Down with the Shine

I get took for a ride, every time.

Though we've searched, we've found no fountain of youth...

So here I sit, aging, minute by minute. Fighting a morbid preoccupation with the tantalizing promise of rest that death holds. Harboring guilt for bringing four lives into a world fraught with disappointment and let down. Praying that they will find themselves at 32, surrounded by love and light and happiness, and somehow escaping this vicious legacy of despair that I might leave them.

Today, I will overcome the hopelessness that mangles my will. I will force my feet into a forward shuffle, however slight, in the direction of the life I want. There's gotta be light at the end of the tunnel. I just can't see myself ending up like all of the local meth-heads who were exchanging hugs with their favorite cops the other day at the community center. I want to be full of light and joy and giving. With enough spilling out of me that I make a day brighter without even trying. I hate the thought that I might have to rely on the stupid drugs I have weaned myself off of to do that. I feel like the drugs just mute the natural light. If only somehow I could find a way to turn the light on without the chemicals. I know it's just a matter of circumstance, and ultimately, it's a matter of ingratitude. If I could really grasp how much I have and how everything will be ok, even when it doesn't feel like it, I could keep the light burning. But at the moment, I quell my hopelessness with only the knowledge that eviction and repossession won't kill us, we will survive, and somehow, I wish we wouldn't. It's so silly. I love life, I don't really want to be done with it. But I am so very very tired. And at this point I don't see a rest stop in the near future. Psychologically, emotionally, I feel like I did when I was in the middle of my physical agility test, and even though I was spinning with fatigue, trying to hold back the vomit because I couldn't take the time to throw up, and every inch of my body was screaming with pain. That is where my mind and my heart are at. Understanding that the test would have been easier if I had been in better shape, I look at how I can work out my insides to be fit enough to handle the perpetual agility test that is my life. It just pisses me off, you know. I shouldn't have to shoulder all of this shit alone. I just want to be able to laugh at the ridiculousness that is my world with somebody. To wiggle my toes under his leg on the couch while I do my homework. To listen to somebody's stories of growing up, going to work every day, what kind of a crap he took that morning. To put my head on a chest and hear a heartbeat, strong and even. And alive.

We had company for dinner last night, great people, with great kids. We had a good time, especially after I banished MacKenzie and Natalee to their rooms after 37 warnings to stop beating the crap out of each other. We played Gin Rummy. I think that's what we played. Me and cards don't go very far together, so it was a monumental thing just getting me into a card game, especially since the only deck of cards we could find were some insanely oversized ones, about 5x7" to be precise, which added a sense of absurdity to the whole thing. But it was fun. I had a good time. But I was sad. Sad and a little bit angry that I didn't have the wherewithall to get through a good evening with all of my kids and some company. We couldn't just be a nice, laid back, comfortable family for just a couple hours. I fantasize about quality family time. Outings, vacations, just me and the girls, but the reality is always so brutal. And it hurts. I just feel so flipping outnumbered!

I still blame Walt Disney. Maybe that's the reason it's so hard to wrap my brain around going to disneyworld to blow about three years worth of income over a week. Frickin' disney ruined my life. Disney and Bill Gothard, Marble, every preacher that stood in front of me telling me what a princess, a gem I was, and how I deserved to be treasured, how god would reward the desires of my heart, how I could transform from the scullery maid of my family into the queen of a small country with a beautiful, strong and amazing husband. That that is what I deserved, what I would get. I believed it. I bought it. And here I sit, a frumpy 32 year old with an ex husband who sported a fondness for barnyard animals, a gazillion dollars of debt, a life I cannot afford emotionally, financially, psychologically, physically, mentally, religiously, professionally, academically, or any other -ally you can name. And somehow I am supposed to raise 4 girls. Beautiful, smart, talented girls, believing the same lies. That there is a prince out there. That they can be anything they want. That they can do anything they want. That they are royalty. And I lie awake at night, in terror for the inevitable future I see for them. One of betrayal and emptiness and loss. Dammit. I am so freakin' jaded. I really think I need a break. Like a real break. For awhile. But then they are gone, the girls, and after a day or two I miss them like crazy and I start to worry that somebody else is screwing them up worse than I am. Ha. Right. I am losing it. Jeez. Is summer too far away? Can I make it until June, assuming that David even plans on having them, in Arizona, or wherever he will be? Married to the poor unsuspecting girl he is engaged to, or putting it off since he still owes thousands of dollars of child support...

Maybe it's just that I woke up again with a hurting head, back, stomach. Everything. Maybe I should restart the damn prozac. Maybe I need to be functional for my kids. Not that I am not. My grades are great, I haven't missed a minute of work, to the contrary, I have gone above and beyond... I cook dinner every night, and commandeer through the chores. But I still feel like such a failure. What the hell? Where are you now, Walt Disney, when I need a pat on the back? Where's my award for making it through another day, another week, another year, and we're all still alive and kicking. Sometimes literally.

So tired. It's too early in the day to be this exhausted.