To be a child.

She ran at a pace that was above a jog, but below the pace that was any real attempt to get away. The perfect kind of pace that matched a childish chase. Her head turned and she gazed behind her, her summer-sky blue eyes filled with delight and not losing sight of her chaser even as her white-blonde hair cascaded in her view. Behind her, he chased her at a pace that never intended to catch up on purpose. His strawberry blonde hair seemed red in the autumn sun, and glittered almost gold at the small wind that would pick pieces of it from his head. His mud-brown eyes pinned on the blue eyed girl, and his pink lips were spread in an open-mouthed smile with a laughter that harmonized with her bell-pitched laugh. I watched them give chase to one another from my spot, and admired them for a moment. The girl couldn't have been more than three, matching the boys age. Even in their youth, their chase gave way for the imagination of young love. On purpose, she fell and rolled dramatically across the grass still laughing. Aside her he fell and rolled too until they both lay on their backs and gazed up at the rare clear-blue sky. He pointed into the air and talked quietly to her, and her hands raised to her mouth to stifle the giggle at whatever he said. Breathless, they laid in the grass and tucked themselves away in their own little world, unbothered by the flurry of business around them. I admired that.

I Feel Stupid Writing This...

     Somedays I want to pick up the phone and just talk to you about what's on my mind, and listen in on what is on yours. When I was little and I was having a bad day, I used to crawl into your lap, lay my head on your chest and listen to your heart beat and the way your voice echoed. It always soothed me. You were the only one that could smother the flames of my anger. I learned late that you were right about so much, and when I figured that out, I leaned on you for advice for everything.
        I hate that that was all stolen from me. I feel like you were stolen from me, and that it is so incredibly unfair. I feel so alone now more than ever. I know I have people to talk to, but at the same time I feel like I have no one. No one that is going to understand me, accept me, and yet tell me to shape up at the same time. No one to give me direction. I just want to hear your voice, see your face. I want this to be a dream, and more than ever, I want it to be over.
         I wonder if you gave up because of me. I didn't get to say good bye. My last conversation with you, I was annoyed and hurt because I felt like you were taking your anger out on me. I didn't understand like I should what it was that made you speak that way. You looked forward to the kids this summer. They didn't even get one last summer with you. I feel like after I told you I wasn't coming to Oregon, and that he had summer school, that you gave up. I am angry about that, mama. I am angry at myself, I'm angry at you. More than anything, I hate that I am angry. I feel selfish and stupid for it but I can't get over it no matter how hard I try. Now I wonder about everything, if you're watching me now, if you're judging me, if you love me still even with the things I've done? Are you proud of me? Are you still trying to give me direction, or are you just gone?
          Mama, who will love me now? Who will love me like you did? Why did it have to be you? I really feel like I should wake up and get some kind of phone call from you, or see that you've played a Facebook game, or that you're at Bingo. I hate that dad as to go through this alone, and at the same time I am too afraid to really dive into his life. I don't know how he deals with staying in that house, filled with memories that aren't all good. I can't bring myself to go to church, I can't bring myself to do anything and I know how angry you would be over that.
          There are times when I feel like calling you to have a question answered. But I can't. I am totally torn on what to do with things, and I can't call you to have you help me sort them out. I feel so screwed up, mama. I feel selfish and ashamed and alone.

Still Waiting.

Sometimes, when I have too much time to think, I sit back and look at what I do day to day. What did I do before now? What will I do after now? I feel like it has been all one giant waiting game. That is what I do now, with my life. I wait. I wait for "next Monday" for a new show, I wait for the weekend in order to spend time with my family as a whole instead of some broken up missed connection. I wait for 1530 to roll around each week day to pick my son up from school. I wait. It is what I do every day of my life, is wait. I feel like all I have been doing is just waiting, my entire life. I'm waiting it away, not wasting it away. Although at this point, it kind of feels like the same thing. What did I do before that allowed me to avoid this feeling? Working jobs, I still waited. I waited for lunch breaks. I waited for the end of the day. I counted down hours. For what? Bedtime? Is that what I wait for every day, is bed? When I wake up in the morning, is that what I anticipate? Sleep? Wow. Here I was in a panic trying to figure out who I am, and instead of facing that, I went into some deep thought about what I do everyday.

