#16 Don't Fornicate with This

01/27/10

When I was at the FedEx store yesterday, a man came in with a cardboard box, and written on each side in big black letters were the words, “Don’t Fornicate with This.”  His words were emphatic, bold and underscored several times.  I want a tee shirt that says that.

After a good weekend followed on Monday, by a minor (or so I thought) breakdown in the car when Pet Clark’s “This is my Song” came on the car radio and I had to stop and cry until it was finished.  Need I say it was one of My Dead Husband’s favorites?  I made one more stop and lived to get back here to the safety and warmth of my little house.  I patted myself on the back for going with the flow, so to speak, and letting my tears fall, spill onto my sunglasses and my pants while I sat, head on the steering wheel listening to every word of that song, each cutting me like a knife.  Then I went to work cleaning and organizing my stuff and thought it was behind me.

Then they came in the door, Bert and Emily squabbling as they always do about the crisis du jour.   It doesn’t matter what they were yammering about, it never does.  I was more fragile than I realized, more wounded that I knew over the song incident in the car.  I got up and made a drink, Kristy got here, and while was ordering our usual Monday night pizza, there were heated words coming from my room.  It doesn’t matter what they were. They were heated and I, who had come back here to pee, left and went to the powder room.  I went back outside and lit a cigarette and sipped my drink.  The noise continued, and I lost my temper and marched into the house and told them I couldn’t bear all the histrionics.  I should have asked them if they would be acting that way if Poppy were alive, but I wasn’t that quick.  I began to weep and went back out into the cold.  I am furious with myself for giving them enough of my power to make me cry in my own home where we were supposed to be having family night.  They all came outside then to yell at me that they were not yelling at one another.  Kristy yelled that I had overreacted, which didn’t help my feelings at all.  See why I need that tee shirt?  Mercifully, as soon at the pizza box was empty, Bert took Emily home.

Emily is 13, and I am well aware that it is her job to  make her parents (and most adults) miserable.  What I don’t understand is why Bert can’t control her enough for us to have one evening a week, just visiting and eating pizza and acting happy.  Maybe we should move family night to Kristy’s house so I can leave if I want to.

So, yesterday I was tired and feeling fragile.  I organized my poems, which at least gave me a feeling of purpose and accomplishment, but then I started thinking about crawling down into the black hole for protection.  It frightened me, that thought.  I have never before seen the black hole as some kind of refuge, only a place of dark helplessness.  Am I going mad, truly mad?  I should call Sondralyn and report these thoughts, and maybe I will.  It’s like having an ace in the hole. The next time my sensibilities are assaulted by family or anyone else for that matter, maybe I’ll crawl down into the hole just far enough to drown out the toxic waste they spew so expertly.

I did a lot of weeping yesterday.  Nancy has a sixth sense about me, and after a short phone visit, said she would come see me in the afternoon.  I read her some of my poems and babbled on about the night before.  Even having her for a sounding board didn’t get me well.  After she left, I cried until the dogs did that thing when they are worried and scared at the same time.  I hugged them to me and told them I loved them a lot and I cried into each of their coats.  They didn’t know whether to climb into my lap or run for cover. My wonderful dogs.

I ended up editing some of my poems and sketching out some new ones that I will work on today.  By 6:30 I had taken a bath and was tucked into my bed with my knitting.  Hell, going to bed at 10 is my rule, so I’ll break it when I damned well please.

I have been wearing The Red Sweater since Monday night, taking it off only to bathe.