**Note: I tried to post this last night but my silly computer refused to keep an internet connection for long enough. So, it had to wait for an unfair Friday morning.**


“Every finger in the room is pointing at me. I wanna spit in their faces then I get afraid of what that could bring. I got a bowling ball in my stomach. I got a desert in my mouth. Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now.”

For some reason, Tori Amos fits the bill tonight. This Thursday night, with the album, “Little Earthquakes” playing quietly over the ancient speakers. No coincidence that the computer that * never * plays a burned CD decided to work for me tonight.

“I almost ran over an angel. He had a nice, big fat cigar. ‘In a sense’, he said, ‘you’re alone here. So if you jump, you best jump far.’”

I seem to do alright during the day. There’s always so much to do, so much to do. Today was especially full what with the guys finally coming to replace our garage door and a cranky baby who is teething and may be possibly coming down with something yet again. What a winter this has been for poor Michael…one illness after another, it seems.

And the cleaning. I’ve spent more than two days now cleaning like a fucking maniac. Today I allowed myself the luxury of cruising around MyBloggers, catching up on blogs and feeling like a total asshole for not being here for some very special blogging friends who offer such amazing support and are in need of some support themselves. Feeling like a total asshole for not reading my birthday greetings and heart felt sentiments sooner.

My birthday. Seems like it was weeks ago at this point.

I do alright during the day when the time is full to the brim with things to do.

But then night falls.

And I fall apart with the darkness.

“First my left foot then my right behind the other.”

And so here I sit, staring at the singing camel who never had a chance to do his routine for the company and clutching a slightly damp yellow pillowcase like that kid on Charlie Brown (Linus?) with his blue blankie in one hand and his thumb from his other hand in his mouth. I sit here, clutching that yellow pillow case, bringing it up to my nose every now and then, promising myself that I * will * wash it tomorrow with the regular laundry, but knowing that I probably won’t.

It’s losing it’s distinct smell. It’s losing it with every whiff I take. But I can’t help myself. Can’t stop myself from bringing the soft yellow fabric up to my nose every so often. Can’t stop myself from rubbing it slightly against my cheek. Can’t stop myself from wanting with everything I have to wrap myself up in that yellow pillow case. Wrap myself up and take myself back in time.

I will wash it tomorrow.

“I can feel the distance getting close. You’re right next to me but I need an airplane.”

I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t ready for this to hurt this much. Every breath I take is a strain, it seems. And I’m angry. Angry at nobody in particular. That for the first time in years, I feel like myself. I feel like maybe, just * maybe *, I could be more than a sum of my parts. It feels like somebody is standing in front of me, dangling this happiness in front of me. Dangling this amazing person in front of me…teasing me….saying, “you like that, don’t you? Feels good, doesn’t it? This is how happy normal people are. You want it? Do you? Okay…here you go….oh wait…I changed my mind”. And just like that….it’s taken away from me.

He’s taken away from me.

Again.

“All the white horses are still in bed.”

I went to town tonight to run errands. I went to Wal Mart. And then to the grocery store. I head back to work tomorrow night. My maternity leave is over and I’m going back to a job that I thought I had left behind for good. I’m oddly not nervous. Not stressed at all. I’m neutral to my return to Fake Name Store. But it does mean that I had to get everything for next week ready tonight. I will be working all weekend.

I’m neutral.

I’m numb.

“She’s been everybody else’s girl. Maybe one day she’ll be her own.”

This seems horribly cruel right now. I can’t get a hold on anything. Can’t seem to find my footing. Wal Mart was wrong. The grocery store was wrong. The car was wrong. The night sky was wrong. Tim Horton’s was wrong. It all seems so mother fucking WRONG.

Wrong and cruel.

The night makes it harder. Makes it harder to concentrate. Makes it harder to focus. Makes it harder to put one foot in front of the other. Everything feels like a dream right now. A dream that somebody woke me up from…forced back to reality…forced back to the real world.

“I hear my voice and it’s been here. Silent all these years.”

I tried several times to post today. I wrote about the Easter eggs. I wrote about the grilled cheese sandwiches and the melted spatula. I wrote about the drunken episodes of the Trailer Park Boys. I wrote about the trip to the drug store after the dinner out. The breakfast food for supper. I wrote about the chocolate…oh god…the chocolate. I wrote about all of it…tried to give all of you some details. Some little peeks into what that weekend…what those days were really like.

I tried to find words to describe it all. Words like, “fun”. Words like, “amazing”. But every word I dug out fell short. Every word refused to do the emotions any justice.

Just as right now, every word falls short of describing this pain adequately.

I hate needing people. I hate that feeling of longing for someone or something. I hate that feeling of clinging to someone. And right now, I’m needy and clingy and longing for what was here only a few days ago.

A few days ago.

Seems impossible.

And yet…

It seems like it could have been five minutes ago.

I tried so hard to post earlier today. Tried so hard to sum it all up and break it down into a convenient anecdote, a cute story, a little peek.

The trouble, maybe, wasn’t really that I couldn’t find the right words.

The trouble, I suppose, was that every time I thought about the weekend. My birthday. Easter. The visit from the American Boy.

Every time I stopped to think….

I was flooded.

Flooded and filled with that Friday. Looking out my window. Checking over and over again for a car I wasn’t yet familiar with. Hearing Rock tell me that Don had passed the house. Wondering how I had missed that in my constant checking. Dashing outside with just my slip on shoes and my denim, studded jacket on. Watching him pull in and running over to the car. Waiting for him to open the door and standing there, like a fool, gob smacked at the sight of him. Repeating over and over again, “you’re here…you’re here…” Standing next to the open car door, refusing to let him out, just for a minute, just for another minute, fully able to look at him this time. Taking each inch of him in. My arms around him. “You’re here…you’re here…you’re here”.

Getting him inside of the house. Relaxing at his touch…his hand on my shoulder… unable to stop myself from touching him once he was at the table. Unable to stop saying, “you’re here…you’re here…you’re here…” Ordering pizza and listening to the story of the trip from Vermont to Ontario. Feeling my masks falling away, crumbling and disintegrating at my feet. Feeling myself fill.

And that night. The girls tucked into bed, full of happy excitement. The baby tucked in, calm and comforted with a full belly and a mind full of peace. That night on the couch. My mind wanders there over and over again. Lying on my side, facing that face, his hand down my back, his smell filling my nose, his voice warm and wet in my ear, the heat rising up my legs, the magnetic pull of my body to his, his mouth on my own, lips perfectly matched almost as though they had missed it all along. Almost as though no time had passed, no distance was ever between them.

That night.

My mind wanders to that night. To that feeling of being complete. Of being something more. It’s about so much more than just Janet and Don. It’s suddenly about freeing that four year old girl from the top of the stair case, hot breath against her neck, hands and fingers groping around, poking and prodding into places she didn’t know she had yet. Freeing that pre-teen from the clutches of a past not so long ago. Freeing her from the same hot breath from a different mouth, the same fingers from a different hand, groping around, poking and prodding into places she now knew were there but would rather forget. Freeing that teenaged punk from the fists that held her too close. Freeing her from the hands that knew where to strike and the voice that knew how to sting. Freeing that twenty year old girl from the operating room table. Freeing her from the green antique couch and the nurses in white coats. Freeing that girl who got rid of the only thing she ever wanted because a big belly would just be a physical reminder of what she already knew. Of what she always had been and would always be. Freeing that confused and scrambled mess of a girl that lives inside of me, still.

Watching her fly away. Watching her being replaced.

“Give me life. Give me pain. Give me myself again.”