Pop

 Memories popped up today

Our family smiling

Hugging

Playing

Sun soaked memories on a beachy day. 

It looks like fun

It looks like peace 

It looks like the good old days

But you couldn’t pay me to go back. 

To be seeped in the pain

Of fresh betrayal

Shying away from truth

Lying to my loved ones

Vacation with my heartbreak

Coparenting with my sorrow

I lost so much in one moment

A bored moment

Poking around

In what I never considered

“Not my business”

Pop goes the trust

Pop goes the confidence

Pop goes the ignorance 

Of what I didn’t know I didn’t know

Time might not heal all the wounds

But it separates you from what came before

You forgive

What you can’t forget

And try to forget

What you can’t forgive

Overcoming in small moments

Popping the doubt

Popping the anger

Popping the hurt

Vacation with my heartache

Until the heart

Stops aching 

Moving forward 

Because I can’t live in that moment

Three years later

I see the smiling photos

Our family on the beach

And for a moment

The new bubbles we have put around ourselves

Pop

Discomfort by the unaddressed problems

Pop

Pain of unhealed trauma

Pop

Feeling totally and completely alone

Memories popped up today

Of a time I wish I could forget

But we had to be a family

And make memories

And celebrate spring break

And birthdays

All tinged with popped bubbles  

Clinging to me

Like a cold bath

Sloughing off my skin

Leaving the attempt to clean

With greasy soaped residue 

An easily popped bubble

When I never tried to rebuild with something better

Than the trippy twisty butterfly bubbles

Of new love  

What is old love made of?

I hope it’s better

Than bubbles

Losing friends

 My friend died on Valentine’s Day. 

I’ll never get to listen to her laugh. 

Or be lifted up by her love

Or feel her squeeze me so tight. 

I’ll never get to look forward to her calls, 

Her messages. Her visits. 

She’s gone. Forever gone. 

A friend stopped talking to me right before my birthday

I don’t know why. I miss her. 

I reach out and nothing reaches back. 

Just vague responses that make me feel like

Shes done being my friend

A friend hurt my feelings

Doubled down when I told her she hurt me

Hurt me more, worse

Confidences whispered to just her

In private moments of vulnerability

Turned around and fired from a gun I didn’t know she was hiding.  

My own secrets, bullets in the war that ends us. 

No longer friends. 

I cannot call

I won’t hear from her. 

My loss is now fodder for the building of a new friendship

“Oh, how I’ve been used.”

“Oh, how I have been mistreated.”

“Oh, how I have been abandoned.”

The same way, she built her friendship

With me. 

Close friends, deep friends

The unending, timeless friendships

That buoy me up

Hold me together

Create me and strengthen me

Are all back home, thousands of miles away

Back home where it’s safe. 

Where my secrets are kept

And disagreements can come and go

And the friendship remains.

Where we have hurt and cracked and rebuilt

So many times already

Our foundation is firm. 

And our future has each other in it. 

Where friendship only ends

Because someone dies. 

I long to be a person who knows I did it right

To be confident that I didn’t misstep

Or cause the schism

That I can say with all righteousness 

It was she and not me

That caused the death of us. 

But I cannot. 

I am fallible. 

And once hurt or rejected,

Whether Real or perceived,

I will hurt and reject. 

I have culpability

In why someone would reject me. 

My standards unmet, their standards unmet

Leading to videos that are mean

Selfish

And in one scorched earth move, 

You cannot contact me. 

And I cannot contact you. 

Blocked from our lives.

I do not want to lose people. 

I do not want to lose any more people

I cannot let hurt cause me to reject anyone else

Because I have a friend I cannot hurt

Who I wish could hurt me. 

I wish she could call me up and yell at me. 

Tell me all the ways I have let her down

Cry and scream and rant and then we could hug

Because she’s still here. 

Still alive. Still available to break my heart. 

I’d rather her be here, not talking to me

Then gone. Forever. 

Oh to be safe at home

With her

Wherever she is. 

No reason to hurt or be hurt 

Because all is well and perfect

In the great reward

Where everything is safe 

And our dearest friend

Treats us like royalty. 

Even if it’s made up

A great Lie

To ease the transition from being awake

To sleeping forever

I want to believe the lie

Because she’s alive there. 

And she will never reject me. 

Or hurt me. 

And we are friends. 

Forever. 

I’m over the stimulation

 On day 27 of Nexplanon bleeding, an hour past bed time, and all the kids are awake, screaming at each other. I have all the gifts to wrap, the house to clean, and a houseguest to entertain, all while also being a mom and cramping through an entire month on my period. 

Deep breathing is barely holding me together when I step in a puddle of some unknown liquid while I search for the toothbrush that seems to go missing every. Single. Fucking. Night. My oldest is singing a screetchy-off-pitch nightmare ballad she’s making up about how much she dislikes her baby sister, which in turn is making her sister howl with hurt cries and winds up to smack, which I barely catch before it happens. The reprimands are given in every direction, quickly followed by instructions on getting ready for bed. 

