique that soldiers used on POW’s to drive them slowly insane, which was precisely what was happening to me. Each morning, I dragged myself out of bed, unrefreshed and sad, filled with a sense of impending doom.

Finally, untrusting of my OB, I turned to Dr. Google for advice. While I wasn’t yet Your Aunt Becky, I was a blogger and I knew that the beauty (and horror) of the internet is that there’s always one soul that no matter how depraved you’re feeling, can sympathize with you. Setting my search to “antepartum depression,” I was confident that I would find something.

Nothing came up. Well, okay, there were a couple of things, but mostly with “antepartum” and “depression” mentioned in the same article.

Not exactly helpful, Dr. Google.

Fine, I thought. I’m a freak.

Ben, my first, had been born after Andrea Yates had her bout with postpartum psychosis, so I’d had no end of pamphlets shoved at me to help me combat any urges to hurt myself or someone else after he was born. We’d studied the spectrum of postpartum mood disorders in nursing school as well. But antepartum depression was a big question mark.

So what did I do? NOTHING. I wore a groove on the couch where I sat miserable and sad until my second son, Alex, was born squalling and healthy. Almost instantly, my mood improved.

When I got pregnant with my daughter, I expected the antepartum depression to return and it did. By this time, I had become Your Aunt Becky and shared my troubles with my Pranksters. Many stepped up and said that they, too, had experienced the same types of feelings. It was wonderful to feel less alone; less like a circus freak. I went onto an SSRI in my second trimester to try to combat the antepartum depression, but even with that on board I didn’t feel much better. Pregnancy, it seems, doesn’t agree with me.

What shattered me was after I shared my experiences about antepartum depression, the usual search terms that brought people to my blog (boring things, aunt becky sucks, mommy wants a vodka) were replaced by these: “antepartum depression,” “depression during pregnancy,” and “sadness in pregnancy.” Knowing that there were other women sitting on their own couches struggling the way I had broke my tiny black heart into a billion pieces.

The isolation I experienced was devastating and while I ended up walking away from the experience with only a little darkness on my back, I hate to imagine others out there suffering the way that I did. I’m thrilled that postpartum depression has gotten so much support. It should get all that it does and more. Women supporting other women is beautiful. I want antepartum depression, which they now call antenatal depression apparently, to get some of that support, too.

I hope that for the next pregnant woman who sits on her couch, crying and feeling as desperately alone as I did, I hope that she can find the light.

Because there is light. And it is so, so good

DX

by | Oct 12, 2018 | Asperger's Syndrome, Autism, Emotional Regulation, Faith, Fear, Feelings, Happiness, Hope, Love, Medical Mystery Tour, Self Loathing, Sensory Processing Disorder, Shame, Stress | 4 comments

DX

Even
zen
ranked
by
the
most
gentle,
retro,
revisionistic
rubrics,
despite
socially/
developmentally-
delayed
features;
I am an adult.

Full
disclosure:
at best,
I am
a
youngy-
old
woman.
No
longer
on
the
oldish-
side
of
young,
travel
with
ID
unnecessary;
no
one
cards
me.

Perhaps,
it’s
more
simple
and
I
am
just
another
old
adult,
certainly
past
the
typical
season
for
continental
shifts
in
identity.

Chronology
aside
however,
‘round
about
Thanks-
giving,
2016,
it
occurred
to me,
that
I
couldn’t
pass
as
“normal,”
even
to myself.

Even
though-

I.
Tried.
Everything.
I
knew
or
read
through
systematic
trials.
I
recorded
data,
analyzed
results,
and
controlled
indicated,
variables
to
adjust
test
method
parameters.

Thread
worn
as
baba’s
mop
rag,
I
wrung
every-
possible
suppositional
drop
from
these
experiments.

Perpetually,
I
tried
to pass
as
relentlessly,
and
intensely
I
was
labeled
INTENSE
(not in
a
good way,
mind
you).

Usually,
when
I
really
want
to
create
meaning
to
pattern
change
and
route
exodus
from
conditioned
parameters,
I
produce
results,
however
modest
or
slow
to norm.

NOT
SO
THIS.

A
random,
variable,
X
unelected,
undesired,
outs me
vulnerable.

