Posted on by She Never Sleeps

the heaviness

I started smoking again. Not like the pack I buy when I’m drunk just to have one cigarette and then toss out the other 19 several months later, after I find them sitting at the bottom of a switched out purse. No. It’s been 3 days and I’m down to 6 left.

My 10 yo told me I smelled like my chain-smoking grandmother’s house today. I should probably stop. But I also lied. I told he and his younger brother that it was just one cigarette and that I was only smoking because –

9: Because of him.

I stopped midsentence, unprepared for the straightforward comment from my baby. He wasn’t wrong. Lost in the graveness of that moment, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. I felt myself breaking. I couldn’t. Not in front of my boys. Especially not over someone they had only known maybe a month or so. It was too late. My heart had sped up, my cheeks felt flush and heated, slowly water creased my lids yet somehow fell with a quickness and often.

“Yes”, I barely muttered. “Because of him.”

As I wept, I explained the way of adults. Of how love is not always enough. Sometimes people have problems they need to sort through before they can be with someone else. I told them how you weren’t a bad person, you were smart, funny – Jesus, I was all of a sudden your PR rep. I told them that we loved each other, yes. We did. We loved each other and it made us both sad to not be together but that now was not a good time.

Then I saw my youngest boy, sitting next to me, silent but bothered, face pained, his own eyes welling up. Listening, nodding his head to indicate he understood, even if maybe he didn’t completely. Too young to understand the intricacies of addiction, but not too young to know his mother was heartbroken.

“Oh, no. No, love. Don’t cry.” I pulled him to me, still small enough to curl himself as close as he could without it being awkward, he did just that. “Oh baby, momma loves you so much. Don’t you worry about me, I’m okay. I’m only crying right now because love is sad sometimes. But that’s okay. I’m gonna be okay. This is just one sad day. And it had to happen, my love. I want to be the best momma I can be and I can’t do that if I’m with someone who has extra big problems. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

It’s okay. I’m okay.

It’s okay. I’m okay.

I know that this pain is temporary. All lost love is temporary. In some rare cases, it may linger. A faint echo of a familiar lullaby yet the name still cannot be placed. I also know that you will join a handful of names which the wind will whisper to me, like clockwork as it usually does, right before a storm. I know I’ll be nostalgic, maybe even a sharp stab of bittersweet sentimentality to cause me to flinch. I know that it hurts to let you go, but holding on will do so much more harm. I have been so afraid to walk away for fear of the loss, but to keep you has already proved much more detrimental.

I have been weighted and sunken, a cheap facsimile on autopilot has taken my place. No one knows where to find me, not even myself.

So, I’ve chosen to go searching for where I may have gone. Unfortunately, this is a rescue mission of One. I only hope one day that maybe you come looking for me, too.

After you have found yourself.

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Miscarriage of Marriage

A year ago, I lost a baby.

Now, almost exactly to the date, I lost my marriage.

One could make the assumption the former might have something to do with the latter, and they’d be partially correct. But not even close to completely.

The longer I’ve dwelled on our past, as I cycle through the years we’ve spent together, I am seeing here and there, the spots we needed to nurture. The moments we had a chance to love and support one another, but instead shut down into silence and resentment. We should have… We could have… but all too cognizent of the We Didn’ts.

When I lost what would have been our third child, I did what I always do. I shrugged it off and continued on. Because that’s what Strong Women Do, right? We keep going. We shake that shit off. We straighten our backs, square our shoulders and with a head held high, just keep fucking moving. Time stand stills for no one, for no thing, especially the loss of life.

I kept the house. I minded our other two children, who were oblivious to the fact that they were swindled out of a third partner in crime. I had moments of severe heart-wrenching grief when the tears would just tumble out unannounced and unwanted and my sobbing became desperate gasps for air. They’d run to hug me causing my body to shake and convulse, for their love and concern was too much for my already broken heart to handle. Of course, this all happened when he wasn’t around. He was a hard-working man, already stressed about so many other things. There was no way he’d be able to handle this.

And the divide grew.  What was once a ravine, became a valley.

We were well on our way to becoming the Grand Canyon.

The disconnect had always been there. He equated love with sex. I equated sex with the previous abuse and long term wear of being a woman. I wanted kind words. Appreciation. Tenderness. He wanted physical touch. Blowjobs. Wild fucks.

I wanted to feel loved as a person.

He wanted to feel loved by being considered desirable.

And we never found a way to intersect. So, we drifted. And drifted. Until we were both two people who loved the idea of who we thought the other person was when we first met. But we obviously weren’t.

I felt he didn’t love me.

He felt I didn’t love him.

We both gave up.

Losing the baby was just the impetus towards the downward spiral. If there had been any chance for saving what was left our union, it was now gone. Yet, we went through the motions. After all, we had a new house needing attention. Two little boys we loved and were trying our best to parent without letting them see our lack of care for the other. I reverted to my failsafe shell of apathy. He started drinking more and staying out and away from our crap existence.

But eventually, it was me. I was the one who put the nail in the coffin. Self-preservation is cold. Heartless. Indifferent. Self-preservation is a wounded wild beast with only one directive.

Survive. It didn’t matter who got hurt or how, but survive. Get out, Get out alive and with what you have left.

I sit here writing this, the unfaithful wife. The woman who strayed. The disloyal. The selfish. The fork-tongued Jezebel. I blink away the wetness gathering at my eyes. Did I get out alive? Yes. Unscathed? No.

But what exactly do I have left.

The scraps and remains of something which was never real to begin with.

 

 

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Doubly So

It’s cold out.

I’m cold. Beyond the chilled tips of my fingers and numbing toes, as the remnants of a migraine subtly thuds at the back of my skull, I find my heart has iced, frosty chips affixed to the frozen ventricles, glistening like tiny gems in the darkness of my chest cavity.

There are no flaming bonfires of hope keeping it beating. The last flicker wasted to an ember turned to soot and minimal ash. It has all been swept away.

I am a tundra.

Nothing lives. It is quiet save for the howling of my sorrow’s wind.

I stand outside feeling the temperature drop. I used to love the change of seasons for precisely this reason. Nothing like the drop in weather and the fierce Autumnal gusts to make one feel Alive. To Feel, period.

I cannot feel my face. I cannot feel.

Maybe it is better this way.