Some things are simply meant to be. That doesn’t make it any easier to endure and let go. Some days are too long and some nights are too short for a nocturnal spirit who can’t handle the daytime chaos of the world. The one who feels so disconnected from…everything. Whose own damn existence she can’t justify. My place here doesn’t mean anything. It never will.
So, I saunter through my day to day. And every one looks the same. Get up, drink some coffee, listen to some rock and roll hoping it saves something in my restless soul, go to work, pretend to be okay, then come home. Where, suddenly, I am alone, with a glass of rum, a cigarette and my thoughts. Nothing can shake the way it feels to not care about what happens beyond these four walls. To not relate to anything. The news seems menial and meaningless. Internet memes aren’t all that comical. I have tried to surround myself with positivity and good people. They only seem to back away when I tend to over react to situations they deem miniscule. Like I am crazy and not worth the time.
It is in those moments when I would give anything for someone to look at me. Not just give me a passing glance, but to place a pair of steady hands on these shaking shoulders, have their clear eyes meet the shattered remnants in mine, and without asking, simply tell me I’m not okay, and even if I never am, it’s alright. I know I will never be okay. But to explain that to the people around me who believe I am this pillar of strength for myself, is difficult. It becomes easier to put the tough, bitchy mask on than it is to explain how I am broken and a part of me always will be.
That I am weary of picking myself up off the kitchen floor like a scrap of forgotten laundry after another break down. Wanting to scream out every time someone tells me: “You’re strong. You’ll make it.”
The truth is, sometimes being the strong one isn’t enough. Pretending to be the tough girl dealing with years of chronic depression, PTSD from child sexual abuse, and most recently, a divorce, doesn’t clear the haze of feeling like an outsider to the world. It’s like I am always on the other side of a window, looking in on blissfulness and normalcy that I will never know. The strong one eventually gives up on sweeping up the pieces, be it from the soul or another shattered dish thrown out of agony. She gets tired of wiping the tears away and picking herself up again, wondering how many more times she can do so before she gives up completely. Instead, she gives in to smoking a pack a day again and finding the bottom of a bottle. Fuck it. That’s the way of most of this family, it seems.
The strong one gets eroded from countless storms. When it is assumed she will always make it, there will come a day when I won’t. It is difficult to carry on when there seems no purpose to existing. I don’t know why I am still alive. I merely keep going through the motions of my every day. Keep trying to do things that bring even a little happiness into my life. But I don’t know what else to do.
I need to remind myself often that it has only been about five months since leaving my marriage. The wounds are still fresh and I can’t think of anything else to do but let them bleed in hopes that soon it won’t be so terrifying to be alone again. I let my life revolve around someone else for four years so that I wouldn’t have to focus on myself, and boy, am I ever paying the price. Now, I have no choice but to focus on myself. Remember to take the anti-depressants every day. Get out of bed in the morning and get to the therapy appointments. Arrive to work on time and do my best, get those bills paid. Make sure the fur babies are happy and tended to. Do the dishes even when I’d rather crawl into bed and cry. Clean the house because a spotless living space makes me feel more comfortable. Sit down and write something just to get a few things out of my system. Crank the rock and roll in the meantime because rock and roll is life, and it heals even small parts of the soul.
I work through all these motions and keep telling myself that soon, it will get better. It takes time to reactivate life after divorce, and that childhood trauma never truly heals.
There are just days where I don’t know how much more I can take, and I question how strong I really am. For tonight, I feel the same way I have felt for years: empty and lost.
And there it is. The brutal truth.
I am not the strong one everyone believes I am. Sometimes, I am still merely that broken teenage girl who needs someone to pick her up when she can’t take anymore. She’s been strong for too long.