Despite
therapy,
education,
career,
marriage,
blessed
children,
forever
wanted,
I
could
not
pass.

People
noticed.

Colleagues,
my husband,
our
children,
dear
friends
networked
consensus
as
viral
tumbler
that
confirmed
me
odd.

Random
reblog
notes
something
about
me
off,
and
a
little,
shiny
bit
that
bends
light
in
chaotic
angles
that
sort
‘a
squint
their
eyes
shut.

Not
much
was
said
to
me
directly,
and
yet,
I
could
often
sense
recoil
when
they
reached
for
their
sun
glasses
or
threw
shade.

Such
relational
signals
torqued
my
analysis
into
hyper-
drive.

To
know
why
transformed
want
into
need.

Security
risks
recalibrate
my
research.

Dire
internal,
tornado
warnings
broadcast
evacuation
drills
like
gubernatorial
orders:

Develop
safety
protocols
to
protect
children
from
collateral
damage.

The
nuclear
family
that
raised
me
ran
a
mill,
union-
workers
manned
24/7
shifts.

Its
conversion
process
fed
my
faulty
chips
directly
into
the
assembly
line’s
ravenous
maw
to
produce
pulp
prose
that
proves
there
is
something
wrong
with
me.
Like
an
errant
piece
of
code
that
breaks
the
smooth
build
of
family
unity,
my
bark
rejected
as
unusable
fibres
darken
the
pulp.

Such
systematic
feed
back
loops
identified
me
as
the
system
glitch.

Pop-up-
error-
messages
in
resplendent
bold,
ALL
caps
print
included
stop
signs
to
confirm
same
on
my
laptop.

Their
attempts
to
upgrade
my
operating
system
downloaded
constant
commands:

“If
you
get
your
ass
off
your
shoulders”

“If
you
try
hard
enough,”

and

“If,
and
only
if,
YOU
GET
OVER
YOURSELF
and
LET
IT
GO
ALREADY,
R
E
A
L
L
Y,
For
God’s
Sake,”

“Only
then
will
you
be
normal,
better
company,
and
easier
to
get along
with,”

and

“Clearly,
you
aren’t
REALLY
trying,
or,
at the
very
least,
not
trying
HARD
enough
to
get
it
right.

Over
time,
it
also
became
crystal
clear
that
I never
did.

Get
it
right.

Not
EVER.

Fast
forward:
to
now
and
my
own
family
God
gave:
Our
precious
homestead
no
longer
could
bear
X’s
collateral
damage.

I
wanted
for
my
children
more
of
a
mother
than
what
I
could
tender.

Despite
my
known,
know,
knowing,
knowledge,
discord
clashed
outcomes
I had
methodically
deleted
from
my
user
profile.

So,
I
got
me
a
good
psychiatrist,
who
asked
hard
questions.

I
loathed
my
deficits
more
fiercely
than
my
capacity
to
love
my
husband
beloved,
or
our
four,
precious,
innocent,
children.

Tuesday,
January
31,
2017,
two
days
shy
of
Punxsutawney
Phil,
Seer
of Sages,
eye-
spied
his
shadow
in forecast
of
six more
weeks
of
winter

Clinical,
empirical,
objective,
reproducible
data…

(_least my
blended
parents
all
believe
I
am
making
this
all up,
again-)

…identified
me
as
an
adult,
late
in life
dx’d
on
the
autism
spectrum.

Relief
drenches
rain
upon
an
arid
oasis,
splashes
reprieve,
and
puddles
tears.

I am
NOT
a
fucked-
up,
broken,
damaged.
not-good-enough,
shameful
excuse
of a
daughter,
woman,
wife,
or
mother.

There
is
a
reason
and
name
for
why
I
cluster
cognition
like
constellations
pattern
stars
across
the
night
sky.

Abject
release
falls
Niagara
baptism
and
washes
me
clean.

I
am
undone
amid
the
rabble
pile
deconstruction,
my
identity.

A new
frame
raises
my barn.

I got
a
lot
to
hammer
out.
Likely
may
whack
an
errant
thumb
along
the way.

Yet,
tonight
Thursday
September 4, 2018,
as I
lay me
down
to sleep,
and
pray
the
Lord,
my
soul
to
keep,
I
lift
prayers
of thanksgiving.

