From Heather O.

Some days I wake up and the sun is shining. As soon as my feet touch the floor, I know it’s going to be a great day. I have a bowl of cereal, enjoy the morning sun shining through the front windows and smile to myself. Happy. Content. Comfortable.

I haven’t had a day like that but maybe once or twice in my life.

Most days, the bear gets me.

I go to bed, curl up on rumbled sheets and stare at the blackness for hours, willing myself to sleep. I cry until my insides ache and finally fall asleep two hours before the children come to wake me up for breakfast. I stumble out of bed, rest my head on the half-painted bathroom wall and try to psyche myself into getting through the day. I wash bowls and fix cereal with bleary eyes, pour the milk with shaking hands and fall into my chair to stare at the wall. I put a movie on for the kids and put my forehead on the desk.

I wish I could shut my mind up for just a few moments but I never can and the walls are closing in again.

Rent is due in 3 days, no money coming in despite my best attempts at sales and marketing, power due, phone due, need groceries, $7 to my name, thinking about spending it on a pizza for the kids for lunch but I know I can’t go into the pizza place without having a panic attack, need to go buy bobbin thread so I can sew, hyperventilating thinking about going in to buy thread, kids want to go to the park and I can’t, what if there are lots of kids there and I lose one of mine in the crowd and can’t find them or some kid’s parent wants to talk to me, just a casual “hi how are you?” that I cannot handle.

Think about Andy, about Chris, about Colin, about Mama and how I have no idea where we’re even going to live if I can’t come up with the rent but I don’t want to live with Mama again and she doesn’t want us there either, know they love me but can’t cope with “where are you going, when will you be back, how much gas have you used, aren’t you due for an oil change, how many pairs of shoes have you made today, how’s the job hunt going, are you taking your medicine”, think I suck as a parent but when everyone can hear every thing I say it makes it ring twice as loud in my head, can’t give up the last shreds of independence that are mine.

I need to get a job, third shift, leave the kids with Mama all night and try to sleep in the mornings after I bring them home while they rot their brains watching TV all day, how can I get a job when I can’t even say the word “job” without shaking, going to throw up during the interview, if I can even get to the interview, terrified just thinking about going to a job and dealing with people I don’t know who don’t know me, what will they think of me, will they think I’m crazy. Am I crazy?

Turn on the sewing machine but can’t sew without thread, can’t buy thread without driving to the store, can’t drive to the store until the kids are dressed and presentable because if they go in the store with unbrushed hair then everyone will know I’m falling apart and they probably already noticed that I can’t breathe and my hands are shaking so bad that I just dropped the thread on the counter, what an idiot, how could I be so stupid, those people all wonder what the fuck is wrong with me.

Have to get orders finished but can’t concentrate, don’t care, not many left anyway since no one wants what I’ve got so I can put these off another day or three, packages stacked here that need to go out but have to wait until after 5 to go into the post office to weigh them so no one is there and don’t have to see or talk to anyone, back home to print postage out, drive back to the post office to drop them off in the privacy of my own car with the music on loud, loud enough that I can drown out the nagging voices in the back of my head for just a little while. Loser. Fat girl.

My kids think I’m okay and for them I am. They are all that I have and I summon every ounce of sanity I have to take them places and let them live a happy life. They hug me and tell me they love me and they are the only ones I believe. They aren’t old enough to hate me for my inadequacies yet. Give them time, give them time.

3 weeks until my appointment at mental health and god knows what they are going to think of me. It’s their job and they see lots of crazies so maybe I’m really quite normal, who knows? Haven’t talked to anyone who isn’t related to me in weeks, lost my only friend because I couldn’t shut up, nothing but online friends left and they’ve got to be sick of hearing me by now, supposed to hold it together online because otherwise my business could be damaged but really not much left there to damage so might as well fall apart everywhere.

I walk around every day and my family thinks I’m doing so much better, holding it together so well, oh she’s on the upward swing. Lie. Bullshit. Inside my head I’m screaming weeping hurting dying and maybe if I could cut the pain out it wouldn’t hurt so bad but I don’t think anything will help.

Can’t believe I’m going to post this on the internet where everyone can see it but maybe I’ve not been honest enough because I’m so afraid of what my mother-brother-in-law will think and maybe they just don’t matter and will think badly of me no matter how good I try to be and how much I tried to care and how much I loved Andy so what difference does it make what they think. Never tried to be my friend, never gave one bit of caring or understanding. Money isn’t love, isn’t caring, isn’t understanding, doesn’t make a house a home, doesn’t make someone love you who just doesn’t even though that would be nice. Never believed me and still won’t when I say that I did want to be a part of their family, I wanted them to think of me like a daughter, wanted them to care about me. Doesn’t matter now, doesn’t matter at all. Your son is free of me, free to wash his own dishes and play computer games all day if he wants and yell at my kids on his only day with them and be glad to be rid of my abrasive insanity that only wanted us to be happy and love each other. Wasted years.

Doesn’t do any good to love because who wants to kiss a crazy girl, give me vodka but don’t come by to talk to me even when I plead, let me bare my soul and then walk away, ignore me for years, treat me like the laundry-girl but now even less than that, not worthy for your affection, who is, who wants it, do you treat everyone like this or just the crazy girls who bug the shit out of you.

“For as long as our love shall endure” was the vow, not enduring, never had a chance, escape clause built in from the beginning, “I don’t love you” to absolve from the responsibility of a marriage, stand back and watch me crash and burn.

And it’s better this way, better this way.

Originally posted here.

(Written June 27, 2006)