I’ve written a lot this month.  More than I planned really but that is both a good and a bad thing.  It means that the synapses in my brain are still working. It also means that my brain is too full.

New Year’s Eve is usually a toss up for me.  I am either in bed at a disgustingly early hour, or unable to sleep at all. I am almost always mentally back on my green chaise lounge in the year 2000 sobbing uncontrollably.  This year I am sipping vodka and wondering what is gonna happen in 19 days.

I’m not quite ready to disclose the latest crisis, I’m pretty tired of being in crisis. I had about 4 months of just living this year, just getting things back to ‘normal’. I have already forgotten what that feels like.

2017 was about relearning how to live. I thought I had it figured out. Turns out I really don’t and I see myself back at the starting line.

When I think about the last 3 years and all that I’ve fought through just to get to this minimum point of existence….for my sci fi people existing on a ship where everything of off except life support… I just want to lay down. It’s different than sleep.  Sleep is sometimes a code word for not living.

I just want to lay down in this moment.

As the hours tick away and 2018 approaches I know that fighting is what comes next.

I’m gonna have to fight for my family, still. I’m gonna have to fight for my home, still. I’m gonna have to fight my mental barriers, still. I’m gonna have to fight my vagina, still.

A bitch can get tired of swinging you know?

In 3 months or 6 months I’m gonna look at this post and remember this moment and have a perspective.  I can’t tell you what that will be though.

Shit in 6 months I might not even be in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

When X was still in the picture I thought for the briefest of moments what it would be like to just walk away.  From everyone. Not leave this earth, but leave this existence.  There is someone in my life who might tell me this is a good idea.  It’s likely why I am not asking her. I am still subconsciously processing what she told me the other day:

maybe it is time to figure out what makes me happy

That is not a lesson one should have to learn at 45. Sure people do it all of the fucking time, but they often haven’t been as beaten up as I have prior to it.

They say that a person with nothing to lose is dangerous. I still have things to lose though, and I wonder if that makes me equally as dangerous.

I told her the other day during that conversation I have no idea what makes me happy. I was telling the truth.  I have happiness at times. When I am holding my Clyde. When I am writing. When I am face down on a bed calling someone a name they don’t want to be called knowing the next strike of the cane is going to be especially vicious as a result. I smile fairly often. I laugh more than I probably should. I am finding time to do shit like watch movies.

Someone told me the other day they want to be the reason I keep my sanity..content and balanced.

Sanity is such a relative term. Balance seems unattainable.

He’s cute.

I fundamentally understand that moving past January 18 something is going to change. It might be my zip code it might be my aversion to brown liquor. Somethings gonna change though. I loathe change. Well……I loathe the process of change.  Once I am on the other side I often find a way to settle into what that change is.

I can say it would be a different life without having the iron shackles of ‘this’ around my ankles. I prefer to only have my shackles in the bedroom yet I’ve gone decades wearing them all the time.

While I have zero idea what my life is gonna look like in 3 weeks, I know I am gonna live. That’s something at least. Maybe.

 

Aphrodite Brown