Wake-up Call.

The “called ended” alert was flashing violently from that stupid little phone, with that stupid number blinking up at me and the stupid words I begged and blurted out ringing through my ears.

I couldn’t ask him, not anymore. Not for the things I wanted or needed. What was I doing now, here…again, desperately clinging onto someone who kept pushing me down, watching me fall and only holding me back up long enough to make me foolishly believe I was back on my feet again. Did I deserve all of this? Did making my mistakes mean I would be suffering for them over and over like I had been the past few months? 

How did my mistakes define me...each one of them tracing an arm, a hand, a hip; was this his artwork or mine.... if I did draw these lines- he colored them in. 

I cannot sit here. I cannot stop crying, but I cannot sit here. I toss my phone by the ground near the couch and undress as I stroll towards the bathroom. The cold air felt icy against my hot wet face. I started the shower and climbed inside. Shut the curtain, shut the world out, shut my brain off?

I leaned against the wall of the shower, my head pounding with millions of tiny memories dizzily swirling around, bouncing off one side of my brain and crashing into the other.

Water feels sharp, water feels suffocating, water is running…running…running like I want to.

I have to tell myself over and over again out loud- like a crazy person- that I am going to be okay. I have to tell myself over and over again out loud that, I can’t do this anymore-to myself.

I wrap myself in a towel and slump down onto my bed. I haven’t had time to do laundry in probably two weeks, I haven’t had time to do anything it feels.  I have spent so much of my time, too much of my time obsessed with him and us and what the hell is going on that I don’t know how I have let myself live this way. I paw through a basket of laundry, and find some reasonably clean sweats and a baby blue Mariners t-shirt. 

Just as I was about to sit myself down for another real good cry, I hear Charlotte call out for me.

I rush into her beautiful little room- at least her room is clean, her tiny beautiful clothes hanging in her closet- her baby pink wagon full of her favorite stuffed animals- her little perfect world. Her- just perfect. I scoop her up and she is softly crying “ Mama, I don’t feel good…”

“ I know baby bear, I know…let’s go lay on the couch, do you want some water?”

“Yes Mama, and I want my pillow and my owl.”

I grab everything all at once and set her up on our couch, she lays her little head on her polka-dotted pillow and clutches her little stuffed animal. I grab her a tiny cup of water and sit her up to drink some, she feels a little warm…she feels so soft…my angel.  She sips some water then starts gulping down the rest of it…

Then all the sudden she violently smacks the cup out of my hand, thrusts forward almost flinging her little self off the couch- she starts throwing up. She vomits and keeps vomiting. She’s screaming and crying and I stand her up on the floor and rip off her clothes she is gripping my neck and throwing up into my hair.

“ Oh baby it’s okay, it’s okay…”

Her little body is convulsing, and her in between dry heaves she is crying out so helplessly.

I get all her clothes off and peel her little arms from around my neck, I run her into the shower and we wash off. She is shivering and scared and throws up again after I turn off the water. I wrap a towel around her and I jolt into my bedroom. I throw on some jeans and a tank top- snatch up my sweater and I grab some sweats and a shirt for her.

I make it back into the bathroom in time for her to be climbing out of the tub wrapped in her towel. Her tiny lips are grey and her skin is freakishly pale and clammy.  She is crying and I get her dressed as fast as I can. She had thrown up the night before, the day before, but not like this….she had been throwing up non-stop and its only 6:30 in the morning…her doctor won’t even be in till 8:30. It strikes me now, hard- we have to go to the hospital.

I take her into my arms, scrambled for my keys- my purse-where the fuck is her insurance card?

“ Owl Mama, I want my Owl…”

Shoes, phone, phone charger...my phone is going dead. Out the door-into the car. Arriving at the hospital.

Perfect

The night before, my mother had come to town. My daughter had been sick and instead of me taking another day off work, she would get to stay home with grandma. When she arrived around 11 pm, I was dressed but sleeping on the couch. I grabbed my keys, my mother worriedly blurts out, “ Are you sure you want to leave, I can sleep on the couch…”

I had fallen asleep over an hour ago and was barely awake. I responded with a harsh,“I’m leaving.”

