happy birthday

 

3 years 

1,095 days

28 years

10,220 days

It was directed by spite

Contemplated often

The grand finale ended in a rage of intoxication

Intoxication that would not pause 

It was my fairy tale nightmare peppered in with  meaningful moments 

but they were not enough

Not enough to hold him

For me I pushed them aside

& set them on the bedside table

Hoping they would dissipate 

The duration of those 1,095 days was a push & pull of sorts

Questioning at best with very loose boundaries

The endurance of 10,220 days was a lifetime

Blessings & abundance

Agony & deep rooted heartache

Present day, is impossible to live in

The twilight zone is my fortress

Past days are comfortable & all I know

Future days suffocate me with all the questioning regardless of the joy that beckons me

happy birthday dear one, you’re scarred for a lifetime as you live in your twilight zone of comfort

It’s up to you to release & live in the now….

Destruction

 

You let me go

You just let me go

You didn’t fight

You didn’t hang on

You just let me go

I Fought for you

I fought for you daily

Sometimes hourly

I never let go

You threw those daggers

I set those boundaries

As a means of protection

And you released all the arrows

They broke me

I turned around

Every damn time

Regardless of the physical and emotional pain

I continued to turn around

You slammed those doors

You broke it all to pieces

You left me to clean up the mess

At what point do you realize the mass destruction you left in your wake

As I float through the air…

Or when I crash to the ground…

Anywhere but here

 

Where are you? 

You’ve lost your place 

I can’t seem to find you anywhere 

Believe me, I’ve tried …

You are everywhere 

You’ve ghosted your place 

But I see you in everything 

Every turn, every moment, every nook and cranny, you’re hidden in it…

I’ve searched for a long time 

I’ve tried to come up with my own answers 

There are no resolutions 

You’ve just disappeared 

you resurface

In the daylight, in the nighttime 

In their faces, in their voices, in their mannerisms 

I see you everywhere…

I’m strangled with grief 

I want to flee you  

I want to escape every last bit of you  

But there are moments, gasps of air that seep out of me

 I can’t breathe, because you’ve held my breath, for so long

You’re anywhere but here…

joy…

Where did you go

How did I lose you

Now I am struggling to find you…

You ran off with my joy

Slowly but surely it was yours to misappropriate 

Little by little you siphoned it out of me

as quietly as the air is released from the sky 

joy…

You tried to stay 

But I let you be squashed 

I allowed your light to dim

& now it is a struggle to reignite 

Your deeds battered & bruised me

Your negligence left me abandoned

Your withholding of love ripped me to pieces

Like paper thrown in the trash

joy…

You were contagious

People were drawn to me because of you

My soul lit up because of the way you moved through me…

I want it back

It dissipated right through your fingers and mine

You could only hold it for so long

It wasn’t yours to keep but you kept taking

joy…

You broke into pieces 

You refused to see the light again

I shielded you from the blows by way of a masquerade 

Whose eyes were open would only be blinded by that pain

That pain you inflicted will not leave me

It is carved into my bones so deeply 

Your grasp drained the joy completely out of my soul yet your hands suffocate me at best

The power will always be yours

Until I find my joy again 

 

 

Fairy tale nightmare

 

Why can’t I let go of him? 

He was my identity 

He was my happiness 

He controlled my emotions, he still does in a sense.  Meaning if he is upset or mad or distanced himself from me it hurts.  Bc I feel like I should be owed it all bc I am doing it all & how dare he be mad at me.   

His emotions were mine, I was happy. He was happy. I was sad if he was sad. His moods dictated my moods.  

I loved him unconditionally for years upon years regardless of what he put me through.  I had to beg for his love & fight my way through it to pull him back in.  To convince him that I was worthy, that I am worth the fight.  

It’s familiar to me 

If I completely severe ties, I won’t survive it 

I will fall apart without him being present in my life somehow 

It’s all I’ve known my entire life & to let it go, It’s like death, but he’s still living. 

He’s still living. There was no death, but there’s such grief, and that sliver of hope that’s projected is in the future, I look back in the review mirror, and I see the destruction, the total eruption of everything.  But rather than let go of the past and the future and live in the present I hang onto what is not here right now, in the moment, in the living. 

But that sliver of hope still dangles in front of me like a carrot for the rabbit at the end of the race instead of moving slowly like a turtle,  I run towards that sliver of hope.  

I keep moving in constant motion & eventually I will get the prize at the end and all the effort, begging, pleading loyalty, everything that I walked through,  everything that I wanted, everything that I asked for, everything that I thought was owed to me because I was faithful because I was loyal,  because I continued to fight the good fight and I walked alongside of him. I supported him I stayed with him, was all worth it

& if I choose not to chase after that sliver of hope then all of that was for nothing.  I failed.  I failed myself, I failed my children, I failed tony.  

I won’t be okay until the end scene of the script transcribes happily ever after

Which is out of reach and far fetched

It’s a fairy tale not reality

I am living a fairy tale nightmare…

Jealously

 

Sometimes it’s hard for me to speak out loud how I’m feeling. Because I feel that I’m being self-righteous and that I shouldn’t feel the way that I do. And I know that there is 1 million other women that probably feel the same way that I do. But yesterday was just a challenge, Mother’s Day, my 26th year as a mother. While I was showered with love unconditionally from my older kids & I struggled with my younger kids that day, overall it was a decent day.

But the fact that the one thing that I want more than anything is the recognition from Tony. Why is that? Maybe because we started this journey together. Maybe because I carried so much of it myself for so long. Maybe because I want him to see how hard I’ve worked & how much I’ve tried & how exhausted I am. I want him to appreciate me, I want him to be grateful for me, I want him to tell me how thankful he is that I have taken over and stepped up & raised his kids to the best of my ability while he has just sat on the sidelines. 

I want to be recognized as the strong, independent woman that was born out of the chaos & destruction. I want to be recognized as someone that he admires & thinks highly of because I have literally raised his kids. I want to give him some of the credit, but at the same time I don’t. I feel like I shaped them into who they are today & that might seem incredibly selfish & self righteous, he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there for the majority of their lives. It’s not fair that he gets to sit on the sidelines and heal while I continue to suffer.

Yes, he’s probably in his own kind of hell but for me so am I.  I feel like the flames are swarming up around me & they’re suffocating me. I come up for air, but only because I have to. Only because I have to put one foot in front of the other only because I have no choice then to keep moving & keep pressing. But so much of me wants to just be swallowed by the flames & just be done. I want to be done with it all.

I fight with this agony daily. When I wake up I have a split second of peace & then I sit down on the toilet & I realize I am in the same nightmare. No matter how much I try to be okay with it & to be grateful for what I have, I am consistently swallowed by what I don’t have, what I lost.  What I lost was Tony & to try to figure out why that matters so much is incomprehensible , why is he so important to me? He should be the least of my thoughts & my energy. But he’s not….

Exhaustion

 

The point of no return, literally 

The knowledge of knowing that whatever you do does not matter 

The angst of understanding that this is the way of life right now 

The draining capability that pulls you in so many different directions 

The plates that are thrown at you directly, you balance them, but you feel as if they’re spinning out of control 

The invisibility that you feel every day, no matter how loved you are 

The tight rope that you walk to make it appear that you are sane

The brokenness that you feel in your bones every time you slow down

The heaviness of it all slowly drains you of any energy that you thought you had left 

Tomorrow, you wake up and do it again 

For how long you’re not sure…