A Window

I had a $h!tty-a$$ heck of a week from hell. I feel better now. But the memories and feelings of the week will sit in a tiny bubble in my gut for awhile longer. It's probably from the guilt.

No one died. My house didn't burn down, or flood, or get robbed. Everyone still has their health (sort of). My future doesn't look too bad. And my little nuclear family is still with me, still happy, still growing.

I have days where my patience leaves town. It's not thin. It's gone. Days where every little task feels like putting a square plug into a round whole. Days where frustration grinds away and my nerves are exposed in all their raw tenderness.

At times wanting to scream and and shake and storm out of the room instead I grind my teeth, cover my face with my hands, my nails dig into my skin. And I cry. Lots of crying. It seems at once to be a release and downfall. The more I cry the more I release the negative energy. But the more I see myself crying, in front of my curious and impressionable son, the more I feel sad, despair, despicable. And so I cry some more. Sometimes I think someone must come and make it stop, rescue him, and comfort me. Most of the time I slip into a daze, exhausted and stunned, and eventually pick myself up, feed my tired body and the Punkin, too, as if he's just expended the same energy that I have, and try to move on with the day. I can't say it ever gets better, that day, but it moves forward and that's what matters. By the time Veggie does come home I'm ready to collapse again, and I do, on the couch, in his arms, while Punkin plays or looks on, a little bemused, a little curious, a little sad, too.

The worst feeling I ever feel, the one I harden my mind against, the one I can barely write about, is the feeling that who I am, what I do on my bad days and what I don't do because of my bad days, will somehow change who Punkin is, who he will become. That watching me on those days, or missing certain things in life because of those days, will make him sad, too. Will making him scared of crying women. Will make him feel despair more than optimism, frustration more than delight, and loneliness more than independence. And then of course there are the genetics - the unavoidable traits I passed down through my blood. Was it wrong?

I feel better today. Punkin is a little more clingy to his father, but maybe that's because it's Sunday. We'll be ok tomorrow. And right now, at this moment, the future doesn't look bleak. But someday dark clouds will storm through our sunny house again and I will wish I wasn't me. Just not today.