And then I realized: you don't have to understand/dissect/analyze/justify/deny/accept/conquer everything you're feeling. You just have to feel it. And it's okay. And one day you'll feel something else. This is important. This is life. This is love. This is temporary.

Good Days

There will be more good days.  Today was a good day.

This is my mantra. I keep repeating it over and over.  I feel like I'm lying to myself, but it is a true statement.  I wish I could get behind it with my heart.

But fear and fatigue are what keep my heart in a weary place.  Dad's appointment was great, despite the scare.  Ada's appointment was great, and the first step to treating her chronic lung issues.  Despite the ongoing battle.  Everything today had a positive outcome.  But I'm still so tired. And I catch myself feeling sorry for myself that all of the good things anymore have to be preceded by struggle. But I  don't want to feel that way, because, as I keep reminding myself, at least I'm still having GOOD. No matter what it takes to get there.  I would struggle for the rest of my life to just know there would be good at the end. So why can't I stop feeling so dark? I still have good in me and around me.

There will be more good days, and today was a good day.

I'll be a friend and a fuck-up and everything

I had a wonderful day planned today with my best friend.  Quality time with someone I adore to relax and forget about all the things stressing me out and weighing me down right now.  And then Ada got sick and I have to spend the day exhausted and packing up boxes and feeling sorry for myself.  Also feeling like a loser for feeling resentful toward my sick child.  Who does that? Me.  I just needed something today. To forget that I'm moving in 5 days and have a whole house to pack up.  To forget that parenting sucks as it is right now, and I'm terrified how much worse this transition into a new home is going to make it.  To forget that my anxiety is at a peak right now and giving me insomnia again and that I'm only narrowly avoiding full on depression through distractions and alcohol. And to forget that I still can't quite make sense of my life after all the events of this year.

So I don't get to forget today.  Instead I get to continue cutting ties with my home and feeling like I can't make one decision where I don't end up letting someone down. Sometimes I do the wrong things and I know it, but do it anyways.  But most of the time I'm really trying to do the right thing, and the results still somehow leave me feeling like a failure.  That's how I feel today.  Just like a total fucking failure at everything.  I want to be everything everyone needs me to be, I really do.  More than anything. But I'm just so fucking tired.  Tired to the bone. I am not graceful at meeting the needs of the people I love, nor am I graceful at meeting the needs of myself. I'm always stumbling my way through my relationships and obligations, so stuck inside my head about whether I'm doing it well enough, that I think I'm missing out on a lot of their rewards.

I just can't explain the exhaustion I feel every day lately.  I think even if I were sleeping 10 hours each night I would still feel this way.  Because only a fraction of it is physical.  I'm so hoping after this move is over and we start settling in, the new year will bring some breathing room.  I've  felt scattered before,  but I've never in my life been so keenly aware of the desperate need to get my shit together, but be so lost as to where to start and how to get there.

I know I've drawn myself far inside
Where you can't  reach anymore
I watch you from the safety of myself

I think you feel the expanding distance
But I don't know if you don't say
I'll rest my head against the cooling glass

I wanted everything to fix itself
Because I became too tired
It was easier just to shatter instead

The moments when I find myself feeling
Are the heaviest ones to bear
Their weight radiating tiny fractures

I've already compromised and been compromised
The blame is internally anchored
I just want to know there is hope for me

There is no title for this

So what, you wanted to see what you are made of
So what, you wanted to know just who you are
You weren't a complete stranger to yourself
So you should have known
Should have known you weren't the kind
Should have known your void runs deep
Should have known you couldn't do it
Couldn't leave your heart out of this
The first time you realized that there were choices
Just lying around in wait
For you to make for you to notice for you to take 
For you
Dizzy and drunk on wasted years
Angry with the course
Distraction and unfamiliarity
To make you forget yourself
But you are nothing if not passionate
You are nothing without fantasy
You are everything you are trying to conquer
For fear and desperation
But don't forget
You still exist
Outside of definitions
So what, you found a trove of complexities
So what, you found new endings and beginnings inside
You'll grapple with your completion forever
This you've always known

Too Much

I've spent the weeks since my dad's diagnosis vacillating between bathroom lock-in cries or drinking way too much at night before unloading spontaneous,  drunken, emotional torrential outpouring on my poor husband, and trying desperately to stifle the shocking rage that can suddenly overtake me in less than 30 seconds lately.  You know, so I don't end up unemployed and unable to raise my daughter from a prison cell.  The anger - white hot, constantly simmering, unshakeable anger.  I havent felt this since I lost my mind after giving birth.  And I'm not sleeping again.  I recognize these red flags. I remember them because I'm not all that far removed from the first time depression swallowed me up.  And I know I have to start thinking about getting help with it again.  This year has just defeated me already. I keep waving the white flag - I'm not too proud - but it doesn't give a flying fuck.

I had to stay home from work today to take care of my sick toddler.  And just as I was really feeling like I was rocking this mom thing, I find out that as always, my absence was treated as an apocolypse and simply nobody could be spared for 2 hours to fill in for me.  So, I apologize that I have a sick child I'd like to care for (being her mom and all) because she can't go to grandma's since grandma is busy taking care of my cancer ridden father. Congratulations on fucking me over more than life already has this year.  I hope you sleep well enough for the both of us tonight. Because I don't.  And I don't even have the "luxury" of taking a guilt free day off to care for my child, let alone a day to myself to just be able to feel what I feel right now without an audience.  No wonder I can't process anything right now.  I have no time alone.

I'm running away with my thoughts now.  Basically I just give up right now.  Life is testing me this year and I am scared and bitter and alone and worried about when things will ever be good again.  I am tired and need time to breathe and rest my heart and brain.  But the universe doesn't want to give me that right now.

2014

When I woke up at 5:30 this morning I heard birds chirping already. It made me mad. My immediate and very first thought of the day was,  "Why are they chirping? Don't they know?"  Of course they don't know.

The birds don't know that I started 2014 with a surprise and unwanted pregnancy. Or that a month later when I was finally getting used to the idea, my ultrasound showed no flicker of a heartbeat and I had to have a doctor scrape out the embryo my body was too stupid to recognize had died.

The birds don't know my favorite Great Aunt was just two months ago put away in a nursing home for the rest of her life with Alzheimers so bad she doesn't know who is alive or dead anymore.

The birds don't know my dad was just yesterday diagnosed with cancer and that I think I might suffocate to death just thinking that I might lose him already.

No, they don't know. They don't know it's 2014 and they don't know how much their eagerness to greet the day makes me baffled and bitter. They don't know I'm jealous of them for their wings.