 I should know that by now, you know? Who I am. What I want in life. I can't answer those questions. It was proven to me just Tuesday of last week. I went to some group thing, to meet people, to give my daughter the chance to make friends. To give myself something else to wait for. When I was passed a questionnaire that had the most basic questions on it, I froze. I knew how to answer basics. My name. My age. How long I've lived here. The kind of stuff that comes without too much thought. But then, I looked at the rest of the questions. Things like, "What do you like to do for fun?" The simple question brought me into this world of thought that made me stare at it like some simple minded fool. It was a question that stared at me, as if answering it meant going to Heaven or Hell. I felt like I had a trap door under me, and all of a sudden, I was doing some kind of deep soul searching while the others around me chatted. When my attention was caught by a question asked, I stuttered as if I had never talked in front of a group before in my life. All I could think was, Me? Shy? I've never been shy in my entire life! Yet there I was, with a blazing red face trying to think of an answer to a question I didn't honestly hear. In my head, I was still trying to answer the question on paper.

I wanted to cry, and I almost did. The only thing that stopped me was my insides completely lashing out at me going, "You cry and I swear we will never leave the house ever again." But I couldn't stop thinking about it. What do I like to do for fun? What are some of my hobbies? WHY CAN'T I ANSWER THAT?! Simple. I thought, what do I do everyday? Oh, then that thought came up, I don't enjoy what I do everyday. In fact, I almost kind of hate it. In fact, I really despise it. That only brought on this strange inner shame, shocked at this secret profession I had made to myself, even though it is a thought that occurs daily and that I admit, I often say out loud. Saying it to myself in my head, seemed like the most shameful thing ever. How could I think like that? I have it easy. Real easy. Ok, well, that is what everyone thinks. Honestly, I hate it. It isn't me, at all. At least, I don't think. It's just who I have been, who I've allowed myself to be. In reality, if I think about it, it isn't anything that I would want to do.

Alright! Progress, right? If what I do isn't what I want to do, then what do I want to do?

Regression. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that, because beyond knowing my name, my age, and my place of birth, I know absolutely nothing about myself. Nothing! Do you have any idea how scary it is not to know anything about yourself and still manage to hate yourself at the same time? How can you hate something you don't know?

So what do I do? I figure, I'll leave it blank for now, and it'll come to me.

I'll just keep waiting.

The Little Things That Kill You.

Every since we've moved, I have felt so incredibly lonely. I never realized the impact my daughter was facing as well. She broke down at dinner one night, so unexpectedly. I don't know what brought it on even, she just started crying. She told me, she missed certain friends back at our old home. She cried and cried. She has no friends here except her brothers, and her youngest spends most of his time torturing her. Her older brother spends half the time trying to get away from her or finding new ways to make her cry. It sounds terrible, but he's an older brother. I knew I was lonely. At our old home, I had made at least one friend after the first month I was there. Someone who became the best friend I had there at that particular location. After five years, I didn't have a lot of friends, but I had enough friends that I felt alright with, and my kids all had friends that either matched their ages or that they grew up with. At first I shrugged it off as the fact that after five years, a place becomes home. I wasn't home anymore, so I was obviously just home sick. My kids never really experienced that feeling of going someplace they don't know before, except my son. His biggest problem was that his grandparents - two sets of them - weren't around and for the first time in his short life, he was stuck 24/7 with me. Since my last two kids were born at our last home, they didn't know that experience because they never faced it.  Maybe I was too selfishly dwelling in my own loneliness to realize that they suffered too. My oldest goes to school. He has that escape, my youngest is young enough that his sister is enough to play with. After experiencing pre-school and pre-k, my daughter here is at a loss with staying home everyday. Here they don't have those programs available for. I thought it was cute the way she missed school and "homework", and riding the bus. I explained that she would have to wait til next year to go to Kindergarten. She seemed alright with that, minus a few here-and-there reminders of how much she was really missing it. My neighbors have a daughter her age, but since they are leaving soon, they don't want to "get attached". Understandable, but my daughter hurts. So I found this group via Facebook, and someone put out there that there is a church group that happens on Tuesdays. It has Life Classes, plus it has day care. I figured this was a good way for me to meet someone, and it was an even better way for my daughter to get to play with kids her own age, and maybe make a friend or two. Not to mention, it would get me out of the house. I can not begin to express how bad I am getting with not leaving the home. It is at the point that when I get into the car to go to the shoppette, I actually get anxiety, stomach cramps, panic. I am so isolated here, and so alone. So alone. With this, I am becoming quite depressed, and I know it because I'm losing passion for anything I had. I don't work out anymore, school is so hard to focus on that it all feels like it's written in a language I don't understand, and I can't even make myself go to a church.

