Juxtaposition

 I  am tired.  

 I cannot sleep because I am too awake with dread.

I  am hungry . 

I  am controlled by cravings that are not real hunger but attempts at filling a void.

I  am not happy. 

 I know things could be a million times worse.

I  wake up every day hoping something monumental will occur. It never does.

I  wake up every day hoping something monumental does not occur . It doesn't.

I  look at myself with disdain.

I  look at myself and think I'm not too bad.

I  ask a greater power every night to remove the black thoughts from my mind.

I  ask a greater power every night to send me a sign I  should keep going.

Neither is answered.

I remain somewhere in between.

Final Dissolution

                            August 26th, 2026. I  had it circled on my virtual calendar for months. It was the day I  had waited for, a day that would make me feel lighter, feel relief, feel free. Imagine my surprise when that was not at all how I felt. Those things are not at all how it feels to sever a marriage of thirty one years. Honestly I am at a loss for how to accurately describe the feeling. I  have been married more than half my life, and I  am left to navigate the rest of it as an individual , no partner , no landing place. That looms very dark for me. Today, my marriage was reduced to four squares on a zoom call with a judge who never met either of us. The judge never saw the long life we had together , before it came to this. He was not present in three delivery rooms, or at hospital bedsides, or graduation venues, or countless birthday parties. He never witnessed the struggles of the last decade, of both of us trying to figure out why we could not be happy with each other. He wasn't at the few failed therapy attempts, or in the parking lots we met in late at night to try and see if anything was left for us to salvage. He doesn't know that one of us will return home this afternoon to an empty house full of memories that are imbedded in the walls, floors and ceilings. He doesn't know that the shelter of that family home occassionally feels like an anchor tied to the past.  He doesn't know that the other one of us is going home to a completely different life, with a completely different woman (and I struggle calling her a woman because she has yet to have her frontal lobe fully formed) and a different dog - but his life is basically the same. Sans the woman he just could not choose over his vices. The vices that eventually destroyed us. No, this judge knows none of that. he just sits and listens to me answer a series of questions that my attorney asks ,acknowledges that I  am in agreement to end the marriage and signs a document deeming thirty one years "null and void".  Null and void. I guess that actually sums up how I feel... those are the words I was looking for earlier. So, even though this journey began two years ago, and I could not wait for today I am left sad and, like my marriage, irrevocably broken.

   

Just in Time

                    I  have taken a rather long hiatus from writing. Not because I  have nothing to say , in fact, quite the opposite. I  have so much in me, spilling out at all times. It just isn't coming out on to paper - its coming out in the form of tears, in the form of over eating, in the form of starving myself, in the form of sleep aids and in the form of anger. To write what I have been feeling for the last 15 months would startle the reader , because it is so raw. So uncharacteristic of all the things everyone believes that I am, that I  shoud be. 

                   I  never understood survival mode until now. 54 years in to this existence and I am in full on survival mode. I do not know what is next, and I  have ALWAYS known what was next.  I wake up everyday (not wanting to) and move. I  am robotic in my routines, but I get them done. I contemplate hiding, having a breakdown - but I stop myself. I keep going , even though my life is really sad and my future probably even worse. Worst of all, the person I have known for 37 years, I no longer know. Did I  ever? That is quite the haunting question when you've built your life , made your choices and sacrifices for another person.  If I spend too long analyzing the last three decades, I fall deeper into the abyss. I know what happened, I know how reactions created situations, and I know why it fell apart. I have spent the better part of a year and a half blaming myself, being guilt ridden and trying to be the "bigger person" . I am here to tell you that this "bigger person" is exhausted. Surviving is exhausting.And exhaustion can really alter one's mind. But then somehting happens , something peeks through the cloudiness of your day- to add a slight bit of sun, a glimmer . For me it was this:

                      On December 31st , this past year, I was home alone. My kids are scattered , I have no significant other, so I was watching tv (half heartedly) and for the first time in my life I thought about what it would be like to just not be here. And I could not find a negative to this idea. My job can be done by anyone, my kids are adults and succeeding, why I am I even bothering with the daily struggle of trying to be normal, trying to be happy , when inside I was hollow?  In the midst of these very intrusive thoughts, I got a message. A message I assumed was a Happy New Year wish from someone , albeit early , so they could cross me off their best wishes list for the night.  Turns out,  it was what ended up making me realize there's bigger things than my despair, there's better things ahead. It was a picture of my sweet daughter in law's positive pregnancy test. A faint line , but a line. I  immediately texted her asking if it was real. She assured me it was, and it was very early on, but it was real. From that moment on , the thought of not being here was unbearable. I want to see my baby's baby.  I want a quasi second shot at all of that , of course with the boundaries set by my child and his wife. That faint line was , unknowingly by my family and friends,  my life line.

                     So my writing took a hiatus this past year to spare my friends and family the scary thoughts and feelings that an old woman has in the midst of a very ,very shitty divorce. But I now feel a little more like my old self, and think I will have a lot of positive and exciting experiences to put on paper over the next several months , thanks to a baby who is not even here yet , a baby boy who is going to have the BEST grandma ever. A baby who showed up just in time.