deflated

i toss

i turn

sleepless.

what words to use to express now i feel. silence seems safest and yet it is a betrayal to what i am trying to achieve. but i cannot stand the pointers who push and suggest and tell what can and should be done. i just want to be heard and comforted. no one has ever been face-to-face with me and comforted me.

it is not all black and white. lots of it is gray shrouded in fog. no one can see another's soul, not unless the whole story is known. odd bits tossed on a table cannot possibly allow for armchair counselors/veterans of this particularly brutal war to draw the correct assumptions, then to give the correct advice.

i do not want to silence myself again. i do not want to lose my voice again. i have worked so very hard to get even here, to this humble state. i have only wanted comfort. i have only wanted to speak in a small voice about what i feel, the troubles i am having in dealing with all the financial, medical, exhaustion, and grief issues. i am not as bad off as some, but i am not as well off as others. i have not written about all that happened. i never could expose myself publicly that way. but know that there are deep pains and horrors that have left scars on my soul. flashbacks come and he is not here to comfort me, to hold me. i am once again alone. and oh, how i wish he had not died.

"unnailed, uncoffined, unknown."

the threat used quite often to keep me in line, to keep me working, ever working, always working, bent and beaten to the tune sung by people who believed they owned me. they never owned my soul. but their mantra is what i am washing off the wall of my life. little by little, but it takes time. something that was painted over and over upon itself for over 50 years takes a little time to wash off.

do this, do it this way, do that, you should be here, you should be further along, well, of course {idiot understood} do it your way, but you should be much further along.

i tire of all this. no, i cannot do it your way. sorry. i amble. i am a wanderer. i take pictures. i study it. i work through the whats and whys and then do away with. i am looking fully at each piece of my life and then packing it up slowly, and only then do i put it away. but the cost is insomnia and exhaustion. the gain, though, is letting go of the memories.

still, i wish i could feel some anger. i never could stand up for myself.

but i can for them, the constants in my life, plus one more, my son, who is a very private man.

for all the work i have done, for all the work i have yet to do, i need strength. i need to sleep. and God help me there are nights i cannot.

sorry, yes, there are times i feel deflated.

and i do try to write it out, hoping for comfort. sometimes someone has the words. sometimes, someone gives them to me. and for a time, i am soothed.

it has been 2 years, 4 months, and 24 days, and i still have not had the luxury of anyone coming to physically sit beside me while i cry. no one to hold me while i sob. no one to get up and make me a cup of tea to soothe my ravaged throat. no one to mourn with me. i have done it all in isolation. it is hard to have your husband die and look around at 1 week, 1 month, 7 months, 14 months, 19 months, 23 months, 28 months and 24 days and still no one is coming to sit with you so you can talk about him and cry with them, gain comfort from them. moving the day of his funeral, as circumstances mandated, has almost destroyed me. but there were no other options. and you can never, ever know the reasons why. you just have to accept that and try to find it in you to offer comfort.

and if you write in a comment that i have my adult son and daughter to fall apart in front of, and that my Dragon was only their stepfather, you never read a single posting of mine, nor do you have the capacity to understand what he means to them, and what it means to be a mother.

"who are you wanderer?" and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: "maybe i am a king."