So when I found this, I told myself that I would make myself go today. I wouldn't back out last minute. That even if it meant stomach ache and minor panic, that I would do it for my daughter. Just so she could meet someone. I set up and messaged the people I'd meet there to help show me around, and have been looking forward all week to this event. I got up this morning, my daughter even got up early and got dressed in an adorable outfit (she too had been looking forward to this, because it meant friends for her). I was in the middle of finishing up getting ready. Everything was a green light until I hear the words, "My ride just backed out on me." Without saying it, I knew he needed the car. Immediately I felt tears in my eyes and calmly put my things down, unplugged my flat iron and told him casually to take the car. My daughter flooded into the room for me to brush my hair and I brushed her hair while it was double confirmed that he would need the car. So patiently, I explained to her that we couldn't go today. She looked at her him and her eyes glittered with tears, made larger by her thick glasses. I felt the familiar sting in my sinuses as I immediately battled my own tears. He told her he was sorry, and told her not to look at him like that. She started to cry, and I held her. She knew then that today wasn't the day she would be meeting new friends, even though she'd been waiting for today as much as I had been. I got her to get out of the room, and told him I understood. It wasn't his fault, and I wasn't mad at him. But even as I told him that, I felt my own tears rising. When he asked if I wasn't mad, then why was I crying? It made the tears fall harder. My body was crying without my permission. It made me feel pitiful.

I knew exactly it wasn't his fault. But everything I have been experiencing lately, stress, depression, it just hit me like a ton of bricks today. The fact that my daughter is experiencing the same thing, kills me. I tried to remind myself by even telling him that the meetings are every Tuesday, I'll go next week. If not next week, the whole month of February he is gone, so I have the car every week. It was no big deal. At the same time though, I know he read the hurt in my eyes, because he was mad. I didn't want to make him feel bad, and I felt like crap letting myself feel like that. I tried to let him go on a good note, offered a smile, but my daughter was still hurt, and although she hugged him, she didn't offer him any comfort in it. She was mad, and sulked for an hour after he left until her brother woke up, through which she decided to go and play. So she's playing, and I'm sitting here doing the exact same thing I do everyday. I feel so broken.

Ocean

I've been so down lately. I can't even begin to explain how I've been feeling. Rattled. Anxious. Unhappy. Angry. Confused. Lost. Stressed. Bitter. I'm losing hope and ambition over everything. After a conversation with one of my advisors, I was nearly ready to quit school when he dashed my dreams with a "realist" point of view. Excuse me, I'm a realist, that doesn't mean you have to be a jerk.  I've been fighting a lot with him too. He won't touch me when he's awake, and when he sleeps he's too violent to go near. I feel withdrawn and cold. I've withdrawn so far into myself that I feel depressed, locked in. I don't want to make friends, I don't want to spend time with my family. I feel trapped and it scares the living shit right out of me. I want nothing more than to run free. Sounds kind of stupid, but I often picture a horse that's been in a barn too long. How it sways back and forth in it's stall, looking out over the gate to the outside. The longing for the need to stretch it's leg is felt with the tension in the air. The moment to feel wild to escape the overwhelming tame burrows from the eyes of the horse into the soul. I know how it feels. I want to run. I want to be left alone, but  I do not want to be alone when I shouldn't be.

I've known for sometime that I needed the ocean. It gives me that feeling, the cure to that ache that beats in my heart. I've been around the ocean for as long as I can remember. I share the memories of my brother, my cousins, my family with the ocean. It gives me peace while allowing this wild part to come out of me. I feel freedom, and standing there listening to the waves gives me the feel that I am running free. I often feel so alone, and the ocean's song just gives me something. I feel like I could die without it. Without the  freedom it gives me. Sometimes, it gives me the answers I need. Sometimes, it gives me what I need to feel...just to feel.