Our
Father,
who
art
in
heaven,
may
it
be
Your will
that
this
dx
allows
me
liberty
to
live
out
and
be
who
You
made
me.

This
changes
everything
I
ever
knew
anew.

I am
more
grateful
than
anything
I can
si-
mul-
tan
e-
ous-
ly-
list
in
metacognitive,
pull-
down-
menus-
streams
list,
or
smells
shout
colors.

I
am
by
Your
design
made;
I
dwell
in
possibilities.

Hallelujah!

The Demons In My Brain

by | Oct 9, 2018 | Abuse, Addiction, Addiction Recovery, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Anxiety Disorders, Child Sexual Abuse, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Coping With Losing A Friend, Estrangement, Family, Fear, Friend Loss, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Deal With A Self-Destructive Friend, How To Help A Loved One Who Self-Injures, Incarceration, Loss, Loved One in Prison, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Health, Murder, Self Injury, Self-Destructive Behavior, Self-Esteem, Shame, Successful Reintegration After Incarceration | 10 comments

I’m not usually one to do stuff like this. I’m the creeper lurking in the corner wanting to make friends but never approaching anyone.

But I have a story, and I need to let it out.

I was your typical Midwest teen in 2006. I was 15, went to the movies with friends, spent all the time I could in the band room or wandering around the pastures surrounding our house. Life was pretty good. Then came that fateful day in February.

My half-brother got arrested for murder. My dad and I always knew he’d end up in an institution somewhere. He wasn’t raised in a good home like me and he had a hard life; we thought he’d get some time for burglary or car theft.

But never this.

After he was arrested, all these issues from the few years when he lived with us surfaced again, all the abuse he put me through before mom came home from work. My school never did Sex Ed, I didn’t know. For years they were buried…he hadn’t lived with us for awhile, but when he was arrested, the memories came back.

But I never told anyone, until now.

I failed my first class ever that year. I just didn’t see the point in doing any work when spring came around and my brother was in court and here I am in school while the people around me are complaining about how the school food sucks or how some teacher took their cells. On the outside I was the same as always, but inside I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I made it through the year, when my mom yelled at me about my D grade, I thought about ending it that night. Just swallowing a bottle of pills, but I was able to get online and talk over all the stresses with my internet. Life was stabilizing again.

Then came the day I can never forget, and I still have trouble talking about.

June 11th 2006, 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning, I got a phone call from my best friend.

She told me that 3 students from our school and our Spanish teacher were lost in the ocean while swimming on a school trip to Costa Rica. The body of one of the students had been recovered already.

Sunday, they recovered the body of one of my closest friends. The third student was recovered Wednesday. Sr. C wasn’t recovered until Friday.

All I remember for those summer days was sitting in front of the computer refreshing news pages, hoping and praying that maybe Andrew, Jessica, and Sr. C were still alive, then it was Jessica and Sr. C, then just Sr. C. Finally it hit me. Four people I knew, went to school with, acted in plays with, sang in the choir with, played in the band with, learned from.

Dead.

They lived in Kansas and they drowned in the goddamned ocean in Costa Rica.

It was 2 days before my 16th birthday and instead of going to a movie with friends or something on a Friday night I was sitting in a hot crowded auditorium with some friends and Andrew’s brother, crying, wishing it was all just a dream.

Saturday, I didn’t get out of bed. Sunday, my mother prepared all my favorite food for dinner, a beautiful cake, my sister was there, I didn’t eat anything. I got a car. I didn’t care.

Later that week, I was on a bus full of high schoolers heading down to Texas for Andrew’s funeral. Everyone thought I was okay, I acted normal for my friends. But when they played Amazing Grace at his funeral I lost it. Amazing Grace? What’s so amazing about a 17 year old losing his life?

The freshest memory of Andrew is sitting with him on the floor of the band room on the last day of school listening to Good Riddance by Green Day. Any time I hear that song, even now, 4 years later, I cry.

My junior year in high school things were back to a semblance of normal, but band didn’t have Andrew. That spring I started cutting because I was so sick of being numb and the pain let me feel something. It wasn’t deep. There are no physical scars, but it allowed me to feel.

