when it takes thirty years to articulate

what I want

because what I want

has never been important to anyone. Not even Not especially Not me

Because I had the idea that taking care of others meant others would take care of me

People don’t give back because you give People give back when you demand, when

you expect no less, when

you don’t give a damn about how they feel, when

you don’t even care enough to try

when the illusion of hope

is about the best you can hope for

we leave because somewhere else is better, sometimes

because anywhere else is better.

we leave because the pain of staying is worse

I tried/try/will try to kill hope,

there is no more vicious emotion to reside in the human heart

than the feeling that good things could quite possibly happen

but this is the wild bermuda grass of the soul

impossible to extirpate

I will not get the job. I am not

what they are looking for.

This is not to say I will not try: When I fall

I will fall forward

my fingers crooked to claws

trying to scrabble my away across the finish line

that always seems to be three inches

beyond my reach.

i am not enough

my brain is broken

and i’ll just have to be okay in fractures

i am so afraid that i am not enough

I have become all that I ever feared:
old, and helpless, and without value in a society that believes in money, but not in Mothers.

Prate and preach about the sanctity of the hearth-fire and the home, and leave me no means to support either:
Snarl that I leech. Complain that I have nobody to blame but myself when there is no cash in coffer. Patronize when I go forth, children raised, into a world that wants thirty years of experience from a twenty-year old, Wants

the fifty-year-old to look twelve, Wants

all the experience in the world except for what you’ve paid decades of your life in learning.

if the tides have taught you your worthlessness

does it matter what beach you find beneath you?

I can’t see that time right now, but I can see that time from here.

Mainly because there is no more hope, and I don’t even have the hope of hope left.

But I still can’t leave. I have to clean my life up as much as I can before I go, because nobody deserves the mess I’d leave if I left right now.

I suppose this means I need to make lists.

And find the motivation that my hope took when it left.

I have a friend who is both hurricane and the calm center of the storm.

She’s the hearth-fire you want to come in and warm your hands with

and the inspiration that makes you want to catch fire, yourself

just knowing her makes it easy to believe you could shine forever, if only

you would reach out with even just one tentative motion

me

The past few days I’ve locked myself up in the internet, like some fabulous closet where only the glittery stream of information gets in. I don’t want to come out. Out there are bills that cannot be paid and normally well-behaved children who don’t want to this week and a spouse that loves me to distraction and is hurt that his need for me is such a burden to me. I don’t want the children to find the bottom of my patience when it should be bottomless; I don’t want to find my husband’s needs to be the last straw to a long pattern of bearing everybody’s burdens.

I hate to say it but I too was too afflicted with the gotta make everyone happy disease. There isn’t any reason why they shouldn’t be happy, but two points still remain, still are, will always be — why does that happiness have to revolve around my sacrifices, and why doesn’t anyone spend their last lost precious drop of resources on me?

It’s the grouchy maker, the martyr creator, I swear it’s this belief that it’s okay, it’s expected that Mom takes not only the brunt of the burden, but all even down to every last ounce of the load. And what do they know of it? They’re children. They’ve never seen anything else in their lives. And spouse is gone all day every week day and sees life through the prism of his computer games and his music frames. Somebody had to make the sacrifices to keep us all from spinning madly, some off-balance out of kilter buzz saw, spitting sparks as it wobbles destructively through the universe. But I’d say that thirteen years of crazy-making is just about enough, thanks, really no, it’s time for a different pattern. If only the old pattern wasn’t so thoroughly broken and forgotten and erased down through the years. How can I retrace what I used to be, relearn who I used to be, if so much of it has leaked through the cracks of my cobbled together life?

I used to be somebody. So long ago. I used to be somebody. Where did that somebody go?