Sobs ensue, “I’m still hungry. No one fed me!” Which is the nightly cry of all the kids who refused to touch the dinner I spent 45 minutes making. I don’t give into terrorist demands, and these starving babies sob as they scrub today’s food pyramid of candy, french fries, and popsicles off their gums. My husband and I split into two, I take the littlest, he takes the older two, and the exhausting wait happens. I lay for a long long time, hoping at any second, she will stop moving, stop asking me questions or telling me stories. Stop rearranging dolls and stuffed animals. And just close her eyes and drift away to dreamland so I can attempt to sneak out and get some QT with the old man before descend into out bed one by one in the early hours of the morning. 

It feels like it will never happen. Until it does. And I slip out as slowly, quietly, carefully as I can… but it’s like she’s hardwired into the moment my body isn’t in her room and begins to shriek at the top her lungs… as if this has never happened before, how dare we leave her alone to sleep… instead of this being our daily routine. 

As I glance into the older kids’ room, I see the lights are still on brightly, my husband lounges on a bed, the Game playing loudly from his phone, and the kids roam the room with abandon. 

“Bed?” I call, the rage barely hidden from my voice that competes with my 3-year-old’s tantrum behind me. “We’re getting to it.” Comes the irritated response from my husband, who doesn’t look away from his phone. Does he not have a clock ticking away at our alone time? No desire to get it over with? No to-do list that fills his brain the second he is finished with the current task? 

I turn around and attempt to calm the baby. She is only assuaged by hugs and kisses and promises to come back, but I know this will be a long back and forth. I’m done. I’m ready to turn my anger on everyone around me. I step out of her room again, only to be meet by my son, out of bed, standing at my side with hands extended and a folded piece of paper, excitement dancing in his eyes. “WHY AREN’T YOU IN BED!?” I snap. 

“I made you this!” He is not deterred by my rage. He’s seen it often and doesn’t take me seriously. I unfold the hideous scribble, trying to bit back my deeply problematic hatred for this moment, for the offering, swallowing back my fury and smile through clenched teeth. “thank you. Its great.” But I straight up drop it on the floor as I head into the bathroom. 

I don’t know how to find the joy in these moments. To feel my purpose, or understand my calling to motherhood. Long nights where I am demanded to give up every piece of myself with no expectation of gratitude or reciprocation. Any free time is swallowed by responsibility and cyclical tasks that never end.

And I’m doing it all… on 27 days of unstoppable bleeding. 

Ready to chew this fucking thing out of my arm. 

Wednesday

 My in-laws are coming today. I need to finish doing my magic and making this very well-lived in house look a little more visitor-friendly. My friend came over yesterday and helped me get started, bless her heart. She did an amazing job, not only cleaning, but buoying me up and distracting me and making cleaning enjoyable. Women are wonderful. 

I leave in less than 2 weeks for a visit home. My dear friend Ali has been put into hospice care. And I’m going home to see her one last time. I’m nervous. But so grateful. And I’m going to take advantage of being home without my kids and husband to relax and figure out how to better serve myself so that I can take better care of them. 

My mom is coming back with me too, so I’ll be able to have more time to be taken care of again. Christmas will come and go. January will be a little sad and a little more relaxed. There is a small light at the end of the tunnel before the tunnel starts again, and maybe I can take that time to make candles to burn along the way. 

Nexplanon

 After my second late-ish miscarriage, we have decided that that’s all we’re willing to risk to add to our family and decided to move into the phase of life where we aren’t having more babies. 

Does that mean he made an appointment? Of course not. 

Carry the babies. Birth the babies. Breastfeed the babies, be favored by the babies (not always the blessing it sounds like it would be), miscarry the babies. And now… get painful, hormonally damaging, two week long period causing birth control shoved into my arm. 

The only reason toilet paper is free and widely available is because men shit. 

I’m sick of being a second class citizen even in my own marriage. 

Burn it all down

 I had a dream my childhood home was burned down

I was with my mom and my dad

We could see the flames eating the trees of the canyon, baring down from no man’s land

A house I haven’t lived in since I was 18, taken by the bank

Because my dad didn’t believe in paying bills

He invited the squatters.

They filled my baby brother’s Nemo themed bedroom with grow lights

And Pot Plants

I don't miss it

I don't want to go back.

Fires could pour in from every side and I wouldn't feel a thing.

In the dream, dad is desperate to save it

It's still got value for him.

Even though no one is in it. There is nothing worth saving.

It's just a place we used to live.

Its not memories that he wants to salvage.

There are no treasures left behind.

It's an imagined worth, a possible buyer

Who doesn't exist. 

Who will see the value of what my father poured his efforts into

When he emptied our trust fund

To dig a hole. And build a 10 foot tall, hideous fence.

He saved nothing. He worked on nothing. He invested nothing.

He took everything... and told us it had value.

And if a fire rips it from the earth

The only person who would care

Is him.

A memory I don’t Remember

 I can’t remember the first time I was told the razor story. I think it was my uncle who told me. I was at my mother’s parents’ home and alone in the garage when my uncle walked in to find me sitting on the floor, slicing across my fingers and palm with a razor blade. They told the story laughing, telling me I wasn’t crying or anything, that they suspected the thin blade didn’t really hurt, but I was fascinated by the red lines appearing on my fingers. My mom never laughed when the story was told. I suspect she was reprimanded for letting me off unattended and she was upset by the self-harm. But my uncle got a kick out of the telling. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he became a Coroner for the Sheriff’s office and enjoyed telling the stories of the many crime scenes he has seen. 

I don’t know why the razor story came into my mind as I was driving today. But I felt like I should write it down.