I wasn't exactly excited that I had the opprotunity to escape the family for 7 to 10 days. Mostly because it was brought on very short lived, and I had little time to decide. The thought of the ocean allowed me to freely agree, and for no other reason did I go. The person who brought me, I made them promise..just once. Just give me one day. My plead must have struck him somewhere, because the day after we arrived in Florida, my first time here, we left in the morning to head there and spent the whole day there. Clad in only my swim suit, I ran to the open shore. We had gone to a beach that was populated, but very sparsely. We had our own space, but more importantly I had my own space. The minute I heard the waves crashing against the shore, my heart burst. I grinned from ear to ear like a child and fled towards the embrace of the ocean. I didn't know what to expect, but when I flew into the water, it hugged me, greeted me, lapped my face like an old dog greeting it's owner. I greeted it with a full embrace and dove in. No fears. The water was warm. Unlike any ocean I have been in. It was magic and I waded out til I was neck deep in the water, leaping with the waves to stay afloat and swimming around on my back, and riding the waves in. I cried out to the sky, I cried to myself, I cried out to Allen. God, I miss him so much sometimes. This month is especially hard. I often wonder if he'd have kids, if he'd be in jail, if he'd of made something of himself. Mostly, I wonder how many more beach days we'd of had together. How many more fights, how many more times he'd make me mad, yet in no time at all we'd be kin to kin again. Somehow I feel him in the ocean. Call me crazy. Maybe because we spread his ashes over the ocean. Maybe because we spent our child hood watching the sunset on the ocean, sharing secrets and making plans for our future before we knew what the future really meant. Though I didn't speak outloud to him, I talked to him today. I let him know everything, although I'm sure he knows anyway. I confessed it all, cried about it. The ocean swept my tears away and lovingly embraced me. Then...I felt released.

I was running in the fields, free of entrapment. I felt my heart open and my spirit fly. I laughed hard, I swam hard, I bobbed and dove, ran in and out of the ocean like a child until my legs and arms were rubber (and my skin was redder than a lobster). I told my friend over and over thank you, but I think he could see the happiness in me. He sat back and watch me bask in my love for the ocean. We left only because the lifeguards closed down the beaches due to the lightning storm that had climbed out over the ocean later in the day. When we left I wasn't feeling like I was heart broken. I was happy.

Good god, I was happy.

I AM happy.

Sleep

I'm nearly gone. Clutched in the vice-like grip of Sleeps arms. Her embrace is endearing as she wraps around me, and pulls me further and deeper into the world she offers. A world with no boundaries. A world so much more pleasant that the one I currently inhabit. Her fingertips brush against my forehead, sweeping the hair from my eyes and sprinkling in the dust that keeps them closed. Her voice is soundless, yet I hear the sweet song of everlasting joy she has waiting for me just beyond the veil. Seconds away. I pine for her love, for her world. But somehow I am pulled away from her, by the furious hands of reality. Slapped by alertness that keeps me in tune with real surroundings, real noises, real thoughts. Oh, how I am tired of this! I ache to give into her. I curl closer against her, and refuse to open my eyes. I clean my head of thoughts that plague me enough during the waking day. They should not prevail over my heaven as well. Finally, I feel the release physically first, as my brain disconnects. My arms relax, my body becoming heavier somehow and sinking deep into the bed. My eyes relax from their forced close, and stay closed. The blackness fades away into a light as the veil is gently taken away. All sounds around me fade like the ending of a song, onto a new one. And my world beings anew. Oh, sleep. How I love you.

My Chair

Welcome to my empty chair. My dark room. My quiet place. It's so quiet, I can't even hear my own heart beat even though it pounds furiously against my chest. It's so dark I can't see the chair in front of me though my eyes are well adjusted. And the empty chair is never empty. Not really. Even when no one is there, something always is. Can you see it? The chair? It's plain..at least it is to me. Wooden. Like it belongs under a kitchen table, with three others just like it. But there's no table. There are no other chairs. Just an empty, dark room. With an empty wooden chair. Quite the lonely feeling it possesses. I try to avoid it as much as possible. But it's always there. It's a part of me that I use for escape. I never really sit in it. Not even in my mind. I always just..watch it. Look at it. All it does really, is seat the emotions I feel inside. It makes them into a faceless person that I spend hours a day screaming at. Repremanding. Pushing away.