SLAMmed

Sad.
Lonely.
Angry.
Mom.

SLAM.

Yup.

That about sums up what I feel defining me, lately.

Sad.  Sorrowful.  Full of sorrow.  Yeah.  Wearing thin, this depression thing.  Looking back at the years I can remember of my life (does anyone recall their first year?  their second?  third?), I am sometimes stunned at how long I've carried this particular stone.  Looking forward, wondering how many years I have remaining  to my span, I wonder if I will simply carry it to the veil.  Surely not beyond...death is supposed to be an end, a respite, isn't it?  I certainly hope so.  This stone gets so heavy, I get so tired, I just want to rest, to sleep for days on end.  Of course, I can't - there are cats and kids and laundry and dishes and life in general to contend with, and none of those things really allow for the self-indulgent lay-up I sometimes yearn for.  Napping with Sprout will have to suffice.  Already, I miss so much, am so behind in cleaning and nurturing and just getting things done...sigh...  I'm tired of crying.

Lonely.  How on earth do I manage that, with two kids, four cats, Someone, and scads of friends?  Maybe lost would be a better word...but no...I am not lost.  I know right where I am, know just how I got here.  I am lonely.  I feel empty, devoid of some basic, soul-nurturing thing that seems abundant in people around me but absent from my own life.  It's not the lack of God - one of the most reassuring, bracing things in my life is my connection to the divine that I call "Goddess".  There's not as much music, and I miss that...and not as much art, which I also miss.  There is almost no laughter or joy, and what there is comes strained, with furtive glances to be sure it's not too intrusive.  I often feel silenced, as if my voice, my expression of Self, is just not welcome.  I get scoffed at a lot, and chastised, and downright yelled at, and it is difficult to feel as though I am heard, or wanted, when it seems everything I do is just...wrong.  As if everything I was and am are...wrong.  If only I could do or be something different, learnt to do or be another way...  If only I could transform into what Someone thinks I should be rather than remaining so very wrong that disapprobation overwhelms me...

Angry.  Oh, my, so very angry.  I have absorbed and absorbed and absorbed so much anger, I cannot filter it all.  I am steeped in it, and it oozes out of me and taints everything I touch.  Small things madden me, so that I want to scream and rage and say and do ugly things to make it all reflect the ugliness within me.  I breathe in, breathe out, try to ground, try to center, but the ground is gone in a whirling, hateful mess and wherever I am, it is so far from center that I can't see center from here.  I need...I don't know what I need...but I need...something..and I can't seem to have it.  Whatever the elusive balm is, it slips away with the flutter of moth's wings just as I reach for it.  The harder I look for balance, the less I seem to find.  Frustrated, I swallow it all, because there is no room in my world for my feelings...not where anyone else has to face them or deal with them.

Mom.  I am a mother.  That is sacred.  It is enormous.  It is marvelous and awesome and terrifying.  It is exhausting.  There is no manual.  We can't even know how to do it right, but there are plenty of people who will tell us we're doing it wrong.  Seems anyone with an opinion feels entitled to tell us how wrong we are, how we should be doing it.  I am supposed to put my kids' need before my own, but I haven't been and I know it.  I am being selfish, and it's damaging them, and I know just how horrible I am for doing it, and I know that any damage that may be done to them is my fault and no one else's.  Guilt eats at me, and doubt, and I wonder every day when I will do the right thing, but I shrink away from it every day because I am weak, I am a coward.  Being Mother is perhaps the biggest thing I have been or ever will be...and I hate that sometimes I simply want to go be alone somewhere quiet and let someone else take care of these amazing children in my absence.  I am convinced anyone else can do it neater, sweeter, kinder and more compassionate than I am capable of...that maybe these children would be better off without my ineptitude fumbling their childhood into the muck and mire that surrounds me.

So, yeah, slammed...shaken and shattered and just damned tired...but life goes on...and on...and on...