Then I went off to college, started smoking to get away from my crappy roommates, slept any free time I had. I didn’t have a social life outside of band and my dorm room.

Next year in college, I rented a house with a friend of mine, and I started cutting again. One night, I finally left scars. The next morning, I called the schools Mental Health Services, the next day I was talking to a therapist. I told her part of the story, how my brother was a murderer and my best friend drowned in the fucking ocean. How I almost scratched my arm raw on the first day of classes because I’m so nervous in new situations. How I’m always afraid that the worst is going to happen. She didn’t try and give me coping mechanisms or advice, she just gave me pills.

The pills made me feel nothing, I went through that semester feeling like a shadow. I tried to tell her that I didn’t want the pills, she said they were the best option for me. So I stopped. They weren’t helping the depression, the anxiety, or the suicidal thoughts. I was on my own again.

During spring break, my significant other of 4 months cheated on me with another friend. She had the dignity to tell me but it didn’t really help. I started drinking, and picked up smoking again. I failed all my classes.

I am not proud of who I was, or of what I did. I have regrets and I can’t forget those regrets.

But I am stronger now. I switched schools and I’m back to living with my parents. I don’t really see my friends much anymore, but I’m becoming who I need to be. I’m trying to learn to cope with my feelings in a good way instead of just bottling them up inside.

I’m 20 now, an age Andrew will never reach. I haven’t seen my brother in 4 years. I can’t trust anyone farther than I can throw them (read: at all) but I am becoming me. I’m changing the path of my life, some days are bad, some days are good, and some days I wish I could crawl under a rock. I just have to keep telling myself that everyday is worth it, that I am worth it, and that in the end I will be me.

And maybe in years to come when I look back at the last four years of my life I can smile and remember good things that happened instead of seeing this crater left by that summer.

Scared To Share

by | Sep 28, 2018 | Anxiety, Depression, Family, Fear, Feelings, Guilt, Inpatient Psychiatric Care, Loneliness, Mental Health, Poverty, Economic Struggles and Hardship, Shame, Stress | 31 comments

I have been fighting writers block for the last two weeks. I closed down my first two attempts at starting my own blog and started a new one but haven’t even posted anything to it yet. I need to figure out where to start – where to begin.

And I want to post here. And I want to comment on the posts I read that make me smile or think or emote. But I don’t. Or I haven’t been anyway. I’ve been lurking… reading a lot but not posting, that is.

The truth is I don’t feel good enough or interesting enough to join in the fun.

Let me clarify: I DO NOT believe I would be, or will be, judged for posting whatever is on my mind at any time. At least not here. I trust Aunt Becky and her merry band to keep us safe from the Mole People. I’m not scared of what might be said in response to what I write.

The truth is I am absolutely terrified of opening up the can of ghosts and demons inside of me. I’ve shared a little of it with my boyfriend, who is the closest thing I have to a best friend too, but even with him I’m scared to share any more.

Honestly, the sheer quantity or ghosts and demons I need to face and fight and get through is staggering me blind most days.

Partly, I am afraid of rejection. Rejection by my wonderful boyfriend, the “friends” in my life, people on Facebook, even here. And by rejection I don’t mean mole people hating for no reason.

I mean losing people. No one caring about me. Or people only caring enough to help a little bit and when the burden gets to be too much they stop trying to help anymore. I’m afraid of alienating people or hurting someone else. Part of me is terrified to even look at this shit myself, so how can I subject anyone else to it?

But at the same time, I know I need to face these things. These ghosts and demons haunting me – some for years and years. Some things as tiny as committing a social faux pas in elementary school all the way up to things as huge as trusting the wrong person with a secret – and losing my job after she shared that secret with my bosses.

The truth is I’ve been on a downward trend for years now. I thought I hit bottom when I went into the hospital last year (psych ward). I thought I hit bottom when I was fired six weeks later and the bills for the “coinsurance” portion of my hospital stay started showing up. I thought I was recovering from those and getting some shit together again. But no. I’m unemployed again. And barely keeping my house clean enough to keep CPS at bay. And relying on my boyfriend and my brother to cook and clean the kitchen. And relying on my parents to pay my bills.

