Now, now now.

The road stretches on and on, slicing thick through piles of old snow. Cold wind bites the car and we blast warm air at ourselves from the inside. We've been in the car for six hours now and we're not even halfway there. And that's okay. Of course it's okay. In the backseat my daughters are sleeping, little pulses of warmth and love. My husband at the helm. And for the briefest of moments I feel the gears and cogs of time align themselves around me. I'm there at the center and I can see so clearly where I stand, when I stand: now, now, now. This is happy. And just as I recognize it, it passes, and I'm sucked back through the cogs: forward, forward, forward.

Stuck and unstuck and everything in between.

If I fashioned myself as a container of blood, I would be clear glass and everyone could see the pulsing heart of me. But since I am made of skin I do my best to show everyone what it looks like in there, behind the steel frame of my ribcage. Here and here and here, I say, pulling strands from the center of me and holding out a fist. I am bleeding all over your carpet, and I'm sorry for that, but it won't stop me. Look at all the pieces, I say. The pretty bits and the ugly bits, the shards of bone and the vivid essence of red.

What I am not saying is, Here, look at me. Appreciate and validate and fix me. It's manically avoiding dealing with the inside bits and instead simply putting them on display. What I say is: Look, I have made another mistake. Look at that. Just look at it. Can you believe the mistake I have made? And then I file it away on a shelf, dust it off, step back, and take it in. Yup. That's a mistake alright.

What I am not saying is: Look how unhappy I am.

It's a nice, tidy form of apathy, a really good, self-perpetuating one. Because you feel like you are confronting something when you take it out and talk about it until the words stop making any sense.  Done and done, I think when I step back to take a look at those things I end up filing away on the shelf. I did all the work. I did what I was supposed to do. And then I walk away.

This is not just apathy, though, it's survival skills, too. If I stop talking about the muck inside and around me it's like poison. If I took the time to dive in and start sorting everything out, I'd get bogged down so quickly, sinking and drowning before I even got through the first thing.

This is not easy, finding yourself waist-deep in the muck when you didn't even know you were in it.

That's my cheese monster talking.

Dang.

Similar message I got today:


Yeah.