When words are not enough...

Sometimes, you lose things. Things like your glasses, your cell phone, the remote control...whatever.
Those are small things. Maybe at the time losing something like your house keys or your smart phone feel like you've lost everything... but the feeling passes.

Then, other times, you lose big things.... Things like your parents, your friends, and, god forbid...your children.

Sometimes you don't lose them to death either, sometimes to drugs, mental illness... the point is, the person you love is gone...and a shell remains. Sometimes they come back, others.... you have to face that things just are as they are... and keep hope. Goddamn it, ALWAYS FUCKING KEEP HOPE. It's all you have.

I've lost all those things. Every. Last. One.

My oldest son is struggling and I don't know who he is anymore. My mother is dead. Six months ago I cleaned house and got rid of a few 'friends' who weren't.... I lose my keys all the time. So often I need to move somewhere where I don't have to lock the fucking doors. I lose my cell phone (when I'm talking on it), my glasses (even though I wear contacts) I've lost my way.... in more ways than one - sudden forced career changes, I've had to move quickly due to a series of unfortunate events... But that's not even the end of the world.

The end is when you lose hope...

Hope is a weird little fucker. Sometimes all it is is a deep breath when you wake up and say, "It's gonna be ok." Sometimes it means having something to look forward to... a new job, a trip...anything. But still...

What happens when you lose yourself? When you wake up one day after 37 year of being someone's mother/sister/friend/daughter/wife/girlfriend that you don't know who the hell you really are? When you can't tell where mom stops and wife begins? When you realize you've become such a damned enabler (enabler - definition - the person who co-signs your bullshit) that your own garden has weeded over so badly that you don't know if those things are roses or daisies???

Then pitty sets in. That little asshole... The 'why me' bullshit. Then you go from enabler to victim...mostly of your own circumstances...(see enabler above) Every thing that goes wrong is someone/something else's fault. Instead of getting up and brushing some shit off, you wallow. I hate that word...wallow. It is as ugly as it sounds, Wallow. Ugh.

People notice the change long before you do, but often don't act because they have no idea what to do. I don't. I hate human emotion. Some people like to be touched, others don't, I never know how to react, so I end up sitting there like a huge fucking asshole just nodding my head HOPING the ugly scene ends soon. I don't mean to be that way, I just am.

At this point, as I approach my 37th year... I am at a crossroads. I have lost everything. Well, almost everything...80% of anything that ever meant anything to me (thanks to the 10% that are still here..I think I'll keep ya) I'm struggling still with the enormous amount of loss I've suffered (suffering) from the last 6 years, the normal confusion that sets in when you wonder what now?

Well, What now? I just lost a job I hated, no biggie except it paid the bills... and then got cheated out of a new opportunity. But I'm also struggling with a start up company that will take some time, but will cover the bills sufficiently eventually. I do not have the luxury of relaxing. I have a toddler, a teenager and and adult child (who is probably more stress than the others combined)  I used to have weekends off from the toddler, which was nice, but his dad relapsed with his drinking and got into some trouble and I can't leave him with his dad anymore. I'll spare you the details, you'd cry...I did. I do. I am now.

It's so easy to fall into patterns, both old and new. So fucking easy. By the grace of something, I am not doing that right now. I've been a single mom on and off for 20 years, so it's old hat, but fuck if I'm not tired.

Sometimes I want to give up...like my mother did. She just took off when my baby sisters were in their teens. They hadn't even graduated high school. She left them with their father, a man not competent to raise them..and then a few years later... no, a year later...she died. Her death hurts me more this year than normal. I don't know why...it's been five years, Maybe just because the last time I felt like this she was here with me, now, she's not. She wasn't a really great mom, but she was mine. Even a drunk can listen, you just decipher their responses and walk away with what you want to. Her last words to me were, "Melissa...what I admire most about you is your strength. Nothing stops you. (she laughed) I don't necessarily want that for myself (she was a comfortable victim) but I think it's really cool you have it. I've never really connected with you because you were so different than me. Never mind the fact that there was no controlling you (another laugh), but I have always loved you...don't ever doubt that, Not for a second, do you hear me??" That was the most useful thing she ever said to me.

I took a framed picture from her house when she died. It says:
"Three Wishes
When you are lonely,
I wish you LOVE
When you are confused,
I wish you faith
When you are down,
I wish you joy"

It is, quite literally, one of only four of her belongings I was able to have. The other is a picture that says 'Laugh as long as you breathe and love as long as you live". The other two are a perfume atomizer that I have taped closed because it smells like her and an old scarf her ex mother in law gave her in the eighties. The reason why I only have those four things is not important.

She floated all her life...she lit up rooms with laughter...people were drawn to her, they loved her....she was the most suicidal woman I have ever met. Cancer took her at 51, 2 days from her 52nd birthday, and I think she was relieved.

Back to the point.... I'm the strong one, For my friends, my sisters sometimes, my kids (of course) for employers.... It is exhausting. Literally exhausting. Like, someone let me take a nap, exhausting. I'm also good at stuff. Look, I just made you believe you knew Debbie, didn't I? And in as few words as possible. It took me (is taking me?) 5 years to grieve her passing. I handled the arraignments because no one else "could'. I flew out to her Florida home to close it down with a 45 minute notice before my plane took off because my sister (who in all fairness was only 20, ten years younger than me) backed out saying "It's really you're place, you're the oldest". I went. I had a sinus infection, a kidney infection and I ran to the gates without putting my shoes back on from the security check point because it took 30 of the 45 minutes to get to the airport. I did it all sober, even. Sometimes I wonder, which one of my three kids will do that for me? It's too soon to tell with Ugga Bugga yet, but it will probably be Middle Boy. Poor guy. I hope I don't leave the mess Debbie did...

Then those thoughts bring me back to what matters... those boys. I have one I had to give up on. That's the hardest thing a parent will ever have to do...ask my dad...he had to do it with me. But I have to keep myself together enough for these other two who didn't ask for any of this.

I picked my Ugga Bugga up at a gas station early Monday morning...without a diaper on under his pants, soaked through, in single digit weather, because his dad was drunk and decided to get drunk and get gas at midnight and blew a tire. This broke the actual FUCK out of my heart. I mean, passerbys heard it shatter and looked around... (I lied...I didn't spare you ALL the details)

No one knows what to say to me... They say stupid things like "It'll pass" Of course it will, stupid. Even a kidney stone eventually does. Everything passes, my mother did. Or, "You're really smart, you'll figure this one out" Fuck off.

Even if I knew really articulate people...and I know a few... words would never change anything. Not even hugs or any of that other 'awkward for both parties' bullshit.

One day, while drinking, a friend of mine wrote on the bricks of my house "Time heals MOST"

I think he's right. Nothing ever heals completely... even a skin wound leaves a scar. Sometimes our scars define us...but they don't have to. Right now, mine do. I am who my scars are. But hey, I'm strong, remember? It'll pass.... :)