Sideways Rain

Driving alone through sideways pouring rain, I realized something -- it's been 5 years. 5 years have gone by. 5 years of my life...consumed, subsumed.....ruined by worry. 5 years of my life taken from me. Or did I give them away? Did I hand them to you along with a pile of cash and misplaced trust.

I used to be happy. Almost, well, carefree..Until the night of..One day life was good, and the next, Super Bowl Sunday 2014, life took a turn. The phone call. The truth spilling out from the other end, the friend, your friend who saved your life came calling to tell me he'd found you foaming at the mouth and unconscious. That phone call changed everything. I remember the inhale. The shock. The "no, this can't be true." I remember the inhale— I haven't exhaled yet.

Every day, every minute I wear a heavy black cloak of worry, second guesses, struggles with trust, struggles with blame, sadness and fear dampen my joy, disable me from thinking about anything or anyone else but you. Keep me from smiling, dimming my light to the point of extinction…

A bomb blast blew me off the path I'd been traveling and deposited me onto another road....one next to the life that could have been. Sometimes I want to die. Sometimes, these days, in this life, I don't see what I have to contribute. Yes, I know it's unbalanced, and no woman of my breeding should think such a thing....but wanting to die, really wanting to end my life so that they all know how horribly wrong this all went….sometimes, sometimes makes complete sense. Yet every day I force my legs to slog through, and my eyes to recognize the beauty in nature, in my darling daughter's smile, my partner's love. I push myself to go out into the world and make sentences. I don't even want to take a shower.

Trying to exist in a world where nothing makes sense --- Where sons steal from their mothers, from their grandmothers, where sons lie and promise empty words. Where sons have an agenda and are not genuine. Call these what you will, symptoms of the disease of addiction, poor choices, brain damage, learning disabilities …..call them what you will, but for me, the strangeness, the unfamiliarity, the unexpected turn from a boy to a hardened stranger and the overpowering fear of what could become of him, is, most days, Just Too Much. I can't be anything to anyone. That divided loyalty, between you and you is the pull that will destroy me. Which will pull me to shreds. Which will draw blood.

This is the thing. The thing that comes when I am on a walk or being quiet out in the world. It is a punch to my gut. Big fist, big man's tight fist barreling straight into my center. I double over from the pain. Lose my air. Stop in my tracks. Walking down the sidewalk, shopping in the market, getting ready for bed. I am stopped in my tracks. And the questions hit me. How did this happen? Who are you? How's it going? Enjoying the therapy? Hypnosis? Neurofeedback? How are you faking your way through those? Faker. Faking your way through all of my gifts. All of my hopes. Faking your way through your life to squeeze the blood out of my bones. I’ve bled for you. I've got nothing left to give.