1.20.2006

i wake up and i am crazy. the bed is wet and i am yelling. i have no control and i just want to be left alone. the job i wanted is gone, but there is no space in my mess of a life for it anyway. i called a psychologist, but there was no person, just an answering machine. i started to say what was wrong after i'd explained why i had called and how to call me back, but all i could get out was "i would like to talk to someone about some...after an accident." what am i saying? i don't know what i even want to do. i know that screaming at my kids is the wrong choice, but in my brain i don't even care. i start to think we spend too much money and goddamn jon for putting the provider index in the basement and the cinnamon bread has molded and there goes all that organic flour down the drain. it's all my fault. i feel so completely numb. my throat hurts from yelling. i am being cruel. it is not their fault. i don't know what i want - if it's just an attempt at control or what. i feel so lost though, no need for things to be in my control. i am not power hungry. i want to shove these responsibilities away. i don't want to have to strip the beds and pour vinegar. i find myself wiping the counter as i think about not needing control, wiping every little smudge down and washing all the dishes, just to make breakfast. and instead of getting the other bread down and the eggs out, i am in the office, on the computer, typing. i don't want someone pulling on my leg or touching my breast. i scream and then feel so small, so incapable of trying harder. and i try to remember what it was about staying in the present and allowing even my negative emotions without judgment, but surely this is not that. this is the verge of places you should not go, ideas that should be left unexplored. i hold the phone in my hand, its buttons aching for pressing. but who do i call? all the names of all the people. i can hear the voices on the other line as i explain what is happening and the best i'll get is an "i'm sorry, honey." i don't want that. i don't want sympathy. i want someone to come take this away. i want to cut it out, dig the bullshit out of my brain. i want to be warm. i want to curl up. i want my legs to stop hurting. i want to be in a very hot bath. i want to fill my stomach just to stop its aching. otherwise i could care less. you should see me. i am so frail looking. i am thin beyond thin, my bones jut out in weird ways, like grotesque caricatures of supramodels all strung-out, sometimes lithe, but mostly awkward, mostly dangerous, sharp and pointy. i see it in the bones of my hip when i lay down. my skin looks translucent and so, so pale. my extremities are cold. there is no warm spot, no soft landing for such a fat baby to rest and be safe. and yet my breasts fill with milk and flow and i am fertile and apparently healthy. but the look of it is disturbing to me. the feel of it is shivery and empty. i feel like a shell i keep trying to fill with anything at all, and yet this hollow skeleton remains. this cackling, screaming banshee, all bones and dripping flesh. i pick up all the little pieces of myself and carry them around, trying to put them in some order. i start to think that i can be or do something and it amounts to so little. i feel like i am not going anywhere, but when i look in the mirror, i am looking so much older. finally my age is written on my face. i feel like the years keep happening so fast and every time i blink i am still no further than when i started yet all this time has passed. i do five hundred things daily and sense no change. the messes of my home are made and unmade, the surfaces and utensils cleaned and uncleaned. i watch it happen. one day i go to the grocery and come home feeling so bountiful and healthy and the next the refrigerator has been emptied and i am searching in its whiteness for something more to throw in the hole. i am lost and i am confused. i want to be away from all this. i want to be left alone, to rot on my own without having to be responsible for everything in the meantime. i am ruining it all anyway.

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