When I start to hit bottom, I start to hide. I haven’t called a single one of my friends in months – granted none of them have called me, either – but two or three did reach out on Facebook to me and I failed to follow through on calling them back too. I’m hiding hard. Even with a fully anonymous email account attached to my as-yet unwritten blog.

I need to start doing something proactive to change.

So I’m reaching out into internet-land, sharing something just to prove to myself I can.

And I’m making a pledge to myself to do three things during the hours upon hours I spend every day with my laptop on my lap each day.

1) I will post SOMETHING either here or on my blog everyday. Something that is honest.

2) I will comment on someone else’s blog (at least 1) every day, just to show some love to people.

3) I will try to share something on Facebook with the people I know IRL.

Someone once told me that we don’t grow unless we do something that scares us. I’m scared shitless right now just typing this. I haven’t even thought about hitting the submit button yet. But I’m going to click that button when I’m done typing (and probably some editing, but if I’m too scared I might skip that step) because I need to put myself out there. I need to be honest for once in my life and share what’s going on inside my brain and body and life with SOMEONE or I’m pretty sure it’s gonna kill me one day.

So here I go off into the unknown. I’m gonna face some ghosts and some demons. And I’m going to share honestly and openly. And as Aunt Becky and her Pranksters so eloquently put it “Fuck the Haters”. I’m not doing this for them or for anyone else. I’m doing it for me.

And that’s scary as hell too…

PS. Thank you Aunt Becky for your post today about your upcoming procedure. Your honesty helped me to make this decision. You’re doing something scary to get better and so am I. You’re my hero.

(ed note: I’m honored and blushy and even crying a little. I love you. Fuck the haters. Most of us have been here before, too. Being brave is hard as fuck, but it’s also strengthening. I promise. Loves you. Be brave. Scare yourself. You can do it).

Anxiety Because Reasons

by | Sep 26, 2018 | Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Depression, Divorce, Feelings, Grief, Parent Loss, Stress | 3 comments

Tonight has been one of those nights…
Where you’ve held it together at work all day.
Didn’t eat a good lunch.
But kept your self-care appointments, involving hours at the doctor’s.
Then you get home…
See a video where children of color are treated poorly by law enforcement, reminding you of the profiling your family has experienced over the years because they look like a gang banger.
So, why not pick a fight over nothing with your ex (who happens to be your roommate), even after he made you dinner & handled the kids.
You scream, and cry, and rage. And he looks at you blankly, trying to understand why. And you respond: “It’s nothing”
Except it isn’t nothing – it’s deep down visceral fear…
That POC are getting treated unfairly.
That your white passing children will have even more privilege because of his German last name, light skin, and their anglicized Spanish.
“¿Mamá? Cómo se dice ‘pancake’ en español?”
“Crepé, preciosa or bañuelos, depends on who you’re speaking to” the Spanish words falling freely from your tongue but hearing them say the words reminds you of ‘los gringos’ and secretly you’re thinking ‘good’.
But even with that privilege, school is no longer a safe space for them.
Because moving to rural America, 2000 miles from family, felt right 4 years ago because little Amy was throwing gang signs in every picture at your daughter’s 9th birthday party.
And here in Middle America, a boy in her class, who talks bomb threats and knows every weapon class in both hunting and military capacity, is told “better be careful who hears you talking like that in high school Michael, you could get suspended.” But no one takes him seriously today and you think “thank goodness they’re going to different schools next year” when she tells you about this.
And your heart hurts for the world but most especially for your cousin who lost her dad and stepmom in the Texas shooting last year. Who, at 34, younger than you are, is going to be a grandmother, but she’s so grateful for life in the face of death, she has no anger towards her daughter, only love.
So you apologize for taking your pain out on your ex.
Take your pills and drink some water.
Put a comedy on the TV.
Cuddle your babies close, all of them.
The woman sized one, taller than you but with so much to learn yet. The scrappy ‘baby’, age 8, who thinks she’s also 13, who loves her sister’s hand-me-downs and stuffs her shirt with toilet paper to mimic the breasts she doesn’t yet have. The furry one, and the scalely ones.
And wait for the meds to kick in and shove the fear and worry back into the abyss of your heart.
Hoping that with the morning you’ll put on your crown and press on for the day. Fingers crossed that your coworkers won’t notice that your eyes are puffy again.
Yup, it’s been one of those nights.