As I write this, my hands are shaking. I may be nervous, because that's my way. It's my way or the highway. It's my way or no way. It's my way because there isn't any other way.
So many options for so many people, but this is my only one... to sit and wait it out. "The panic won't last forever," I tell myself. I tell myself to remember to breathe as I am squinting so hard from the nerves that I cannot see clearly. I've been laying on this couch for weeks. My children must think I'm crazy and maybe they are right. I can't be that mom on TV that takes their kids to parks and has play dates and home schools. I am too tired. My kids don't need that. They need very little actually.
I guess I should start at the beginning with a short version of my history. I was born of a pastor's wife and a dictator father. I had many siblings, but never really had a close sister or brother. I was smarter than my siblings, but had a free spirit. Just enough spirit to bring a frown to my parent's faces and the shake of their fingers. I was trouble to them...never a child. They never loved me. I was always someone that constantly sinned. My father told me to go to the devil and he never looked at me again. I grew older and lost them both to cancer. When they died, I was the only one there with them. No one else cared anymore. I was the last one left, their most rebellious daughter. I held both of their hands as they slipped away into the night. Neither died painfully and both with the dignity that Fentanyl provides. I was only 20 when they left. My siblings scattered off into the country an spread out far from each other. I stayed here.
I have three kids. Two are sleeping in the room next to me currently sleeping to Matlock in the background on their television. The first child is nowhere or anywhere. I wouldn't really know. She was taken from me right away because I had nothing. I have this framed picture of her when she was born on my mantle and in my purse. Sometimes I still feel her moving in my belly. I remember what it was like to feel her responding to my diet or movement. I love Mexican food. She obviously hated it, so she would thrash around in my belly pissed off at every bite I took.
I have lived single for decades, but I have a really loyal friend that sleeps on the lazyboy chair in the living room. She is a lesbian and I know she is in love with me, but I can't tell her there is no chance. She means too much to me, so we both pace around, wishing for something better. I can't leave the house, I'm too scared of what's out there. She can't leave because she's afraid of what's out there. The world is so cruel and scary and we are comfortable with each other.
I have asked for help with the groceries many times from my church. Twice my pastor has tried to make me pay with my body for the help and I have always declined. Instead I would volunteer for the worst jobs at the church. I'm a proud woman, but not at the expense of two empty bellies.
I have kept my faith. I have stood strong. I did everything I was supposed to do to atone for my sins and yet, my eldest still found it best to go to sleep on a rope. She called me and said "Hey" on my voicemail. I was sleeping. I was always sleeping. She put herself into the sky without real warning. I sat in the front row of her funeral and realized that god wasn't there anymore. Maybe never was. God may not be. If He is, He has turned the weak away.
All of my prayers. All of my tears. Gone. Up into nowhere to no one. I am alone and there is no help coming from anyone.
Sing.
Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z
