Entanglement

Self care has never been my forte. Even when I was the most fit I’ve ever been, I was still drinking a bottle of wine and smoking half a pack of cigarettes every night for dinner. I sure did look good though.  I look at myself now and wish I could go back to 35 year old me and slap some sense into her. I wish I had taken better care of myself. All of myself—the mental, emotional and spiritual as well as the physical. Especially the physical. Everything hurts now.  I don’t know what I expected, growing older. But I didn’t expect to still be struggling with my weight or my mental health. Small, ordinary things that most people do on autopilot, like showering for instance, is such a fucking Herculean task for me. I spend half the day psyching myself up for it, and it’s not like I don’t want to be clean, it’s just…hard now.  Lots of things are harder now: sleeping, eating, laundry, cleaning, cooking, caring…existing, some days. Gratitude is the lifeline that I cling to becaus...

When I was eight months pregnant with our first child, my then husband did something so horrifying, it shattered every illusion I held about him, confirming with utter clarity who he really was. I was devastated. We had two cats at the time and they began howling at one another from the next room. My drunken husband went charging in. There was a commotion. When he came back he said, “I broke Imsa’s leg trying to separate them.” Imsa was my cat, a solid white, gentle, ethereal beauty I’d had since she was a kitten.  My mind conjured a vision of a crying child, an intolerant drunk jerking or shaking her in anger and the dire consequences left in his wake. I knew in that moment, with every motherly instinct that I possessed, he could never be allowed to be alone with my child. My heart raced, nausea roiled in my gut and I wept. Wept for the daughter in my womb and for the sweetest cat in the world who didn’t deserve to be in pain. As a victim of domestic violence from a previous relat...

Imagine it’s your sole mission after a tragic accident, caused by you and your own stupidity, to stop paying child support and have your ex wife served court documents to that end, from your hospital bed.  Imagine being such a self-centered, selfish prick that you don’t bother having a civilized discussion with her about next moves, or maybe reducing support for a time. No. You just go for the jugular, the kill shot, the blindside, knowing she has zero chance of taking care of the kids without your financial support that was mandated by the divorce decree you signed just a year prior.  One year. That’s all I got after twelve years of marriage, of being a stay at home mom, of staying by his side through all of his lies, gaslighting and narcissistic behavior. This man went from the Captain’s seat flying commercial airplanes, to stocking shelves at the local Chevy dealership. His boss wouldn’t even let him drive the service vehicle to deliver parts. I went to work driving a schoo...

I had a drinking problem for years. It was always five o’clock somewhere and I craved the feeling of a good buzz. I drank to socialize. I drank to fuck. I drank to escape. I drank to stay skinny. I drank to be able to stand my own presence. I drank to embrace oblivion.  I slipped the bounds of my reality too many times, innumerable times, and made new ones that I can’t even remember.  Being with someone who was equally fond of the drink was like needing oxygen to breathe, but it’s also like looking in a broken mirror—you still recognize your reflection in all the cracks and broken pieces, but instead of getting a new mirror, you just stop looking at yourself.  I’ve had thirteen years now, of sober clarity, to remember and to reflect. To sit alone in silence, to face my worst demons, darkest fears, deepest pain, biggest insecurities and all my defects of character. To own my mistakes and feel remorse and regret and an ocean of fathomless sadness. To find my true self and t...

I stayed. I stayed despite the rampant rumors floating around about your sexual preferences.  I stayed. I stayed and was complicit many times, in making sure your breath didn’t smell like alcohol when the bottle to throttle rule had been bent and broken.  I stayed. I stayed when you didn’t come home, but instead got drunk with your friend and totaled a brand new sports car when I was home pregnant with our child.  I stayed. I stayed after I found lipstick on your uniform and on your underwear and you tried to gaslight me about it.  I stayed. I stayed when our newborn was barely five weeks old and you admitted having an affair. You boasted to my mom and dad that I would never leave you. And I didn’t.  I stayed.  I stayed while you and your mom fat shamed me instead of supporting me during the worst depression of my life.  I stayed. I stayed after, on vacation, you called me an ugly, fat, clueless, rock star want-to-be in front of our children.  I s...

Someone who I admire greatly said:  “I told you about the darkness not because I wanted your pity, but because I needed it to exist somewhere outside of me.”  My soul claimed those words and embraced them like a lover.  Writing gave me, gives me, a place to put my own darknesses. It doesn’t matter to me if anyone ever reads me. This I do for me. For my sanity.  Maybe someday, someone will claim my words and hold them close because they, too, have cracked themselves open to evict the demons that reside inside.  It is a brave thing to leash the thing you’ve sat in silence with for so long. Years and years of sadness, trauma, fear and heartache, layer after layer, I had to peel my own darkness off like a second skin. I mourned, I grieved through the pain. And I wrote.   I’m still picking at the pieces that remain.