I've just entered my forties. Yes, you read that right, FORTIES. You can say it, I don't look a day over twenty-four, right? RIGHT?!? Just kidding, my face is definitely older than it was sixteen years ago and my mind has got to be about sixty. My heart, on the other hand, feels like I'm still a teenager....ripped apart at the smallest sign of conflict or a harsh word. Some days I can actually watch as my emotional walls crumble around me. I curl up into a small ball on the floor and wait for the moments to pass like a small child in a cupboard hiding from an abusive babysitter.
The only way I can sum up my life is to say it's a clusterfuck of madness. A teenager, a toddler, two dogs, full time job, and household matriarch combined with anxiety, depression, and other health concerns makes crazy town soup. Mmmmm....soup. This year seems to be determined to break me completely though. Multiple friends have passed away, the world is a fucking disaster in so many ways, my kids are both at that willfully insolent stage in life, the start of perimenopause, and, of course, the things best left unsaid. I do have a great support system in place: friends, parents, spouse, but when they don't live inside my head, it's difficult for them to understand.
Living inside my head... I wouldn't wish that upon anybody. I imagine it as string and monsters in various shades of red forming multiple roundabouts and trying to navigate them. On a side note, if any of my painter friends could paint this image for me, I'd really appreciate it. Sometimes a ray of sunshine will appear in the form of a giant, fluffy doggo painted yellow to chase the monsters away but for the most part it's just a flurry of crimson insanity. I often tell people I don't wear red because I have red hair but in actual fact, red scares the fuck out of me...except at Christmas.
I definitely have outlets to soothe my cluttered mind...live music, writing, alcohol, walking with my dogs, beating my children (please don't tell anybody), and exercise when I can drag my sorry ass off the couch. I also take a sweet medicinal cocktail every day and talk to a counselor. She's trying to convince me that beating my kids is not good therapy but I don't believe her. I know what works. For those of you that just took a deep breath, shook your head, and picked up your phone to call the ministry of broken children, calm your tits, I don't actually beat my kids. I'm pretty sure the teenager could take me down and then the toddler would sit on my head and bounce until that red, stringy, monster-like mess came out of my ears. I guess I've taught them well...
So what's the point of these disgracefully written paragraphs you ask? Life sucks sometimes. That's all, it just bloody sucks. It makes me feel better to poison the minds of my readers with grossly exaggerated images of soup and the colour red and to let you know that you're not alone in this shit-stew of a universe. It's hard when you're the one that has to be strong for everybody else and your muscles start to fatigue. It's difficult when others look to you for guidance and/or answers and your brain doesn't work enough to form a coherent sentence of support. It's scary when you know your true self is in there somewhere but is lost in a maze of fuckery and distorted realities. My only advice, and advice I should learn to follow, is to look for the light wherever you can find it, no matter how minuscule or insignificant, and follow it until the world brightens up around you....it can't stay dark forever.
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