I slowly walked towards my car and the dark felt strangely comforting. In the dark I can remind myself that the day is almost over, that the hell that happened the day before would be over soon. In the dark I can find comfort in knowing that my broken heart isn't frantically glittering away for the rest of the world to see beneath the harsh unrelenting light of day.

When I sat down to start the engine I hesitated. We’d been going back and forth for so long I don’t even remember when it used to be good, when we used to be happy…I had driven over there so many times with my stomach in knots, crying, in the middle of the day or in the middle of the night…we had once been perfect. Perfect.

I pulled in the same driveway that I had over 6 months ago, the first night I’d come to see him and his friends, just as friends- for a party. Except now, when I walk through the door and up those same stairs and climb into that same bed- our friendship wasn't the same, it was practically over- was our relationship over?

Nowadays, walking into that room either resulted in all-out war or worse, a tense cold peace.  It may not have been what either of us deserved or wanted- but  it was what we were now, and it was better than letting go- or it was for me.

Thursday was the day he told me it was over, again.  

It was now Sunday night, and he was on the couch watching a movie and I just went straight up to bed. I was exhausted, I had been, we both had been for so long now I think the only reason we kept holding on was to keep each other from falling down. I just wanted to sleep, to pretend this week, this weekend…this month…maybe this whole thing just never happened the way it did.

I’d spent so many nights hoping that the next day would be the day we would put down our weapons, we would surrender and start being what we were supposed to be from the beginning; happy. Happy, happy, the kind of happy that you never are until you finally find the One. Isn’t the One real?

I have to believe that  a better kind of happy and the One, exist.

When he came to bed he still smelt the same, it still felt the same, he still held me the same way. This night couldn’t have been so different from the first one? Here, in the very still, quiet beauty of the dark we were still; perfect.

But in the morning when I got home, my mother was leaving. My daughter had woken up in the middle of the night, she was exhausted. What am I doing? Why wasn’t I here?  My mom left and I peeked into my daughter’s room. There she was, enveloped in her purple and pink bedding, clinging to her stuffed penguin from the zoo.  I shut the door and backed down the hallway; I leaned on my couch and slumped onto the floor. And then I cried. And then I couldn't stop crying. 

I texted him, I called him, I begged for the last time. Don’t do this.

I don’t know if I’d ever begged like that before, but if anyone ever in the history of saying no, had ever had an easier time saying no, it was him, in this moment. 

I pleaded, I don’t want this, I need you and I need you to help me….but he couldn’t. 

He was sorry, but I don’t understand sorry anymore.

“ I recommend you call your sister or your mother,” he said and then I hung up.

The Story of Us

You run into someone you haven’t seen in what seems like forever. You knew each other in college…"You dated that crazy chick, I can’t remember her name….”

You catch up over a beer, you laugh and ramble on about nothing and everything.  As you clumsily put your number into that strange little device, that tiny weapon of mass destruction that enables you to simultaneously keep your secrets and destroy them at will…

You think to yourself, I'll probably never hear from them again anyway.

But one night turns into a couple text messages, a few more beers and two or three more nights out. It multiplies into the strangest feeling, divides itself between what is right and what you know you want and before you know it; you’ve added yourself to a list of dreamers, who thought that a random coincidence could turn into something perfect.

Some people say you can’t start something before you end what came before. Is it possible to ever really grieve the heartache from the past when you’ve been barreling into the future at full speed? We don’t think about these things when were caught up in our new beautiful mess.

We don’t think about what we can’t control, what we don’t know or how we will ever be able to figure out how to make something out of what started as nothing…

Out of what might very well, should have never became more than what it started out to be; nothing.

When the glass you’re walking on is about to break through and you have nowhere else to lay down but in the bed you made, your faced with the humbling realization that some of your mistakes are what brought you here and that some of his just made it all the more impossible to fix. We tried to fix it didn’t we? We want to fix it…To say we can “make this work” but as I sat on the floor of my living room for the millionth time this month, crying out loud for someone who would never love me the same way again, it finally sunk in that it was time, to just fall through that glass, and lay down in that bed.

I woke up on another rainy Sunday, after another worst Saturday night, and knowing I couldn’t survive another tear-filled Monday morning, I had to start over.

You must start wherever you are, and start small.

This is where we are now, and where my story begins; the story of us.